Album Review: The Weeknd - Trilogy

The internet can be a fickle thing. We now find ourselves in an age that defies the stock-standard formula of the recording industry, where artists are free to share their music whenever they want. The Weeknd did this, staggering his releases through mixtapes over the course of about nine months last year. Trilogy sees all three released in a package that, er, fits in neatly with the stock-standard formula of the recording industry. See what I mean?

The fact that three fairly disparate collections are packaged as one works as a framing experience; House Of Balloons is intrinsically mellow and often sombre, its stretched bass throbs ebbing up and down between Abel Tesfaye's voice. Thursday kicks things up a notch, with big club beats and Thriller-esque melodrama getting the 'cool' treatment through a bit of studio trickery and, of course, those vocals. Finally, Echoes Of Silence unleashes the wonk, showing the more experimental side of Tesfaye. Opener, D.D., is as Michael Jackson as you can get without being Michael Jackson, but the rest is a dirty, twisted and intense rendition of R&B you won't get from another artist. The last disc is arguably the best, as it ties together the formula that Tesfaye has put together over the remarkably short time he's been producing, or at least has been seen to be producing, music.

I admit to not really picking up on The Weeknd too much when his mixtapes were first released, so despite being slightly naff on the commercial side, Trilogy works as the perfect collection of Tesfaye's work and, yes, a pretty solid example of the great new wave of R&B. And my God, is it sexy as all hell.