ALBUM REVIEW: CITY OF DREAMS ~ ECLIPSE (Reviewed by Spane5)


After several failed downloads at 70% done, I finally downloaded Eclipse's city of dreams album. It was a free download from datafilehost.net
This album is hiphop-rap. It comprises of 9 tracks and plays for 30:52 minutes. The album folder also contains a folder for the lyrics to each song in separate pdf files. This album featured other six Nigerian musicians and most of the tracks were produced by Eclipse himself.
Pros:
Clarity in vocal deliver, good use of metaphors at strategic points, creative and lively vocal delivery style, nice album arts.

Cons:
Broken lyrics at points where vulgar words were censored, Inconsistent genre, mixed language, inconsistent message and style.
Just as the album name implied, this album was just giving out different messages and styles in different tracks, Eclipse's was just dreaming around, more like a random pick of dope songs to make up a packet; it's more like 'the best of eclipse' than 'an album by eclipse'
From the engineering point of critique, I'll say this album is on point and I'll rate it at 72%. This album was not clipping, sounded balanced enough, and has appreciable dynamics for its various genres.
The sung vocals were on key and most Eclipse's rap vocals were right on my face in 2D, no depth.

Salamalekun
This track has this catchy vocal like that of a young Hausa virgin singing wasalamalekun, then the trap boom bap followed on top with some string vamp counting the tempo and time 4/4. The female vocalist which though sounded like a sampled voice at some point was not credited as this track was by eclipse and M.I alone. Eclipse took the first verse and was doing the usually thing every bloody rapper will do; boasting of his team and his art. There was a sung refrain by eclipse where he gave shout outs to his guys out in the street doing the game. M.I was on the 2nd verse and continued from where eclipse stopped, announcing that they're the government when it comes to rap.

 Orijo
Immediate I played this track, my daughter screamed, say she likey!
This track is hiphop with Alicia keys style of piano vamps, sustained strings, and distorted bass and buttressed by a warm brass.
Here eclipse flaunts his wears and life style, saying they are all Orijo meaning original I guess. He sounded like he was tryna advertise a brand of wears (orijo) with this song. He also boasted here too about his life style. You can easily fall for him especially for the style he delivers his rap with.

Don't you know ft Ruby Gyang
Don't you Know is a love song that got Eclipse doing rap on a dubstep instrumental spiced up with some conga drums. I could hear Eclipse say 'you're my priceless jewel, you're my Ruby', then Gyang complicated issues more affirming that she is so in love with him and should not be left to go: I paused for a moment to calculate if these two artistes had something for each other for real or if they were just making a song.
One thing I liked specially about this track was the British/Hausa accent Eclipse did at 1:10 seconds, got his R's rolling.
I also liked the space and depth the mixer created on their vocals with the reverb, it brought in more soul to the song and gave it a unique style.
Gyang on this one didn't fail to rep her high pitch trade mark as I could hear her do a back up on the chorus with the higher octave of her main melody.

Ogini Di ft Eva
This was pure modern day hiphop with a lot of turntable effects on the instrumental. The track was just calm and Eclipse did a lot of singing on it.
Eva somehow was sounding like or rather reminded me of Gwan Stefani when she sang; I got impressed a lot cos I'm a fan of Gwan.
The message of this song reminds of Mavado’s Cruise Pon Di Dick, it is the perfect song for a sex session. I could hear Eva complaining she has been stuck in traffic for three hours and can’t wait to have the stick in her. There was a mix of English and Igbo language which Eclipse made at some points. This added some flavour to the song as well as hindering some of the audience from decrypting his message. The mixer processed the rap vocals with some automatic pitch correction which I can guess to be autotune. The effect was sounding good, the rap vocals had notes on a scale and sounded like it was actually sung, plus the shaky nature that showed some mood in the delivery: a lot of mixing engineers have used this effect to spoil rap songs though.

Washerman
Washerman is afrojazz with references to Lagbaja. Now what fascinated me again on this one was Eclipse's rap delivery. He had the lady vocals back him up as usual with afrojazz, then the talking drums, trumpets and piano-rhodes.
This track is about men with sweet tongues who go about deceiving young girls.
Eclipse had to import yoruba words in the song lyrics I guess to make it sound more Lagbaja.

