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The combination of synth, loop techniques and no-joke instrumentalists playing wild and unconventional rhythms is totally over-the-top, but that’s exactly what makes this album so dazzling.
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Instead of rhythmic exploration Braxton is working with a variety of harmonic and melodic developments and in doing so has made a refreshing and similar counterpoint to 'Mirrored'. Central Market may not be as calculated, but it is more fun and in general more easy to digest.
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On Central Market, Mr. Braxton’s first full album under his own name in seven years, he has moved forward with exponentially more complicated music. It’s exponentially more entertaining, too.
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Central Market is a big album for an age that has acquainted itself with thinking small about the album both as a vessel for sound and as a standard-bearer for new aesthetic vision.
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More Stravinsky than the Saturdays, this is still way more fun than the latter.
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Central Market could prove to some that contemporary classical music can be more epic than post-rock, more dangerous than metal, and have more to say than the most verbose MC-even if most of his songs don't have any words.
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While the pieces that put the orchestra at the fore are the most dazzling, Central Market is a tour de force that only grows more fascinating with repeated listens.
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It's Central Market, his second full solo release, that sees him coming of age in a manner that befits the familial myth.
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The strongest tracks here make a case for Braxton’s compositional skills; the rest feel like recycled tales from his nights out with Stanier and Williams, an unfortunate byproduct of placing them within this context.
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Which isn’t to say that the rest of the album isn’t impressive at certain points, though the law of diminishing returns weighs heavily here.