Gary based producer Jlin, who some of you might remember for her track “Erotic Heat” (Bangs and Works Vol.2 – Planet Mu 2011), or from her moment in the mainstream light providing music for fashion designer Rick Owens’ F/W 14 Paris runway show, is stepping further into the light with a stunning eleven track debut album “Dark Energy” showcasing her unique and bold new sound.
Gary, Indiana, a neighbouring City to Chicago, is one of those towns people overlook or perhaps expect the worst of. It's famous for the Jackson 5 and its Steel Mills, one of which Jlin works long shifts at. She says her sound and “the themes behind my tracks are all based off what my creativity absorbs, whether it be bad or good”, and the music certainly shows that intent. It's forceful, yet ripples with colour; it’s an intense, monolithic sound with rugged rhythms that stop and breathe and roll out in unusual staccato patterns. It’s a sound unlike any other out there, one that’s fiercely unique.
Her track titles are as evocative as the music is intense and hint at deeper themes – “Black Diamond”, “Guantanamo”, “Abnormal Restriction”. She notes “The titles I chose are based off failing and learning.” Album track ”Expand” also features a vocal from another important female artist - respected experimental West Coast producer Holly Herndon whom Jlin has been quietly collaborating with.
Her album “Dark Energy” is so called because of where it came from and how it came to be; the dark monolith on the cover also perfectly encapsulates it – “This album took my entire life to make. Every moment in my life lead up to this album. My musical sense of expression comes from sadness, and anger. I can't create from a happy place. It seems pointless in my opinion. I don't make the tracks as much as I feel them. Creating for me is about feeling and impact.”
Jlin has been supported by all the key players in the Footwork scene and says she is “thankful to many.” 2015 feels like the year people are ready for a new voice in Footwork and Jlin is a true original with a hard, yet infectious style and an album that showcases it brilliantly.
Cornelius Ferguson, better known as Traxman, spent the '90s and '00s packing Chicago's dancefloors with fast-paced house, juke, and footwork. He's taken his show all over the world the last few years, thanks in part to his insane 2012 Planet Mu release, Da Mind of Traxman, and in part to his insane live show, which find him flipping samples of classic R&B tunes, Chicago house tracks, and psychedelic jazz in equal measure, at lightning speed. Da Mind of Traxman's sequel, the aptly-named Da Mind of Traxman vol. 2, is coming out soon also on Planet Mu, and it draws from an even broader sonic palette than its predecessor, incorporating elements of all sorts of dance music genres, pushing footwork into the future, into the atmosphere.
In 2012, it is a rare thing for a young person to emulate such soul, but at 24 it feels like Taso has been around since much longer than having just coming to consciousness in the neon reflective, high-fade, gloss and glitter cradle of the 90's in America. However, born in Massachusetts in 1988 and transplanted in California at 14, Taso and his music have a hypnotic joviality and exuberance that feel eerily beyond his years. There is jazz buried between the crevasses of his music, and his work resounds with a feeling of distinct street beat crossed with the substance of technical virtuosity. Birth name, Anastasios Ioannis Skalkos, young master Taso has spent the greater portion of his life crafting a musical identity from his unearthly passion for big bass and bringing people together to have a good time.
His earliest musical influences are groups like The Wu and Biggie, but Taso also champions pioneers like Jimi Hendrix and King Tubby, as well as his affinity for old school hip hop and late 90s grind core. Much like the fortuitously eclectic decade that influenced his young brain, Taso's music has a bit of all of these elements present in his musical soundscape. At times, his beats are trunk-busting, slow rhyme inducing, pop-and-lock, deep, West Cost breaks that have an element of dubstep. In a flash, Taso's use of synths proves as razor sharp as any contender in the big bass alleyway of top ten lists across the EDM globe. With a college degree in audio, Skalkos is a veritable grenade of bass, highly enabled to manipulate patches from soothing and lullaby-like to chest-bursting, disemboweling, distorted, monster tones ready to claw your eyes out. In that way that you want. Badly. And know it.
Interacting with patterns.
Member of electronic producer / live performance group dirtRAID. Host, resident and co-founder of RUN. Live remix DJ sets from the 909 to Los Angles.
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