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Census Designated
Census Designated is the second studio album by the American musician Jane Remover. It was released by DeadAir Records on October 20, 2023. After releasing her debut album Frailty to critical praise in 2021, Remover came out as a trans woman the following year and changed her stage name to Jane Remover. A majority of Census Designated was inspired by a self-described "near-death experience" that Remover encountered on a road trip through a blizzard. She was also inspired by horror movies that she watched while creating the album. It was written in a variety of locations, including her house, school, and on the road while touring with Brakence. The album's tracks went through numerous revisions as she wanted to clean up her vocal performances and oversaw the mixing process to make it as "perfect" as possible. It was recorded in both Remover's house in New Jersey and at Studio North in Philadelphia and was entirely produced by Remover herself. Census Designated is a shoegaze and post-rock concept album that takes place over the course of one night, from sunset to dusk. It presents Auto-Tuned vocals that address themes of desperation, isolation, and rejection. She wanted to distance herself from the labels that were given to her previous work; specifically the term "Internet music". Its artwork was photographed by the American photographer Brendon Burton, and was chosen as the cover art to represent Census Designated's overarching "of age" theme. It was promoted with four singles and a tour across North America with her labelmate Quannnic. It received positive reviews from publications; Paste and Pitchfork included the single "Census Designated" in their best songs of the year lists. It also charted on the North American College and Community Radio Chart (NACC). BackgroundJane Remover released her debut studio album Frailty during November 2021, to positive reviews from Pitchfork,[1] Paste,[2] and Anthony Fantano.[3] It was generally described as being digicore,[1] hyperpop, emo, and EDM,[2] as well as a variety of other genres.[1][2][4] When she first started releasing music, she had always wanted to change her sound and wanted to "work towards the goal of being a jack-of-all-trades".[5] During June 2022, she released the singles "Royal Blue Walls" and "Cage Girl" and came out as a trans woman, changing her stage name to Jane Remover;[6] Census Designated is the first album that was released under the name.[7] During 2022, she toured the United States with Brakence in support of his Hypochondriac Tour.[6][7][8] A month before Census Designated released, she moved to Chicago.[6] DevelopmentWritingDue to Remover recording Frailty in her childhood bedroom in New Jersey, the state inspired a lot of material that was on the album.[9][10] Alternatively, Census Designated was inspired by a self-described "near-death experience" Remover went through while on a cross-country road trip through a blizzard.[11][12] She was travelling to Seattle late at night, but the snow became unbearable, and she had to make a pit stop in John Day, Oregon.[7][12] She said it felt like a "reality check" that made her "want to stop ruining things for [herself]".[12] She wrote some of the songs at her house, some at school, and being on the road while she was on tour. She also said how a lot of it was written while being in a car.[13] Speaking about the album's visuals, she commented: "I kind of just had this idea of an empty plane, and dilapidated houses and just like decay and nothing". The ideas for the album's imagery came to her when she first started working on the album musically.[7] The songs on Census Designated went through numerous revisions. They are written about things Remover is afraid of happening instead of things that actually happened in real life.[6] While writing and recording the album, she approached the process differently and experimented often. In describing the album as "darker, more difficult" and "straight up rock", Remover shared that while work on the project progressed, she felt the need "to make something else, […] to make something better" with each successive track that was recorded.[6] "Lips" "served as a skeleton key for the rest of the album in both mood and sound", as Remover became obsessed with the "loud part" of the song, and thought: "I can find a way to build a whole universe out of this." She wanted everyone to interpret the lyrics differently, as she thought with the use of body horror imagery, she could keep the lyrics vague and abstract. She was also interested in watching horror movies while creating the album; such as the "suburban nightmare and macabre love" of Cutting Moments (1997) while writing "Lips".[5] When writing "Backseat Girl", she "hadn't cried for a long time" and a memory ran through her head "of standing next to someone who was crying during a show", leading her to feel inconvenienced, which inspired the song.[10] ProductionCensus Designated was recorded in both Remover's house in New Jersey and at Studio North in Philadelphia, from February 4, 2022, to July 22, 2023.[14] It was entirely produced by Remover.[10] Following the release of Frailty, Remover felt conflicted over the vocal performances included on the album; criticism directed at the album's recording quality prompted her to "[try] and clean … up in all aspects" while working on Census Designated. In an interview with Stereogum, Remover shared that she re-recorded the track "Lips" roughly 100 times because she was unsatisfied with each vocal take, and this desire to continually re-record the song persisted into the album's mixing stage. During the mixing process, Remover oversaw this aspect of the production in-person to ensure that it was "as perfect as it [could] be" before the album was released. After hearing her music being played at a venue, it gave insight into how to make and mix her music in the future.