It’s been a long five years since the universally acclaimed genre-bending LP1. FKA twigs' music is based in the familiar sounds of 90's R&B but twisted and turned in endlessly complex and fascinating ways. She states that her new record Magdalene is "about every lover that I’ve ever had, and every lover that I’m going to have", a rather serious undertaking. The album was self-produced by twigs and recorded over the last three years in London, New York, and Los Angeles during a dark period of personal illness. However, her singular vision is not a solitary one - Magdalene features co-production and collaborations with Nicolas Jaar, Metro Boomin, Jack Antonoff, Oneohtrix Point Never, and Skrillex. Future guests on “Holy Terrain” (her first hip-hop collaboration under her own name), a minimalist main-room banger with a typically brilliant video. “Cellophane” begins as a delicate piano ballad with wonderful atmosphere, her voice sounding like Kate Bush with the drama dialed up a few dozen notches. “The process of making this album has allowed me for the first time, and in the most real way, to find compassion when I have been at my most ungraceful, confused and fractured.” says twigs, “I stopped judging myself and at that moment found hope in "Magdalene". To her I am forever grateful.”

• black vinyl pressing
  
• gatefold sleeve w/ printed insert
• music label: Young Turks 2019

reviewed by ;-D 09/2019