When I was in grade 5, my class had a children's author come and visit us to talk about writing fiction. While most of her speech went right over my head, one thing stuck: the best fiction is drawn from the truth. Bear in mind, I was a very manipulative child, so of course, the only reason this stuck was because I used it to lie better. I must say, to date, I have not seen this theory disproven although I do try not to lie at all now. This week's artist's songs are all fiction to her but she draws from the second-hand experiences of her friends' and family's lives to tell a diluted truth.

 

Sabrina Claudio wins the review with her latest project, About Time. Only 21 years of age and never having been in love, Sabrina has been writing about deep feelings of lust and love since she was only 14 that she insists she has never experienced for herself. As a child, Sabrina was into the musical arts, including both dance and music. She started out as most rising stars do of late, on Twitter, YouTube and SoundCloud. She got her first recording contract before she was 19 and still living in Miami but she quickly found herself to be unhappy and being pulled in every direction but her own by producers. With the incredible support of her parents, her whole family uprooted to LA in pursuit of her dreams. From there, everything happened pretty fast. When she released the single Confidently Lost on SoundCloud, LA labels were jumping at the chance to represent her. 

 

About Time, a mixtape, is a short collection of perfectly-crafted songs with no fillers. Her unique sound and sultry voice make the perfect combination. The mix-tape starts with a soliloquy about time so the listener can understand the concept of the record and then dives into the beautiful sounds of her harmonic hums. When the words of the first song start, I am immediately captured by her talent. From the start of the mix-tape she shows off her vocal control with her runs.

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The production throughout the mix-tape is relatively simplistic. Most of it is composed of her own background vocals, a simple repetitive percussive beat and a few synthesized instruments. Each song within the mix-tape has very similar production, making production the thread that ties the mix-tape together. However, there is a small negative side to this because the similarity of the songs also brings with it predictability. The mix-tape also has a natural end to it, finishing with a remix of track 3 from the mix-tape, belong to you. It feels full-circle to me when an artist finishes an mix-tape with a remix of a previously played track and settles me with a feeling of completion.

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The most popular songs from the mix-tape are belong to you, unravel me, and frozen, with my personal-favourites list overlapping with the former two songs. I would also add wanna know as a personal favourite. Belong to you and unravel me make the list because I really like the way that auto-tune was used to synthesize runs with her voice in both songs. It adds dimension to these parts of the song because its both the lead vocal and a part of the background at the same time. In belong to you the auto-tune is used on the 'you' when she says 'I belong to you' in the chorus and more prominently used in unravel me when she sings 'me' in the chorus. Frozen feels like the most different song on the mix-tape because of the guitar that is used at the front of the song and then continues subtly throughout but the unusual thing that makes me love this song particularly is that I can picture ballroom dancers dancing to it. As strange as it may sound, I love when a song inspires my mind to imagine an entire routine and sparks my creativity.

 

This mix-tape gets 5 stars because the only flaw I find in it is its invariability which normally would be much more damaging to the ratings but the one theme that was used throughout happens to be one that I enjoy. I would recommend this project for listening while taking a Sunday drive or relaxing at home as its sounds are perfectly-suited for a calm environment.