Lights Camera Action
This song is a happy song. It started with an intro that sounded like a live rip of Eclipse’s introduction to a stage performance. The instrumental had a trumpet session and female backing vocals on a hiphop drum line. Eclipse talked about stage lights and red carpets and their beauty, he related this to life as a whole being under the spot light for the world and in front of everyone’s camera both lovers and haters.
It’s cool how rappers talk about haters; it’s like giving them the credits they deserve. Eclipse described them as distractions in this song. I appreciate the effects of the haters because as a distraction, they could be the driving force for your attractions and attention, they keep you on the right path in life, they enhance you, they power up your hustles same way micro organisms enhance digestion.


Afarawe ft Demmie V and Poe
This song started with a moonlight epiano and that kind of hiphop square bass peculiar to Chris Brown or Iggy Azaelia (fancy). The intro was brief and it headed to the hook by Demmie V.
The chorus vocals of Demmie V was heavily coloured with autotune and this gave it a very sweet style. It is common for wacky singers to hide under the umbrella of autotune retuning every single note, but this was different, it was used to create a style here. I could hear some shaky notes like they had extra vibrato anyway, and I can attribute this to excessive flattening or sharpening of an intended note by Demmie V. If I was the one mixing in this effect, I will do some manual pitch fixing before proceeding to paint the vocal with autotune; here it was just sounding like someone mopping a room without sweeping it first. Well, wareva, I liked the ‘style’.
The sweet effect also came in on Poe’s verse as he sing-rapped the ending under the influence of autotune.
As usual Eclipse nailed his verse. He did a longer outro talking via telephone/radio effect combining English and Igbo language, advising his audience and fellow musicians to always cut their coats to their shoulders.

One More Time
Dancehall was never a bad idea for this collection of Eclipse’s dreams. This track reminded me alot of ‘Love is Wicked’ by Brick & Lace as it had similar drum line and female backing vocals like Brick & Lace were secretly featured in it. Eclipse sang, “shorty give it to me one more time”: this is a song for the dance clubs and dance floor, you know those kinda things you say to the girl you’re rocking in front of you.

No worries ft Evaezi
‘No worries’ is a calm rnb hiphop rap that has the best combination of male and female acts. This track is capable of fixing your worries. Eclipse rapped in the verses while Evaezi sang on the chorus with extra backing vocals from Eclipse too.
This was produced by Eclipse. Here they were talking about their music hustles and expressing their hopes that someday life will get better and they'll shine. The best way I can define this track I think is to call it a solemn hiphop rap. From the start, Eclipse first gave thanks for good life appreciating the good things God's been doing. But then, the mood he created with this song was like: that Saturday evening just after the rain around 5pm when night was already coming before time, then there was accident, in the white bus no one died though but we've been trying our best to move all the injured victims to the nearby hospital, the ambulance is already on ground then the police has arrived and asked us to explain how it happened. You know that mood that comes with that kind of situation, deep emotions of pity consolations and fear when you see the girl beside you crying already in the scene. Evaezi intensified the mood more with that crying/angry voice, snarling some words. I've not seen the video yet but I can already see the veins on her neck popping out. Evaezi is the reason why I like this track a lot.
The backing vocals were just focused on creating the soul with uuuuuu's and ahhhhhh's. Seriously, this song was just sounding like there were serious casualties in the accident, but eclipse was simply talking about his life hustles and obstacles. This track reminded me a lot about Tupac's 'Changes'.
City of Dreams is a good work; it had good morals and is suitable for almost anyone. It had soul and emotions at some points and then free happiness at other sides. What stayed consistent throughout the song was only Eclipse’s rap delivery style and the collection (as I will call it rather than album) was very expository of who Eclipse is.
Eclipse was proficient in what he did and I’m well convinced my money won’t be a waste when I finally proceed to pay for the freedownload I made.

Contacts
Twitter: @ItsEclipse    @spane5mixline
Instagram: @itseclipse_   @spane5onthemix
Facebook: Eclipse Nkasiobi    www.facebook.com/spane5
www.itseclipse.com

Don't fail to call my attention to that album I need to review today, use the contacts above.

Comments

  1. Fantastic stuff spane, great job, great composition, great critics, i fink i agree with most of ur descriptions, Eclispe is indeed a great artist though, as you said, this is the best of Eclipse

    #IFLO

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dope EP.....thumbs up Spane 5

    ReplyDelete

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