Album Review: Avicii – TRUE: Avicii by Avicii
3 min read
Swedish DJ Avicii (aka Tim Bergling) has been making waves in the music industry for 7 years now, he has worked with the likes of David Guetta and John Dahlbäck and first tasted mainstream success with his first top ten selling single Levels in 2011. His debut album True (2013) wormed its way into the top 10 of at least ten countries around the world and what was really unique about True is that Avicii wanted to find new ways to connect with his fans; the album focused on his personal influences of bluegrass/country music as well as incorporating electronic dance elements. This month the renowned producer has dropped a personalised remix of his own album, True: Avicii by Avicii. Interesting.
What might be a little bit of a disappointment to fans is that the revamped version of Wake Me Up featured on this remix album is no different to the Avicii Speed Remix version, which was released as a digital download as part of the Wake Me Up-Remixes single. But why would Avicii go through the trouble of remixing the song again anyway? It’s already done, so chuck it on the album and Bob’s your uncle. You Make Me doesn’t stray too far from the original version, however the remix is backed from start to finish by the atmosphere of the track as opposed to the original which changed drastically. The new version of Hey Brother is a bit of a let down, the strong and carrying vocal heard in the original is replaced by a really light and weaker vocal; even if the remix creates a louder atmosphere they just don’t seem to compliment each other 100%. Blah, blah, blah.
We skip through to Shame On Me, this remix is actually pretty cool; the original track is so fast paced and is hard to keep up with, which is what would’ve been thought to be expected from the remix. The new Shame On Me is slowed right down, you can actually bop along to and understand the lyrics without having to concentrate too hard; this isn’t minus the remix production, but this song has actually been improved since being tweaked. One other thing to note is that the entirety of True wasn’t remixed for this album; Heart Upon My Sleeve was not touched, perhaps something else fans won’t be too crash hot about.
True: Avicii by Avicii doesn’t really demonstrate anything substantially groundbreaking in the world of dance music, but kudos should be given to Avicii for taking what was already his and interpreting 90% of the original True album to suit the genre in which he is renowned for. This may differ according to diversity of opinions out there, but it would be very difficult to remix such an album as it was very raw for a piece in its genre and that rawness would just be lost in any kind of production. This would be a great remix album for fans of Avicii the master producer, but not so much for fans in love with the original album concept.
