User:Ahh123456789/sandbox

Visions is the third studio album by Canadian singer and songwriter Grimes, released on January 31, 2012. Frustrated from touring, she sought to make an album as a means of emotional catharsis, recording it over a three week period in August 2011, and released on 4AD, her first studio album for the label, and Arbutus. It was succeeded by the lead and only single "Genesis", and spawned three music videos for "Genesis", promotional single "Oblivion" and "Nightmusic", the former going viral.

A synth-pop, dream pop and art pop album,

Visions received critical acclaim upon release, being hailed as "a masterpiece in gonzo pop that is weird, original and derivative at the same time", and is considered her breakout record. It was shortlisted for the 2012 Polaris Music Prize and won the Electronic Album of the Year award at the Juno Awards of 2013. It was also a moderate commercial success, peaking at 98 on the Billboard Hot 100, and is regarded as bringing the DIY music scene of Mile End, Montreal to international popularity.

Background and recording
Claire Boucher released her debut album as Grimes, Geidi Primes on Canadian record label Arbutus Records in January 2010, followed by Halfaxa in September, when she began publicly promoting Grimes and started touring beyond Montreal. In 2011, she released a split 12" EP with fellow Montreal based musician d'Eon, Darkbloom and, beginning in May, opened for Swedish singer Lykke Li on her North American Tour, and the following August her debut album was re-released through No Pain in Pop Records, in CD and vinyl format for the first time. In May, Boucher performed early versions of new songs "Genesis" and "Nightmusic" at Festival Kinetik, and "Be A Body" in July.

Growing frustrated with touring and a lack of stability in her life, Boucher began work on Visions in August 2011 over three weeks at her home in Montreal. While under a release deadline set before she had started the album by her then manager, she recorded the album at a "psychotic pace" to meet the deadline. Most songs on the album were finished in a single day, without many demos being created beforehand. She described the process as being "equally enjoyable and tortuous". She created the album hoping to "clear [her] mental slate. Overriding everything I’d done previously, too" stating the album "is a pretty good representation of the beginning of the future.” Visions was recorded using Apple's GarageBand, primarily using a Roland Juno-G keyboard, vocal pedals, and a sampler. The album was mixed by Boucher and Sebastian Cowan at their La Brique Studio Space. She signed with record label 4AD in January 2012.

Music and lyrics
Synth-pop
 * dream pop
 * art pop

Tracks 1-7
The song "Vowels = space and time" was actually me angrily writing about the fact that people were always getting on me for not writing songs about things. It's based on a theory from Russian Zaum philosophy, which is this weird, obscure pre-Dada early-1900s surrealist group that believed language was false because vocal expression had inherent emotional meanings or qualities. I was like, "This justifies my other records!"

Tracks 8-13
That’s actually my favorite song on the new album too — I was wondering if you could explain the characters following the title (侘寂)? "[Laughs] It’s really stupid, because I don’t want to seem like some Asia-phile. I’m so embarrassed about that, but it’s the Japanese characters for wabi-sabi, which is a concept that implies, or is about, non-attachment, and not being too attached to physical stuff. The song is kind of about being in the moment. It’s about experiencing the physical world, right now, and not being attached to things." https://www.refinery29.com/60-seconds-with-grimes

That’s one of the only happy songs on the album. It’s about physical existence, and sex, and being alive. I’m really opposed to phones, I’m opposed to checking my email. I just think it’s really unflattering that everyone’s always on their computer. ‘Be A Body’ is about physical, sensual existence and about having physical pain and pleasure. It’s about existence. As pretentious as it is, it’s based on a Thomas Aquinas quote where he was trying to talk about how in Medieval Christian thought everyone was super into ‘fuck my life, my physical body is a horrible thing and a representation of sin’, and there’s a passage where Aquinas said “Be a body” and i just thought it was so sick, so bad-ass that he would just say that, just give that straight-up imperative. He was a hip guy. http://www.electronicbeats.net/the-visions-the-voice-an-interview-with-grimes/

Pitchfork: I like when I can make out specifics in your lyrics. There's one bit on "Skin" that stands out: "I know you're faced with something that could consume you completely/ Soft skin/ You touch me once again and somehow it stings/ Because I know it is the end."

CB: That's about being in love with someone who's ultimately too caught up in their own shit. I wrote "Skin" for one person and one person only. It's one thing to make a song that you feel really good about, but sometimes you don't actually want anyone to hear it. I can't listen to my own music when someone else is in the room.

Title and artwork
Boucher named the album Visions because "it’s a direct reference to forward thinking, and also really looking to the past at the same time in a cohesive single word”. The album cover was drawn by Boucher with India ink and watercolor paper. The layout was designed by Jasper Baydala. The cover artwork depicts a "gleaming" skull with jewels in its eyes that "whips its tongue through a field of elemental grit before being tied with a child-like bow." Symbols featured on the cover include an alien head weeping onto a pyramid, the eye of Horus, and hearts.

