| One Nation | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | 14 March 2011 | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 44:14 | |||
| Label | Hippos in Tanks | |||
| Hype Williams chronology | ||||
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One Nation is an album by British musical duo Hype Williams. It was released on 14 March 2011 through Hippos in Tanks record label. [3]
The Guardian describes the record's sound as “all woozy basslines, stuttering tempos and glacial washes of synths that feel like a hollowing out of several narrative strands in pop history." [4] Self-Titled Mag called One Nation "as blunted as hypnagogic pop gets." [1] Pitchfork critic Paul Thompson wrote: "At its best, One Nation sounds like a beat tape left to crackle for a decade in somebody's garage. [...] a spacious, hazy, hip-hop-influenced electronic dub." [2] It has been compared to the works of Daniel Lopatin, Ariel Pink, and Boards of Canada, and has been characterized as drawing influences from G-funk, synthpop, horror movie soundtracks, [2] classic R&B and Chicago house. [5] The album also features spoken word fragments [6]
| Aggregate scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | 70/100 [7] |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Drowned in Sound | 7/10 [5] |
| The Guardian |   [4] |
| NME | [8] |
| Pitchfork | 6.4/10 [2] |
At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from critics, the album received an average score of 70, which indicates "generally favorable reviews", based on 8 reviews. [7] Drowned in Sound critic Noel Gardner described Hype Williams as "a brace of obnoxious, always-switched-on jokers whose music has actual depth and beauty, as much as their M.O. might try to disguise it." Gardner further commented: "If you had to single out something as being symbolic of 2011, you could do a lot worse than this album." [5] The Guardian 's Caspar Llewellyn Smith stated: "And while, for some, two spoken-word tracks – Untitled and Untitled (And Your Batty's So Round) – may bring to mind nothing so much as Baz Luhrmann's Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen), others may find it all strangely addictive." [4] Tim Chester of NME thought that the record lacks cohesion and "the songwriting spark of Ariel Pink", eventually writing: "Like making a time capsule and filling it full of junk, '‘One Nation''s oddball ephemera might seem more intriguing to good citizens of the future than it does to us." [8]
