
Over the past few weeks, we've acquired "808s and Heartbreak" in pieces, a few tracks here and there, a handful of unfinished versions, a few songs mastered and re-mastered and re-re-mastered. Now, listening to the album as a cohesive whole, we almost wish we had waited. In its entirety, "808s and Heartbreak" is an epic, masterfully produced, innovative work of music. The album opens with Say You Will and Welcome to Heartbreak; instrumentally, these tracks, and a great majority of the album, are beautifully sweeping and slightly haunting, playing with the dichotomy between sparsity [...]