One of those albums you can listen to from start to finish without ever getting bored or frustrated, Channel Orange will go down as one of the best R&B releases of this decade, if not the bestįrank’s strengths are his versatile voice, the breadth of his songwriting capabilities, the way he mixes and matches old aesthetics and ends up with strange new combinationsĪs easy as it is to listen to Ocean's voice in long stretches - he's casually expressive - the number of deep ruminations over slow tempos requires some patienceĪs a singer, Ocean performs like he has all the time in the world and no idea what to do with it. While Channel Orange is stuffed with one-of-a-kind details and characters, its overall scope is grand, as is Ocean's In throwing his emotional locker wide open, Frank Ocean has made a tender, engrossing classic A brilliant, show-stealing, game-changing affairĬhannel Orange is so arrestingly smooth that all of its unusually shaped pieces fit together as a seamless whole It’s a record that takes your breath away – finally, here’s someone with the gumption to take urban music to new and fascinating heights. It’s a masterful, dynamic and evocative collection of conversations between his inner-self and the listener

Whether he’s being sarcastic or vulnerable, publicly hedging or lyrically baring it all, his songwriting speaks to the humanity in us all Throughout, Ocean and his producers offer an inventive but relatively understated take on contemporary R&B - no mean feat for an album whose centrepiece is a 10-minute shape-shifter called 'Pyramids' In a formulaic era, his production is impressively idiosyncratic, heavy on hazy electronics and cavernous, dubby reverb, and packed with weird touches: the melodies never quite pan out as you expect them to, while the backing shifts and changes unpredicatably It spans time and distance – from Ancient Egypt to the modern Las Vegas strip (on “Pyramids”), from Ladera Heights (the “black Beverly Hills”) to the temples of India – and for all of its 55 minutes, it’s brilliantĬhannel Orange is as dazzling as it is baffling, rarely staying still long enough to get a grip on Sort by ADM rating Sort by most recent reviewĬhannel Orange’s scale and scope are impressive to behold.

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