“Take You Home” then takes the listener further into the dance floor, conjuring images of sweaty-skinned couples cutting into the hazy smoke caused by the fog machine there in the laser-lit discotheque. The lyrically provocative “You Don’t Need a God” follows in the same pulse and heartbeat-waving, undulating, and thematically inspiring. The mood and the beat change drastically with the ensuing “Hell After This”-a minimal, graceful Dance tune, back-boned by a drum loop and effectively made organic by the acoustic guitar plucks and a combination of strings and horns. The slow, piano-led “Give You Up”-the album’s first single-follows next in smooth transition. Still On My Mind opens with the eerie and entrancing buildup of “Hurricanes,” which is founded on steady guitar plucks and subtle Electronica orchestration. Released on March 8, 2019, on BMG Records UK, Dido’s fifth displays once again her love of Folk as well as of Hip Hop and Electronic Dance Music. After her successful debut, four albums followed-the Trip-Hop-flavored Life for Rent of 20’s Safe Trip Home, 2013’s Electropop-styled Girl Who Got Away, and the latest, Still On My Mind. The chart-topper “Stan” contained a sample of Dido’s single “Thank You,” which consequently catapulted to becoming also a worldwide hit, reaching number-three on both the United States and the U.K.īorn on December 25, 1971, in Kensington, London, England, Dido is now regarded as one of the female luminaries of the contemporary British Pop music scene. However, in the year that followed, Dido became a household name after the American Rapper/Hip Hop artist Eminem’s single “Stan” went to number-one on the United Kingdom’s music charts. evil.The angelic-voice and faced singer known as Dido released her debut album, No Angel, relatively quietly in 1999. One thing I did appreciate was the fact that there was no good vs. Mary is the mother figure whom we assume is the representation of nurturing, but in fact, while she displays much greater conscience than Doro, she’s most certainly not a Mother Theresa figure. There is an attempt to offer a mother/father juxtaposition, where Doro is the cruel male figure whom his children love, though they know he cares nothing for them and would quickly kill them. Apparently, domestic violence is caused by this lack of control in active and latent telepaths. Between the two of them, there are thousands of people running around the country with the ability to control minds, or inflicting horrible violence against others because they can’t control their own minds. Those who are failed experiments are left to die, while the successes eventually come together thanks to Mary, who is Doro’s ultimate success and thereby becomes his ultimate rival. The notion that one man is working to breed people with super human powers, particularly telepathy. Overall, this was a very disturbing theme.

Emma’s tirade is particularly hypocritical since she is as much a slave to Doro as all the rest of Doro’s children whom he keeps in line with violence and threats of death. Later, Emma angrily raises the issue of non-telepaths being referred to as “mutes,” which she compares to “niggers.” Beyond her brief tirade, this is not addressed again beyond the obvious comparison of mutes being used as slaves to the Patternists (though here, the mutes are all very content and mistreatment by Patternists is punished).

Rachel’s race is introduced as a non sequitur that serves no further purpose but to add to Jan’s “Oh god, niggers,” comment later (we learn earlier that Jan is racist when a Black boy happens past her and therefore we assume she is White, as there does not seem to be any other option but Black or White). Most times, when we came to know someone was Black, it was because Mary was making a comparison or wishing/pleased someone was so (ie wanting to know why Doro had chosen a White husband for her, or being pleased that Doro appeared to her in a Black body). For the most part, characters physical appearances were only vaguely described. There were many themes and issues raised, but none truly pursued. I’m not sure what I ultimately expected, but what was there was a bit of a let down. This was a surprisingly short read, which I picked up as part of the Seed to Harvest series, but have read before Wild Seed. Book Review: Mind of My Mind by Octavia E. Butler

Mymind review