It's likely Jam City's Classical Curves informed how some of your favorite producers work. The Night Slugs/Fade To Mind member's last album was cavernous, sterile, and compartmentalized. In many ways, it was a product of the capitalist system's insurmountable matrix of control over everyday life, even the process of making music. It occupied an extreme on the spectrum of a trend that spread throughout avant-garde dance music over the course of the last three years. Jam City, alongside Kingdom, Bok Bok and Girl Unit, brought a similar perspective to their production on Kelela's Cut 4 Me mixtape. The vacuous, metallic tracks laid under Kelela's raw, emotive vocals helped make that tape one of the best releases of 2013.
Dream A Garden is Jam City, AKA Jack Latham's follow up album. It couldn't be more different. Part pop, part post-punk, the album's influences range from hip-hop and grime to country and gothic. To call it a departure would miss the point. It is an inverse reaction to that same machine Classical Curves so successfully emulated. For Jam City, Dream A Garden is the breathing, feeling musician's response. At face value, it's a DIY pop album laced with vocals and inventive instrumental performances. When considered together with Classical Curves, it is a radical statement: a refusal to submit to the seemingly totalizing clutches of the modern world.
The album bio closes with the below:
They want us to be sad,
They want us to be selfish,
They want us to be unhappy,
1.
It's likely Jam City's Classical Curves informed how some of your favorite producers work. The Night Slugs/Fade To Mind member's last album was cavernous, sterile, and compartmentalized. In many ways, it was a product of the capitalist system's insurmountable matrix of control over everyday life, even the process of making music. It occupied an extreme on the spectrum of a trend that spread throughout avant-garde dance music over the course of the last three years. Jam City, alongside Kingdom, Bok Bok and Girl Unit, brought a similar perspective to their production on Kelela's Cut 4 Me mixtape. The vacuous, metallic tracks laid under Kelela's raw, emotive vocals helped make that tape one of the best releases of 2013.
Dream A Garden is Jam City, AKA Jack Latham's follow up album. It couldn't be more different. Part pop, part post-punk, the album's influences range from hip-hop and grime to country and gothic. To call it a departure would miss the point. It is an inverse reaction to that same machine Classical Curves so successfully emulated. For Jam City, Dream A Garden is the breathing, feeling musician's response. At face value, it's a DIY pop album laced with vocals and inventive instrumental performances. When considered together with Classical Curves, it is a radical statement: a refusal to submit to the seemingly totalizing clutches of the modern world.
The album bio closes with the below:
They want us to be sad,
They want us to be selfish,
They want us to be unhappy,
2.
Listen to Jam City's "Today," below. Dream a Garden is due out 3/23 via Night Slugs.