Whiled bloated and clumsily structured, Amber Mark shows off her vulnerable and assured sides on her debut record, 'Three Dimensions Deep'
An exploration of love and self-empowerment within earth, cosmos, and beyond. Amber Mark’s debut record stepped into a wide swath of Neo-soul, contemporary R&B, and pop, all tied into the themes of love and self-empowerment that are conceptualized in three acts: Without, Withheld, and Within. Amber Mark’s natural husky and assured delivery is wonderful and is complemented well with the well-developed instrumentation that spans from tropical afrobeat, smooth R&B, and even some spacious pop cuts that overall showcase a balanced array of developed bass grooves, gorgeous multi-tracking and backing vocals, textured percussion, and subtle usage of different keys and synths that’s well-integrated for the most part. That’s also the same case with the structured and hooky melodies that make all 17 tracks stand out from one another.
A good showing for her debut, but is dragged down moderately with the album structure feeling haphazard, especially with the back half where the cosmic aspect could’ve been embraced even further, some of the production and instrumentation touches don’t work well as they should, and Amber Mark is still clearly finding her sound and style as she clearly wears her influences from the past.
But for a 17 track record spanning for an hour, it is impressive that she pulled it off a lot in this record. It is evident that she’s still finding that style that she can nestle into, but for a project that reaches on different styles and sides, she has definitely shown her prowess and skill. Just hoping that she would eventually touch upon a different cosmos next time.
Favorite Tracks: Competition, One, What It Is, Bliss, Foreign Things, FOMO, Most Men, Darkside, Worth It, On & On
Least Favorite Track: Out Of This World