[6] On Census Designated, Remover wanted to distance herself from the labels that were given to her previous work, specifically the term "Internet music".[6][7] With the album, she said that she "kind of found the lane that [she] [wants] to stay in", when speaking about her production style. When speaking about genre, she commented: "there's not really a lane".[7] Remover cited the music of the American singer-songwriter Ethel Cain, namely her album Preacher's Daughter (2022), as another source of inspiration for material included on Census Designated; the song "Cage Girl", which Remover revealed was originally "a demo that [she] made in an hour" for a creative writing class in 2022, is a favorite of Cain's.[6] CompositionCensus Designated is primarily a shoegaze[15][16][17][18][19][20] and post-rock[15][18][19] album that has also been described as bedroom pop,[16] experimental rock,[7] and noise rock.[17] It is an hour long and all of the tracks run for more than four and a half minutes, with most lasting up to six minutes.[7][21] The second half of the album is largely based on "nightmares" Remover fears will materialize in her own life, and tracks "Census Designated", "Video", and "Contingency Song" are "told through the lens of relationships".[6] It presents Auto-Tuned vocals that address themes of desperation, isolation, and rejection.[15][22] Emma Madden of Them described the lyrics as "rich with half-vague, half-precise poetry" and thought Remover's guitar tone "holds both a sense of terror and beauty".[13] Spencer Nafekh-Blanchette from Exclaim! called Census Designated "a new chapter in Remover's experimental production" and that Remover "provides an hour of droning soundscapes that are equally as noisy but significantly more ambient and meditative than her previous releases".[21] For Pitchfork, Kieran Press-Reynolds commented that "Census Designated hits like a flash flood, following moments of dreamy calm with clattering downpours". He further questioned, because Remover has experimented with drum and bass, ambient, glitch rap, and Jersey club, "why would she choose fiery avant-rock as a primary vehicle?".[16] Census Designated is a concept album that takes place over the course of one night. Its story begins at sunset and is "guided by Jane Remover’s streams of consciousness", and ends at dusk.[7][11] According to Paste's Madelyn Dawson, "its 10 tracks span over an hour of deliberate buildups, frenetic breakdowns and visceral, wry lyricism".[7] It incorporates organic and live instrumentation.[6] Ian Cohen from Stereogum said the album "occupies the darker fringes" of rock music.[6] The Guardian's Ben Beaumont-Thomas compared her vocals to that pop K-pop and Europop singers, and that she reinvigorates guitar sounds by "laying them against each other at oblique angles, dressing them with tufts of static and delicate metallic threads of noise".[20] For Flood, Will Schube said that the album sounds like "Tool covering Lana Del Rey, or Ethel Cain raised on Primus instead of Bruce Springsteen".[23] Madden proposed that the album should be listened to "just past sundown, when there’s a brief and lonely pause in space and time and it feels like you are the only person experiencing reality".[13] Press-Reynolds also mentioned how "for every deafening blast, there's a quiet moment to sober up".[16] SongsCensus Designated's opening track is "Cage Girl / Camgirl", a bedroom pop and drone track with begins with a buzzing and "guttural" croaking sound that goes into a backing guitar that builds into a crescendo.[24][7][15] The guitars are "detuned to a death metal gurgle" and it feels cinematic and fictional, according to Cohen.[6] The following post-rock[15] indie ballad[16] "Lips" begins with gentle vocals that discuss the unpredictability of young love,[5] and being someone's "nervous wreck".[16] Its looping guitar strumming fizzles out until the track becomes distorted with drums that reaches a climax of purging noise.[5][16][25] Press-Reynolds put it as: "imagine My Bloody Valentine commissioned to soundtrack Fatal Attraction."[16] "Fling" is another post-rock track[15] that starts out with rough static that transitions into "something softer and more careful" according to Nafekh-Blanchette.[21] Fantano described it as having "super righteous riffs" and "screaming walls of distorted chords laced with some glossy vocal harmonies" and "stuttering noise".[26] "Holding a Leech" is a shoegaze and post-rock track that increasingly intensifies as it picks up in pace.[15][21] A post-rock[15] track, "Backseat Girl" is about how Remover felt like she ignored others' feelings, even when she's aware of her own.[10] With "Idling Somewhere", its loud moments and "destructive" feedback were described as "more punishing than harsh noise albums" by Fantano.[27] Ondarock's Michele Corrado wrote that Remover "goes wild with lacerating screamo" on the track.[15] The shoegaze "Always Have Always Will" begins with an "ahhh" sound that "extends like an infinity mirror". It is a softer and more apologetic track that climaxes with a "crash of fuzz", but "feels more blissed-out than baleful" compared to the other songs according to Press-Reynolds.[16] "Census Designated" explores themes of feeling abandoned, hard to love, and being uncertain about the future.[28] The track is written about being afraid of being lied to and being used because of Remover's age, as it also mentions numerous "mindstates" and different geographic locations.[16] Though, she likes the idea of being "young blood, fresh meat" and it ends with "screams and boiling static".[16][28] For Pitchfork, Hattie Lindert believed that it had a more "stripped-down sound" when compared to Frailty.[28] Fantano called it "one of the most multifaceted songs" on the album, and that it "hits some epic and noisy highs".