Banging album a masterpiece Lady Gaga

It feels safe to say that Lady Gaga loves a bit of drama. Theatrics is her thing. She’s the artist who wore a dress made of meat. Since her audacious debut just 12 years ago, she has endowed addictive pop music with lavish performance art.

Chromatica is high drama from its opening notes.

Sweeping cinematic strings set the stage like a Shakespeare soliloquy and return twice more dividing the album into three acts.

In an album devoid of ballads, they are momentary reprieves in which to catch a breath.

No stranger to a concept album, the concept here is to party like it’s 1999.

The whole album has that 90s club feel.

Lead single Rain On Me featuring Ariana Grande, which just debuted at No 1 in the United States, begs to be mixed into French house group Stardust’s Music Sounds Better With You.

To be fair, the way this year is rolling out, going back to party in 1999 sounds very tempting.

Her technique is impeccable. Every vocal stab is perfectly placed, every drop hits home and, when she belts it out, her voice is undeniably powerful. Bangers are back on the menu, and it’s a welcome return.

That’s not to take anything away from Joanne or A Star Is Born. Those projects garnered her bucketloads of well-deserved praise, but the Gaga of our hearts is dancefloor Gaga.

Lady Gaga has always created a high-energy safe space, inclusive to misfits of all shapes, colours, sizes, and orientations.

On Free Woman, when she sings, ‘‘this is my dancefloor I fought for. We own the downtown, hear our sound’’, it’s a rally cry her legion of loyal fans will love to echo.

Setting a more laid-back pace, yet positively dripping with funk, is Taken Away from one of Detroit’s house music maestros, Moodymann.

Tethered together with 70s samples, it dips into Al Green and Roberta Flack, and serves them up with crisp, closed hi-hats on a bed of bubbly basslines.

Despite its danceable nature, there’s a gritty realism to the record.

Like far too many black Americans, Moodymann has been a victim of police brutality.

His anger surfaces subtly, with an occasional passing siren or a snarled hook about having his back against the wall. Despite these serious undertones you can still enjoy the ride, because this record is rooted in the finest house music traditions.

With finely-tuned instincts, honed over 20 years of playing clubs, Moodymann gives us an album of slick street beats that will have your toes tapping in no time, or perfectly in time.