Labrinth ‘Cosmic Opera: Act 1’ review: An ambitious record on his own terms

Labrinth’s rightfully acclaimed work on the soundtrack to HBO’s Euphoria in recent years means that you’d be forgiven for forgetting the work he’s capable of as a solo artist.

He’s the pop star who achieved a seminal smash with ‘Earthquake’ back in 2011, but more recently he’s the endlessly talented polymath capable of turning his hand to anything he wants. That second point is particularly true on Cosmic Opera: Act I, a sprawling concept album centred around the dark side of the music industry. Or, as Lab puts it, “an artist’s perspective to explore mental illness while navigating a career in the entertainment industry. The paranoia, the confirmation of threats, the desperate and unfulfilling pursuit of success.”

There’s foreboding instrumentation and heavy beats on the brooding ‘Implosion’, while the heavenly ‘God Spoke’ sees him deploy a choir so powerful you’d swear that you’ve just ascended to a new astral plane.

Along the way, there’s an actual ‘Opera Interlude’ and even the mightily powerful ‘Orchestra’, which sees his silky-smooth vocals backed by that very thing.

It’s an album where Labrinth has been uncompromising in his grand vision and delivered something that sounds all the better for it. Though perhaps not as successfully pulled off as Rosalía’s recent record Lux, there’s certainly shared DNA here in the way that both records offer something unapologetically grand and, as a result, stun their audiences in the process. It’s the mark of a true talent operating at full power and, most importantly, on his own terms.