[29] The penultimate track "Video" tells the story of a woman who becomes infatuated with a man she watched "play with himself online", before he "ends up taking advantage of her" when the two finally meet outside of the Internet.[6] Its guitar strums for six minutes until the track burst with a powerful scream.[16] The final track, "Contingency Song", contains dissonant drones, and Press-Reynolds described it as having a "sparse winter horizon" and that "you can almost feel the chill of its malign fog".[16] ArtworkThe album's artwork was shot by the American photographer Brendon Burton,[14] and depicts Remover standing alone in a field with her back towards the camera as she faces the remnants of a dilapidated house.[13] Speaking with Them, Remover commented that she chose this picture to serve as the cover art because it represents Census Designated's overarching "of age" theme. When interviewer Emma Madden posed that the empty house featured prominently in the image might embody emotions related to "feeling further away from home", Remover welcomed the idea and expressed her intention for "a lot of the material on this album to be up for interpretation", while also noting that the suggestion "wasn't what [she] was going for" personally.[13] Promotion and releaseIn preparation of Census Designated's release, Remover posted images to her social media that consisted of her standing in places such as empty wheat fields, in front of bare buildings, and outside a window in a deserted landscape.[7] "Cage Girl", which serves as the first half of the album's opening track, was initially released as a demo on SoundCloud in April 2022[6] before being officially released alongside the non-album single "Royal Blue Walls"[a] on June 27, 2022.[30] "Contingency Song" was released as the album's second single on November 16;[25] however, the album features an alternate version of the song.[12] "Lips" was announced alongside the album itself and released as the third single on August 23, 2023.[11] The album's title track, "Census Designated", was released as the fourth and final single on September 20.[28] It was accompanied by the first-ever music video from Remover, directed by her labelmate Quadeca.[31] Census Designated was released by DeadAir Records on October 20, 2023.[12] It was leaked in Japan days before its release; in response, Remover shared that she has become accustomed to the reality of music leaking prematurely after experiencing her previous projects, Frailty and Teen Week (both 2021), being spread online before their respective release dates.[6] On October 31, 2023, Remover announced that she would be co-headlining the Designated Dreams Tour with her labelmate Quannnic, starting in February 2024. The tour saw the two artists travel across the United States to perform a total of 12 shows.[32] Critical reception
Press-Reynolds described Census Designated as "a feverish mutation of shoegaze and bedroom pop" which showcases Remover's evolution from the bitcrushed vocals and sample-heavy production of Teen Week to that of her "newly expressive style […] [weaving] lattices of vocal clips and skitters between inflections" over tracks characterized as "[scratchy] and serrated". Press-Reynolds goes on to note that he felt certain songs "stretch out for too long" and that, collectively, the album is not as sonically pleasing as Frailty. Still, he argues that the "mountainous unfurling" present throughout the project's ten tracks offers an overall "immersive" experience and calls it Remover's "most poignant and piercing music" to date.[16] Nafekh-Blanchette thought the album to be "[retrospective] and [tranquil]" compared to the "contagious energy" present throughout Remover's previous releases; her "subtler and more nuanced sound", he says, results in a project filled with "droning soundscapes that are equally as noisy but significantly more ambient and meditative". Touching on the album's length, Nafekh-Blanchette calls it potentially the only "truly divisive element" of what is otherwise Remover's "most cohesive work yet". However, he also suggests that Census Designated lacks the "unpredictability" of projects like Dariacore (2021), Remover's mashup album released under the pseudonym Leroy, which made her "earlier work so undeniably one-of-a-kind".[21] Corrado called Remover's guitar "a guide" to her "long compositions" and that the sounds heard on Frailty are "completely overturned". He further wrote that "the continuity with the past" is in the emotions of the music, which he described as "of strong impact and prone to using the most disparate expressive forms". He said that the tracks "escapes the songs form" and instead "[takes] refuge in a sort of obsessive stream of consciousness" and called the songwriting "painful". Although he commented on how the length of the album is not entirely useful, he closed the review with stating: "we can say that the underground-oriented Generation Z has found an important champion".[15] Beaumont-Thomas wrote that, due to Remover's music being rooted in digicore and hyperpop, "when she picks up a guitar she makes it sound like no one else". He also called Remover a "superb arranger", and the she is able to revitalize "these staple guitar sounds". He also said that there "isn't a single weak song" on the album and called "Census Designated" the "greatest [realization] of her visionary approach".[20] Fantano called the album "overwhelming", though it "isn't hitting you with a lot of fast moving information all at once" and said the album's pacing is within a "slow to medium range".[34] He overall thought that it was a downgrade when compared to Frailty, though he thought it was ambitious and its artistic intentions were pure.[35] Year-end lists
Track listingAll tracks are written and produced by Jane Remover.
PersonnelCredits are adapted from Census Designated's liner notes.[14] Musicians
Technical
Artwork
Charts
Release history
NotesReferences
Video sources
External links
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