UK's George Paul, aka Jabes, never seemed to get the proper praise for his iKEA SUMMERS EP of last year. It was an excellent release that signalled the arrival of a new artist who already exhibited confidence and a fully formed musical vision. This new project, the inaugural four-track release for the new klunk label, follows suit.
Part of the nebulous UK Bass vanguard, Jabes' music is without a doubt a product of the streaming era, and of today's flattened history of electronic music, an organic amalgamation of UK rave's past and present, '90s IDM and today's proclivity for twitchy, fragmented shapes and avant-club textures that have spread through Soundcloud and Bandcamp. Colourful and eclectric synths gleam and whir over walls of airy textures and hefty grooves amassing and plummeting back and forth between blissed-out build-ups and propulsive broken beats.
Yet none of it ever feels forced or calculated, never falls into the contrivances of genre pastiches or nostalgic facsimiles. Despite the old-school stylistic allusions, everything is seamlessly put together to create its own thing; familiar elements are carefully selected, pulled apart and reconstructed to create euphoric rave music that sounds like past, present and future.
(Klunk)Part of the nebulous UK Bass vanguard, Jabes' music is without a doubt a product of the streaming era, and of today's flattened history of electronic music, an organic amalgamation of UK rave's past and present, '90s IDM and today's proclivity for twitchy, fragmented shapes and avant-club textures that have spread through Soundcloud and Bandcamp. Colourful and eclectric synths gleam and whir over walls of airy textures and hefty grooves amassing and plummeting back and forth between blissed-out build-ups and propulsive broken beats.
Yet none of it ever feels forced or calculated, never falls into the contrivances of genre pastiches or nostalgic facsimiles. Despite the old-school stylistic allusions, everything is seamlessly put together to create its own thing; familiar elements are carefully selected, pulled apart and reconstructed to create euphoric rave music that sounds like past, present and future.