Pop music amplifies and lionizes its creators by default, while empathy comes from the capital-M music and the community. This has remained true as the music industry has changed and it has remained true as DJs-- Daft Punk, David Guetta, Deadmau5-- have risen to pop-culture prominence. It's why so much of the coverage of an artist like Robyn focuses on her smallness and approachability; it is not the norm. On his debut album, Bristol-based producer Joker (Liam McLean) wants to be a hero. The Vision, arriving after years of delays and false starts, is not for the industrial streets of Bristol, London's maturing club culture, or the small pockets of hyper-aware American undergrounders eager for bombast that doesn't result in our getting wedgied in a mosh pit. All of those scenes are made to feel small next to the righteous blockbuster-ing of The Vision, an album so impressed with itself that there's little need for the listener to be so.
It's not hard to figure out how Joker arrived here. As part of the "purple" (post-) dubstep movement, Joker (along with Gemmy and Guido) suggested that the end-game for dubstep's engorged bass rumble did not have to be masculine aggression. He unleashed a nearly bulletproof string of singles and for well over a year did seem heroic-- his superpower a Magneto-like control of your mid-range dial, his age proof that there were skills yet to harness. His breakout came as dubstep was graduating from pervasive force to ubiquitous cultural presence (in England) and seemed to cement his status as a comer.
That The Vision is more pop-oriented, more streamlined, and more self aware won't be a surprise to anyone who has paid attention. It paints the picture of a producer who not only missed his moment but whose verve and craft dissolved as he waited. The Vision buckles, repeatedly, under a mass of unwieldy guest appearances, pandering pop moves, and Joker's ever-present, oxygen-eating synths. An album meant to display a producer's power and confidence-- from the title to the cover art on down-- instead reveals a reliance on formula and a crippling indecisiveness. Grime, R&B, stadium pop, and dubstep all come in for the most tepid of updates.
Most of the collaborators-- on board to tease out those genre plays-- are ill-chosen and marginally talented. With the exception of Jessie Ware (Santigold to Katy B's M.I.A., right down to her bigger voice and handful of kickass tunes), they serve as haughty ciphers, funneling heaps of entitlement and no small amount of paranoia into these tracks. Silas, on the functionally widescreen "Slaughter House": "They wrap you up in plastic and ship it to the store." Who? 4AD? (More damning still, from Silas: "You can hang around and see what the hook brings." I can!) "On My Mind" is "Love in this Wal-Mart" for the post-Timbaland set. It features the line, "Rumor has it that you want a man with a big di-di-[ed. note: wait for it] digital following." This is presented without a hint of humor or irony; somewhere Lonely Island's number three is slapping his forehead. Joker's most fruitful and charming vocal collaboration-- "Music (4am)"-- perplexingly misses the cut.
What's most distressing is that The Vision doesn't sound like Joker's version of R&B and hip-hop ruined by less talented collaborators; it sounds like Joker's version of the same ruined by Joker. He has strip-mined his chewy, mid-range melodies for their largess, applying it liberally to standard verse-chorus-bridge structures. Removing the cast of self-aggrandizing twits from "Back in the Days" doesn't get you to "Digidesign"; the children's choir on "Lost" is a far cry from the whirling-dervish-house of "Snake Eater". The best "classic" Joker track included is "Tron", an early-2010 offering that preceded the unrelated Hollywood remake that you've already forgotten about and was thought at the time to be among his weakest tracks.
The comparison I keep coming back to for The Vision is Canibus' Can-I-Bus, American hip-hop's nuclear option for unrealized potential and perceived slights. Like Can-I-Bus, The Vision required a perfect storm of bad advice, arrogance, and wretched timing. It irks that a series of Joker's peers-- among them SBTRKT, Rustie, and Magnetic Man-- have established a blueprint for bass producers looking to go pop without sacrificing direction or personality. On "Slaughter House" Silas finishes his rhyme: "They wrap you up in plastic and ship it to the store/ But deep in your bones you know you were made for something more." On an album of terrible, throwaway lines, this is the worst: Joker was absolutely made for this. He arrived fully formed, a shy kid buried in synthesizers and video games, born for music. Whatever has transpired since, The Vision seems to be exactly what Joker wants: UK pop&B of the vainest and most vacuous possible variety.
