A Gift To Us All (studio album) by Cacola

The first time I listened to "The Perfect Shape", my mind was blown. I never seen a song transform itself so many times so successfully. "A Gift To Us All"' biggest strength its fluidity of sound. Song will explode into new beautiful directions you will not foresee. Unfortunately, this album does have some stumbling points. The quieter less transformative songs such as "A Room With No Doors" lack the passion or creativity to keep them relevant. "Tapers" features really weak vocals that detract from an otherwise fantastic song. "Age Of Disintegration" ends the album ends the album much more than I would have hoped. It may have flaws but when it works, "A Gift To Us All" lives up to it's name.

Goes between frantic house and chilled edm. Some good bits in there.

From Mercury 01/14/2021 19:01

85/100 (Excellent, invigorating, sweet, bright album that opened my eyes to a lot of the merits of the genres - Breakbeat, Drum and Bass, other electronic sub-genres that I have no developed ear for.)

So this album is tagged as Breakbeat and Drum and Bass on RYM. I did a search to see if I have any previous exposure to these genres, and I found that outside of video game soundtracks, I do not. Sometimes when I am talking or writing about genres I have no previous experience with or context for I get self-conscious and end up deleting what I write. But with this year's decision to branch out a bit, I have decided to actually write my thoughts on this album.

I really friggin like it. The whole album is strangely life-affirming and upbeat. There are so many beautiful moments with big keyboard sounds mixed with a layer of ambient beauty. And when the beat comes in to join these gorgeous parts it usually makes me swoon. (more often than not)

The first track kinda blew my mind. "The Perfect Shape" is the perfect song. The production is just so lively and smile inducing. And it is a perfect opener, as it gets me onboard with the general vibe of the album. Within 2 minutes I am 100% right there on the right wavelength, tappin' my wee feets and ready to just be swept away.

I also love the 10 minute "Flowers and Snakes" and when the guitar sounds came in on that bad boy I was blown away. It sounds so gooood.

"Birthday Girl" is something I could see myself playing for my wife on her birthday, and just as I say something like "Happy birthday, honey. I love you." and kiss her the tinkly piano sounds come in and the camera pans up and away and the credits roll. Okay, maybe that's just a cheesy make-believe movie moment. But the power of the song is in its ability to make me think whimsically and romantically and happily. And I appreciate the hell out of it. This song reminds me of the sweeter songs on Discovery. Different genres but similar sweet electro-love feelings.

Other standouts are "How to Take Complete Control of Everything and Everyone" - although there are parts of this song that I feel get a bit muddied by all the things happening at once, most of the song is just exhilerating, sunny, and blissful. And the way it smoothly fades out and hands the baton off to the soulful and moody "Tapers" is great. "Tapers" is a welcome chill out after the over-the-top exuberance of the previous track.

In closing, this album is fantastic. And it was a great introduction for me to a whole lot of (again, for me) new sounds and styles. But even separate from genre classification and just looking at how the album made me feel irrespective of genre, this album was uplifting, inspiring and beautiful. It was also a bit long in my opinion, and didn't always sound clean and pristine as there were some parts that sounded a little cluttered and lost. But those were minor quibbles and this is still easily one of my favorite albums of the young year.