The cover for Visions is probably the best piece of art I’ve made. I think it’s technically proficient, super intense, laid out well, and it has a lot of meaning. It seems so agonized. It’s hard to make emotionally impactful visual art and I think I achieved that with that piece.

Where were you when you made it and how long did it take you to make?

It took about 14 hours. I was hanging out in my upstairs neighbor’s house and we were watching really fucked up movies like Silence of the Lambs, Enter the Void, and The Shining. So, I was totally distressed. I was too scared to go downstairs and we pulled an all-nighter. Within 10 seconds of sketching the skull, I was thinking it was a really good skull. It’s the best skull I’ve drawn to date. The cover of my albums always has to have a skull because it’s one of my primary symbols. It represents based, disgusting dead humanity in the most basic form and it’s something that everyone recognizes -- this idea of death no one understands but everyone is obsessed with. http://www.mtv.com/news/2695678/grimes-visions-interview/

It features lines of poetry from two different poems in Russian by Anna Akhmatova. It features a pink strip to the side of the artwork, created from the word "Grimes" being written multiple times in small letters. She chose to put poetry on the cover as she wanted to put writing on the cover because she "like[d] the way fonts look." It was included on Complex's list of 50 Best Pop Album Covers at number 7. Underneath the title, it says "I Love" in Russian.

Release and promotion


Visions was released on January 31, 2012 in Canada, and on February 21, 2012 in the US, UK and Europe. Worldwide releases followed throughout March. The album was streamed on the NPR website a week before it was released in the United States. The Canadian vinyl version of the album featured a different track listing; it featured 9 songs, including two previously unreleased song "Life After Death" and "Ambrosia". "Oblivion" was released onto the Internet in October 2011 as a promotional single, along with the announcement of the album. "Genesis" was issued as the lead single on January 9, 2012.

The album debuted at No. 98 on the Billboard 200 albums chart on its first week of release, with around 5,000 sold in the United States. It also debuted at No. 8 on the Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart. As of December 2015, the album has sold 110,000 copies in the US. It has sold over 150,000 units. In 2012 it was awarded a silver certification from the Independent Music Companies Association which indicated sales of at least 20,000 copies throughout Europe.

In November 2012, with the announcement that Visions was named album of the year by record shops Rough Trade and Resident, two exclusive bonus discs were made available with any purchase of the album in each shop, featuring remixes and rare tracks.

Visuals
The music video for "Oblivion", directed by Emily Kai Bock, was shot in Montreal at Olympic Stadium and at McGill University's Molson Stadium, during a football game and a motocross rally. The video debuted on March 2, 2012, and shows Grimes amongst shirtless frat boys, as well as in a men's locker room surrounded by weightlifting athletes. "Art gives me an outlet where I can be aggressive in a world where I usually can't be, and part of it was asserting this abstract female power in these male-dominated arenas—the video is somewhat about objectifying men. Not in a disrespectful way, though", Grimes explained. In an interview with Spin, she revealed that the song is about "going into this masculine world that is associated with sexual assault, but presented as something really welcoming and nice. The song's sort of about being—I was assaulted and I had a really hard time engaging in any types of relationship with men, because I was just so terrified of men for a while."

The video for "Nightmusic" was directed by John Londono and premiered on May 10, 2012. It takes place in a "barren, greywashed" landscape, and features Grimes wearing one of the "pussy rings" she designed in collaboration with Montreal-based jeweler and sculptor Morgan Black.

The self-directed video for "Genesis", which was released as the album's lead single on January 9, 2012, premiered on August 22, 2012. It was filmed in Los Angeles and co-stars rapper and stripper Brooke Candy, whom Grimes describes as "a very contemporary muse". In the video, Grimes is seen alongside a group of friends while driving an Escalade in the desert, holding an albino python in the back of a limousine, and posing in the woods. She said of the concept of the video: "It's loosely based on this painting by my favorite painter, Hieronymus Bosch, called The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things. I wanted to play with Medieval/Catholic imagery. I was raised in a Catholic household and went to a Catholic school, and my childhood brain perceived medieval Catholicism as an action movie: There's this crazy omnipresent guy who can destroy you at any moment."

Critical reception and impact
Visions received positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted mean rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 80, based on 42 reviews, which indicates "critical acclaim". Lindsay Zoladz of Pitchfork awarded the album a "Best New Music" designation, claiming it "showcases a streamlined aesthetic, resulting in a statement that feels focused, cohesive, and assured. It's simple enough to leave room for Grimes to grow, but this thing is so compulsively listenable it's hard to come away from it wanting much more". The A.V. Club's Evan Rytlewski commented that on Visions, Grimes "continues her march toward accessibility, rendering hazy, quixotic sketches into tangible, hook-heavy electro-pop". Jon Caramanica of The New York Times hailed Visions as "one of the most impressive albums of the year so far". Rebecca Nicholson of The Guardian described Visions as a "smart, funny album, and it's almost impossible not to dance to it". Clash's Matthew Bennett wrote, "With 4AD's renewed vigor in all affairs electronique and Boucher's coherent elevation in both song quality and hook there'll be no stopping this creative, sensual explosion of humanity called Grimes." Benjamin Boles of Now called the album "richly textured and inventive", noting that "while Visions is unmistakably 2012 sonically in its references to R&B and hip-hop, it also fits remarkably gracefully into 4AD's impressive back catalogue of dream pop".

