Cloud Nine – A Review

The long awaited album by Kygo is here! After an original release date of 12th February 2016, Kygo has made us wait for 3 months to finalise something that was apparently 99% done. Technically, it was the longest February on record by Kygo standards. That being said, I was excited to see what he could offer.

After the initial excitement provided by his remix of I See Fire by Ed Sheeran, and the success of his original song, called Firestone, I was eager to see what he could offer. He’s been drip feeding us his songs for a long time now and his tracks make another appearance in the album.

 

Cloud Nine Tracklist (Requires Spotify):

1. Intro
2. Stole The Show feat. Parson James
3. Fiction feat. Tom Odell
4. Raging feat. Kodaline
5. Firestone feat. Conrad Sewell
6. Happy Birthday feat. John Legend
7. I’m In Love feat. James Vincent McMorrow
8. Oasis feat. Foxes
9. Not Alone feat. Rhodes
10. Serious feat. Matt Corby
11. Stay feat. Maty Noyes
12. Nothing Left feat. Will Heard
13. Fragile feat. Labrinth
14. Carry Me feat. Julia Michaels
15. For What It’s Worth feat. Angus & Julia Stone

Other notable tracks that aren’t on the album are:

Firestone (Live Acoustic Version)
Firestone (Fireworks Version)
Stole the Show (Acoustic Version)

Listen/Buy it here

iTunes: https://goo.gl/6WGv6E
Amazon MP3: https://goo.gl/b5mfL9
Spotify: https://goo.gl/yosHPi

The first impressions that I got from this album is that there are some tracks that seemed a bit half baked. Overall the album was very good. He is consistent in the type of vibe that he wants to produce. The introduction to the album is very chilled and opens beautifully into one of my personal favourites, Stole the Show. It’s not to say that all the songs were pleasing to the ear. Some tracks I personally thought sounded a bit out of place. In an area where Kygo seems to want to establish himself as a Tropical House music producer, some songs just seemed to be there for the sake of being there. But then again, this album (within Insanity, at any rate) has had overall critical acclaim despite the few bugbears that exist within its track listing. Songs like ‘I’m in Love’ (Track 7), is a personal pet hate of mine. It’s just annoying and very whiney.

That being said, the tracks are overall very very good! The combination of interesting mixes and artists, he has produced an album which has risen to the top of my most played on Spotify. Notable mentions include the collaboration that Kygo did with Foxes to produce Oasis (Track 8). It is a fantastic song which utilises all aspects of Foxes’ vocal talents. Carry Me has a lot of similarities with Avicii’s Broken Arrows, but he’s using a winning formula to produce something that was pleasing on the ear and (dare I say it), better than the original. Give them a listen and you will see the similarities.

In the end, this is just my personal thoughts, but overall I feel this is a very strong debut album by Kygo.