Whether immediate thoughts are notated on mobile phone notepad applications, SMS messages or 140- character-limit Twitter, sometimes there isn`t enough room to completely express yourself in a memo. This can have it`s benefits because it prevents repetitive rambling overshadowing a simplistic point. In the case of Miami`s Brika she uses her debut album as a short memo to introspectively ponder and comment about her life from childhood freedom (Expectations) to adult insecurities and doubts (Moon). It doesn`t overexpress or overpower, it does enough to introduce to us her frame of mind and judging by the music video accompaniment to Mumbai, she has several of those.

 

Appropriately released on a new record label entitled Art House Records (not to be confused with a jazz record company in the late 70s), Voice Memos is a genre-blending, sophisticated and artistic creation of R&B, Jazz, beautiful piano pop and everything inbetween. Sometimes it`s energetic and clean yet minimally downtempo with an underground quality a kin to Banks and Kate Tempest. An archetype of this is in Mumbai. A eureka moment of creative spark that magically combines Bossa Nova percussion and atmosphere with her Rhianna-accented R&B vocals whilst speaking about an Indian city as a metaphor for the need for adventure and discovery. Although on the flip side as brilliant as the song's concept is, the execution needs to be considered a bit more, especially the pitch of her voice, which in the chorus comes across as shouting and uncontrolled.

 

Whilst on that particular psalm she speaks in riddles that ask for deciphering, on the another single Expectations, she simplifies and advises to her childhood self to avoid greed and to avoid the same regretful mistakes : "I beg you now move a little, take it slow/ What was I thinking, getting creative when things are too raw?" The song is matched cleverly with a music promo that shows Brika's child form greedily eating a chocolate cake in the middle of the night, nostaglically referencing the movie adaptation of Mathilda.

 

There are other cinematic connections including the romantic lyrical comparison on the tribal-drumming and echoey voiced Options: "Sometimes love isn`t big enough to stop trains and planes like in the cinemas" and the old jazz of Overtime that sounds like it belongs to a Bugsy Malone soundtrack composed by Regina Spektor, This image being aided by the addition of film projector reeling effects.

 

The LP packages itself in an unusal album structure. Amongst the polished and glossy produced delights, there is a scrapbook of short mono preludes that demonstrate the first draft rawness of the songs that follow and are labelled numerically supposedly by the date of their creation: 10.13.13 and 4.9.14 etc. Depending on how you see the album as a listening experience, this composition can be seen as an interuption to the creative flow but on the other hand it`s a unique method of showing a humanistic and transparent personality to her music process.

 

Making an album is all about decisions and the synthpop-orientated, inspirationless and hollow Gold was a bad choice. It is too base-driven and over-produced making it more fitting for a soundtrack to a young franchise than a deserved place next to the superior gems. Furthermore, it duplicates the staleness of Charlie XCX. This is a case of imposing too many tricks, a habit that needs to be ironed out.

 

The album`s most misjudged decision is the inclusion of Go and it`s prelude 3.7.12 featuring rapping from Bogart. Despite the fact the mix of Brika`s R&B style vocals isn`t too mismatched with Bogart`s poetry and sounds jazzy like a Ana Tijoux production, it feels like a marketing ploy from the record label as they desperately aim to get two of their acts collaborating with each other. Yet their intentions has the potential to backfire considering that the unecessary quality-spoiling explicits results in a parental advisory sticker that from the album cover exclusively and unfairly gives the impression that it`s hiphop release with Brika being a profanity-puking rap star, when the album is much classier than that.

 

As a whole the album feels incomplete and opens itself the vunreablitty and criticism of dissapointment targeted at it`s miniscule length of tracks but maybe it`s meant to be that way. Instead of being submerged, we are given a appetizer leading us to future main courses and hopefully her memos can blossom into full grown essays. MTH

 

Best Tracks: Mumbai, Expectations and Moon