A cinephile friend recently described a gross tactical error made by Oscar-fave The Artist: It approached silent films as a genre rather than a method for making them. Musicians make this mistake too. Consider vocal processing. The amount of time spent warping, burying, and looping the human voice has increased exponentially as artists have found it an effective tool for bridging the gaps between man and machine (James Blake), ecstasy and violence (the Weeknd), past and present (Ariel Pink). R&B's delirious emotional states have proven particularly fertile ground for artists like Jacques Greene, How to Dress Well, and Autre Ne Veut.
Successful applications, all, and while actual output varies, these artists have enough in common that foggy vocals have become a zeitgeist of modern underground music. Enter o F F Love, a French transplant living in Berlin, who-- you guessed it-- has mistaken this choral thicket for an end-game. With its sounds of pop and R&B stylized to abstraction, it is impossible to imagine Probably Love, o F F Love's debut LP, dropping any time but the present. One year ago it would've seemed obscure; one year from now, it will sound archaic. o F F Love exists as a prism that refracts the most facile aspects of chillwave, witch-house, and PBR&B to deleterious effect and, in doing so, provides a glimpse of how damaging indie rock's obsession with memory and obfuscation can be.
o F F Love's penchant for obscurity is not just musical. Little is known about the producer, who hides his face behind a scarf and ballcap. Mangled phonetics (e.g. "Makeupworz", "Missthemway (Again)") aid in building the mystery, I suppose. What little o F F Love media exists-- a spare website, a YouTube channel, a SoundCloud-- indicate an interest in teen-pop fanaticism, potentially fecund territory for a deconstructionist. This fascination proves to be entirely visual, however, as Probably Love establishes a template of queasy vocal refrains, dull kick drums, and aerosol-laced synths. The vocals are provided by o F F Love himself. Or they're sampled. Either way, human voices are slathered in Auto-Tune, reducing the opportunity for a big reveal or the establishment of a discernible vocal presence.
I suspect Probably Love was recorded entirely using software, but ultimately that doesn't matter: What matters is that this album sounds like it's been filtered through an overheated laptop's cooling fan, so shrill is its palate. Probably Love smolders in this dissonant, digital pit, its every minor chord, snare hit, and intonation laid to waste by hot, harsh circuits. The tempos do not help. Probably Love sputters, distended phrasing and echoing snares left to linger: The shrieking, nauseous interjections of "Be Around U" and rudderless vowels of "Everyday, My Holy Day" are egregious offenders. The cumulative effect is advanced narcolepsy, someone blowing spit bubbles with soft synths and drum machines. When o F F Love does allow a quicker tempo to invade-- such as on the almost pretty masturbation fantasy "Beating for You"-- it predictably drags his vocals out of the muck as well.
Perhaps you think I'm missing the point, that o F F Love's blur&B contains some hard-won beauty or relevant commentary. But Probably Love isn't beautiful; its ugliness and pessimism exhaust me. And what greater point could he be making? Probably Love is the frightful dead-end of so many recent trends, the point at which we lose sight of what question is being answered, what volley is being returned.
