Especially with (2012) the British Ellie Goulding managed to find a nice balance between pure pop and alternative electropop. Subsequently, at (2015) she moved a little further towards conventional pop music, with varying results. Her fourth album Brightest Blue opens with the title track, a collaboration with . It suggests that this time Goulding is again seeking out the experiment. Once again,
… the focus is on electropop and R&B is added to this from time to time. By frequently passing her voice through a vocoder and doing a lot of tempo changes within the songs, her music gets a sharp edge. Yet it is the pure sound that was so beautifully present on her debut (2010) and Halcyon are no longer emphatically present here. Especially in combination with the fairly long playing time, Brightest Blue is not that 'bright'. (JvQ)more
