Aradia - Citizen of Earth

Seattle-based electro indie pop artist Aradia is a little weird, but she's in good company. Weirdo-indie, as I like to call it, has been on the fringes of the alternative scene for quite some time. Electronic acts like Modselektor and their buddy Otto Von Schirach have been making strange and exciting other-worldly electro-based music for years. Every once in a while a few of these weirdos break through like Bjork or Grimes, but for the most part these champions of nuttiness, who live in their own little worlds, just get on with making rinteresting and usually some of the best indie music for those of us who can handle it. Aradia may well be part of that group who don't think they're from this planet, like to wear lightning bolts as underwear and produce fun, weirdo-indie electro-pop.

Like many of these moonchild weirdo-indies, Aradia has quite a bit of musical training and talent. She began playing piano at 3 years of age and went to the Aaron Copeland School of Music. Rather than follow the classical training path to completion, Aradia deigned to enter the indie pop world instead. She saw some success as well as her interest in electronic music grow in the Atlanta group Twelfth Planet (not to be confused with drum and bass producer 12th Planet). With the lessons learned from her stint in that group, she moved to Seattle in 2014 in order to work solo, ultimately producing her debut album Citizen of Earth.

Aradia likes to call her sound 'roktronika,' which is as good a name as any for the cocktail of rock, pop, electronic and trip hop styles she's created on this album. There is a unique blend here of spiritual and sci-fi lyrics which along with her self-produced electronic beats makes for the weird factor which is so fun and not oft enough explored in music these days. Unfortunately for the most part, while the concept is strong, the actual delivery on Citizen of Earth is largely half-baked.

The issues with the album from a mile-high view have mostly to do with production. While the beats and melodies Aradia writes and produces are quite well-done, the songs generally don't seem fully formed. A little rough and uncompleted, it's as if on most of the tracks the parts don't come together fully. There's a rough quality there with almost all of the songs which I'm not sure is done on purpose, but it just seems kind of poorly mastered. Raw, unpolished sounds are sometimes a good thing in indie music, but when you're talking electronic with kind of an interstellar bent, you want the synths, beats and vocals to be clean and with little background noise.

This unfinished feeling extends to Aradia's vocals on most of the tracks as well. While the lyrics are well-written and interesting, the melodies she's put together to go along with the backing tracks seem immature and hackish. Her vocal timbre is also generally a bit flat, and quite often while listening to this album I kept thinking she shouldn't have dropped out of music school. Again, being on-key is pretty important when it comes to the clean musical lines required by electronic music. Because her voice is so deep and full, the lack of a good pitch in many of the songs leaves Aradia's voice sounding a little flabby, for lack of a better term.

Like I said, I love the concept Aradia is going for here. A few of her songs sound a bit like Bjork or even Massive Attack, so she's headed in the right direction. Not every song on the album has that unfinished quality, either, so it just may be a matter of working out the kinks on her post-production. 'Knock Knock' is an example of Aradia's potential. With a truly unique beat and spot-on vocal tone, this syncopated and slightly dissonant track delivers that weird, spacey quality in both concept and music. It may remind listeners of Bjork's early work or even Siouxsie Sioux. 'Knock Knock' is easily the best track on the album.

The very next song, 'M-Class,' is almost fully-formed. With a backing beat which resembles early drum and bass with lots of snares, Aradia marries her unique voice with a sort of shoegazey guitar sound and they really work together. The space cadet lyrics are also working in sort of a pop function here and all these elements come together though I think the mastering is just a little rough. It seems Arada does well with an indie rock element to her music because with those minor keys and unhinged guitars there is not so much of a need to be pitch-perfect. The album's closing song, 'So Long,' is also quite good. With a sort of sparse downtempo/trip hop backing track, here Aradia's vocals also seem to match the key, and we can see that she is capable to creating beautiful tones with her voice.

On her first solo full-length venture, Aradia most definitely has the concept down. Her intelligent, spiritually-laced lyrics and ambient electro beats should and in the future most likely will create a unique form of indie pop that will have the fringes of the indie electronica world all atwitter. For a first effort the album is not bad, but as always the devil is in the details. If Aradia can fine-tune both her vocals and her mastering just a little, I have no doubt her next album will join the ranks of the weirdo-indie elite. Apr 01 2015