The garish, cluttered cover art of Lady Gaga’s Dawn of Chromatica is reflective of the remix album’s sonic palette. A sister record to last year’s Chromatica, the album is a mixed bag, swinging wildly between microgenres and quality from track to track. If the original album favored pop hooks over musical invention, many of the versions on Dawn of Chromatica are noisy or just plain tuneless.
French producer Coucou Chloe strips “Stupid Love” of its ingratiating hook, while the trap-adjacent “Plastic Doll,” featuring up-and-coming rapper Ashnikko, is practically unlistenable. The most grating offender, though, is “Sine from Above,” a Frankensteinian abomination that chops up and distorts guest Elton John’s vocals, making an even bigger mockery of the legendary musician than the original did.
Other guest vocalists fare a bit better: Charli XCX, for instance, injects some much-needed expressiveness into “911,” which British producer A.G. Cook drags from the late aughts into something approaching the future. On “Replay,” retrofitted with a hard-edged mix of hyperpop and metal, Dorian Electra’s dramatic vocals lend the song a genuine theatricality. Elsewhere, Bree Runway brings some swagger—in stark contrast to Gaga’s wooden delivery—to Detroit knob-twirler Jimmy Edgar’s update of the derivative “Babylon.”
The always forward-thinking Arca begins their reconstruction of “Rain on Me” unassumingly enough, with an undercurrent of gently percolating synths that give way to a gale-force wave of sound. The Venezuelan artist retains the original’s structure and hook while at the same time transforming the song into something truly innovative. It offers a glimpse of what Chromatica might have sounded like had Gaga’s music lived up to the avant-garde pop image she’s created for herself.
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