Over the past few months I’ve been seeing the name Matoma pop up all over the place, and even listed on a lot of people’s most anticipated debuts of the year; so, of course I had to check out One In a Million when it finally dropped. I went into this one completely cold and not knowing what to expect from the producer but right off the back I could see why he was receiving hype. As a producer he has a clear grasp of mainstream dance production – everything is clean and sharply produced; the thing that was lacking however, was any real emotion. One In a Million is a generally decent listen that’s a safe bet for any mixed crowd as the aggressively generic songs won’t offend anyone one way or another. The sound is comparable to anything you’d hear from any other producer on the Top 40 and the guest features are all serviceable, but the album as whole is lacking in any real punch or excitement. It’s one predictable sound to the next. So yeah I can see where the excitement for his debut would have come from but he came up woefully short of producing anything really memorable.
I heard sirens in my head
From the first time that we met
Thought it was a false alarm
Yeah, we started as a spark
Didn’t think we’d come this far
But here we are, oh– “False Alarm”
Have you heard One In a Million? What’d you think about it? Did Matoma live up to the hype with his debut album? Let me know in the comments below and be sure to leave your own ratings and reactions for the album.