Matt James of PopMatters praised the album as "an absolute blast" and opined, "Sure, it could have done without some of the interludes [...] but its overall sense of ambition is intoxicating. Visions' rebellious contrariness to evade classification is part of the design and certainly part of the charm". Heather Phares of AllMusic concluded, "Fresh and surprisingly accessible despite its quirks,Visions is bewitching". Eric Harvey of Spin wrote, "The pervasive sense on Visions is of a young woman carefully pushing out of her own introversion, which makes the moments where she sings from the gut instead of the throat [...] or strives for human-on-human sensuality [...] all the more thrilling". Harvey continued, "Boucher's talent lies in the balance of exploiting her gifts and leveraging what's come before her, but judiciously". Kevin Liedel of Slant Magazine viewed the album as "a flawed but intimate glimpse into the fantasies of its creator, and while it might not act as a springboard to greater fame for Grimes, it's just as satisfying to hear her take her bedroom music into a darkened basement, away from the prying world." However, Luke Winkie of Under the Radar felt that Visions "isn't as much of an evolution as it is an elongation; Boucher is still making warped, sparsely-populated electro-pop, and the potential still outweighs the content", adding that the album "stands as a half-formed concept". Reyan Ali of The Phoenix stated that "the ever-fascinating Boucher clearly has unusual ideas sloshing around her skull", but ultimately criticized the album as "unnecessarily oblique, listlessly long (48 minutes!), and painfully shapeless". Rolling Stone's Jody Rosen expressed that "Grimes isn't spooky enough to be 'ghostly,' and not substantial enough to hold your attention."

Accolades
AllMusic proclaimed Visions the best album of 2012 and stated, "On Visions, Claire Boucher honed the mix of little-girl-lost vocals and dark synth-scapes she'd forged on her first two Grimes albums, Geidi Primes and Halfaxa, into something just as unique, but far catchier." The Guardian named it the second best album of 2012, calling it "a masterpiece in gonzo pop that is weird, original and derivative at the same time". The NME ranked the album at number two on its 50 Best Albums of 2012 list. The album appeared at number five on Clash's list of The Top 40 Albums of 2012, and the magazine referred to Grimes as a "creative, sensual explosion of humanity". Pitchfork placed the album at number six on its list of The 50 Best Albums of 2012 and praised it as "a triumphant meeting of human and computer, an album that blows the traditions of both pop and experimental music to pieces and glues them back together in gorgeous, entrancing ways". PopMatters included the album at number 11 on its list of The 75 Best Albums of 2012, concluding, "Astoundingly catchy, occasionally haunting, and frequently brilliant, Visions is top-rate art and pop in equal measure, and deserves to be talked about for years to come".

British magazine Fact ranked Visions the 26th best album of 2012 and commented it "moved beyond the circumstantially lo-fi character of her early offerings Geidi Primes and Halfaxa for a profoundly inventive and just plain weird take on electro-pop. While the shifty rhythms can get a bit repetitive, they're usually voiced differently, and they're always paired with otherworldly synth-work that darts into uneasy, industrial territory". Rolling Stone placed Visions at number 33 on its 50 Best Albums of 2012 list, noting the album "uses EDM extremism, medieval chants, sugar-crusted melodies and her own sky-high voice to rethink pop music". The album was listed on Pastes The 50 Best Albums of 2012 at number 50, and the magazine wrote, "With its constantly shifting tonal landscapes and non-standard structures, it's the kind of music that's exceptionally hard to peg on paper, but that never stops Visions tracks from looping in your head long after it spins to a close".

"Oblivion" was ranked the best song of 2012 by both Pitchfork and PopMatters; the former called it "beautifully fragmented" and stating it "sound[s] both chilly and machine-like but also radiate[s] human warmth and imperfection", while the later opined that "this nouveau dream pop triumph is surely the album's calling card, the definitive encapsulation of everything that makes the record (not to mention the musician behind it) so beguiling to listen to". The NME named "Oblivion" and "Genesis" the sixth and 16th best tracks of 2012, respectively. Rolling Stone included "Oblivion" at number 28 on its list of the 50 Best Songs of 2012, writing that on the song, Grimes "drops sugar-dust vocals over a thwunking synth loop, sounding perfectly dreamy until you listen to the words: 'I never walk alone after dark.../Someone could break your neck/Coming up behind you and you'd never have a clue.' The catchiness only makes it creepier".

Visions was shortlisted for the 2012 Polaris Music Prize on July 17, 2012, but lost out to Feist's Metals. The album won Electronic Album of the Year at the Juno Awards of 2013.

Personnel
Credits adapted from the liner notes of Visions.


 * Grimes – vocals, production, poetry
 * Anna Akhmatova – poetry
 * Jasper Baydala – layout
 * Sebastian Cowan – mastering, mixing
 * Mark Khair – alien head design