Jam City ~ Classical Curves

Jam City is one of the most restless, the most varied producers on the Night Slugs roster. Classical Curves is a testament to this, to the eclecticism that comes with the name. Indeed, what is beautiful about this record is not its emotive and highly accurate portrait of the present day, nor its more modern (and arguably more successful) take on the objective of Detroit Techno (to amalgamate Kraftwerk and Parliament), but its heteroglossia - that fact that any of these readings is as good as the other. In Classical Curves I hear at once the hazey postmodernity of the Ferraro/Lopatin matrix, the glamour and sex-ooze of Prince, the coldness of eskibeat, the mechanical industrialism of Underground Resistance and the vibrancy of Night Slugs. But that's just me and my musical understanding - you may see something altogether different in it, and that's the beauty of this album.

Whether true or an elaborate publicity stunt, the backstory of the album provides a fitting environment for its themes. (The story goes that JC was approached to work on some chrome "body extensions" by a high-fashion label, naturally the project turned out to be overseen by a Big Brother-esque aero-space company and was consequentially shut down. Another goes that JC was involved in some sport-label spy missions to snoop on competitors.) Elucidated are modern surveillance, the ritz and materiality of haute-couture fashion, robotics and ultramodern technotopia. This is not only communicated in the albums story, but in the album's cover art. A crash devoid of humans, golden velvet, marble, and a splintered motorbike all framed in the kind of inside-outside area one might find in dystopic Dubai. It's an excursion for Night Slugs' visual aesthetic, just as it's an excursion for their sound.

'Her' has received a bit of botox since we last heard its demo. The album version makes the song more palatable, the brutality and violence of the drums has been pacified while the injection of the vocal sample adds a vogue poppiness to it. This is a bad thing by no means, more a matter of taste, with JC equally succeeding in promoting what was a great idea to an album-worthy track. I've spoken about my love for 'Her' before, but it really does prove what Girl Unit recently said about Jam City, that he "manages to recontextualise harsh sounds and make them beautiful." 'Her' and 'The Courts' work together in an almost symbiotic manner. Not only is ther no break between them, but they are sonically (the pounding gun of Her turns into the slap-claps of The Courts) and structurally (the emphasis on tension and release) aligned.

'How We Relate to the Body' is the centrepiece for Jam City's synth work. If I had a complaint it would be this; the overuse of that synth tone. When restricted to one song it creates a hi-sheen, effulgent, chrome gloss while remaining laceratingly potent and disarmingly modern. Coupled with the steadiness of a fat kick and the emotion of decaying replicant vocals, the track delivers not only thump fit for a club but subtlety fit for the home. Tracks like 'Club Thanz' and the 'Hyatt Park' sequence are where the synth work tires and where Jam City seems happy to sit back and sustain the album's concept. Having said that, they do work for the album and are far from skippable. Unless you consider what comes next. What can I say about 'Strawberries'? It's the best song on the album? One of the best of the year? Well, yes, but that doesn't compare to the sheer joy of listening to it. It is the standout not only because it retains a bigness to behold but because it is the most fully realised example of Jam City's aesthetic. It rolls all those influences I mentioned before, with a bit of trap music and a bit of Rustie thrown in for good measure, into a firework, and goes off in full, explosive glory. 'Love is Real', with its ambient drones, kitsch soundbytes and jittery percussion, could fit right in on the most recent Ferraro work, Bodyguard's Silica Gel.

'The Nite Life' is a strange collaboration, and it is testament to both artists' creativity that this exists, let alone that it is so successful. Jam City appears to have studied the vibe of Main Attraktionz and delivered it holistically without compromising the sound of the album. It's smoked out; emotionally so. After all, Main Attraktionz have shown that they approach drug taking in a nihilistically philosophical way - 'I Smoke Because I Don't Care About Death'. Jam City's production similarly conveys an aura of 21st century surrealism and disillusionment. But where Jam really shows is skills is in the vocal-less second wind that comes at the end of the track. Skittering hi-hats and a rolling bassline are added to create a lurching, ear-worming slow jam that only sticks around for a minute before drifting into oblivion. So there you have it, a highly anticipated and typically English club album that finishes with a collaboration with the creators of cloud rap. On that note...