Release Date: 30 August 2024
Song Count: 10
Rating: 8.1/10
Description:
At long last, an album hailing from my own home country!
Anton Zaslavski, going by the stage name Zedd, is a Russo-German electronic music producer who has collaborated with countless pop stars and famous singers over the course of his career, gaining worldwide success with his songs - and Telos marks his third full studio album since his beginnings as a solo artist in 2010, and features several different artists lending their talents in every track.
The end result is a compact album with a colourful variety of songs, none even staying remotely the same as the next - every individual track has something brand new to bring to the table, with an additional near-guarantee that it will live up to the standards of everything that preceded. The sound mixing is consistently over the roof, every selected sound that is added having been thought of carefully to enhance the soundscape, and the wide range of vocal talents and ambiences elevate it all to the next level. It's also worth noting how experly the transitions between each song are done, with nearly all of them flowing into each other seamlessly like a hand fitting in a glove.
A vast majority of the tracks - save for one that didn't click with me due to some of its sound and direction choices intrinsically putting me off, and a few in the latter half that followed a more formulaic and less exploratory pattern - is practically worth its own place on a golden seat on some kind of charts, but if there is one song that absolutely deserves to be highlighted in its own right, it is "No Gravity", a piece featuring up-and-coming singer Bava. From the introductory key melody instantly hooking one in and sticking in one's mind, Bava's whispering vocals leading way for the bass foundations filling out what may have been previously missing, and the slick yet calm and minimalistic percussion completing it all and setting an ultimately chill undertone to the ear-candy it accompanies, it simply takes the right direction in every step it takes. Long story cut short, this is easily my favourite track amongst this already solid bunch.
While I came into Telos not quite knowing what to expect, only being aware of the gorgeous art cover that initially drew me in, what the album ended up providing in terms of catchy electronic tunes most certainly did not disappoint. A brilliantly made set of tracks that will definitely draw me in for relistens in the future.