Chronicle 2021. The Highlights #3
8 more albums, from latin trap to horrorcore to the brilliance of Skogar.
Between getting COVID and getting dumped, this sure has been a fun time to write about albums. I believe I’m fully recovered from both, but hey, these things take time. I’ll just make sure not to fall apart in the process, and continue to praise the things I truly love - like these 8 albums! Again, they’re in no particular order, just the way I feel they’re meant to be listened to. Except for the last one - that’s the best of the bunch.
Jack Ingram, Miranda Lambert & Jon Randall - The Marfa Tapes (country, folk)
Closer to country than it is to folk in the compositions, but stronger connections to straight up folk music in the sound, and the sound is mainly what matters. Miranda Lambert, should it be repeated, is one of the greatest singer/songwriters working today, so seeing her stripped of literally all gloss - just her and 2 dear friends and songwriters who all really like each other, 2 acoustic guitars and a set of 2 microphones - is a nice and warm blast to nights of pleasure that maybe weren’t meant to happen, but they did anyway, and everyone involved is better off because of that. Everyone here gets a chance to sing, and while Jack and Jon are no match for Miranda’s sweet spoken bliss (or grawfling fury), they convey emotion that wasn’t entirely needed - after all, they only needed to carry a tune - but adds to pretty much all these songs a sense of delicacy and optimism. Think of it as a collection of songs, nothing holding these together, but do keep in mind the break in “Tequila Does”, where Miranda straight up forgets the lyrics and is notched back in by her friends. That’s the free willing spirit of something as rare as this.
Duki - Desde el fin del mundo (trap)
In general, it’s safe to say that this is Duki’s peak. Not his artistic peak - that will probably forever be “Goteo” from 2019, a glorious anthem from top to bottom - but his peak as an artist with a vision. His earlier projects, to put it plainly, all sucked, and you could barely make heads or tails of what he wanted to do. So after a year of relative absence, he’s finally back to prove all naysayers wrong, only to provide a stern, solid album from front to back. Not only one where he showcases his potential as a melody maker, but also his undeniable voice that made him, from the start, one of the leaders of Latin trap music, not just from Argentina.
Maybe working with a steady team is what gets us something this tight, even being 18 tracks long. The production is entirely done by Yesan and Asan, also veteran trap producers, but this time trying to prove a point to the world as top quality producers. The beats consistently switch while adding in firm guitar and bass tones that bring in some sort of edge to this fun victory lap. Duki, by this point, has more than enough reasons to dive into his more hedonistic impulses, and he sounds more bright eyed than he has in years, maybe after not touring after such a long time. He feels refreshed and with a purpose.
His rockstar/starboy/hitboy persona remains, so a pop punk song like “Muriéndome'' with Khea doesn’t come out of nowhere, and it’s more than well done, with Khea’s high pitched warbling and Duki’s level headed way of looking at things (sometimes, and only sometimes) are very well integrated with proper, frantic drums and guitars. His trap leaning cuts are the most predictable ones, but by no means should that be an insult - his swagger on “Cascada” knowing that others will understand him in the future, or his thumping into the 808s on “Valentino”, like trying to eat dirt in 4D (the beats really are that immersive). His posse cuts, “Fifty-Fifty” and “Ella Es Mi Bitch” are surprisingly consistent, despite so many moving pieces, mostly because Duki remains the one who keeps the rest in check.
Although his biggest moments come with the risks taken. “I Don’t Know” stands out as an immediate highlight, a breakdown captured live, as Duki bounces off the walls of his brand new car, tears pouring down his face so hard he can barely see, tired of rejection, with a background that pinpoints that moment of jumping off the dark edge. Follow-up “Sol” sees him done with trying to keep control, and he finds an accomplice in Lara91k who’s also too far gone, to the point where the rock instrumentation comes off as a piece of despair and missing pieces. Another night lost. Closer “Muero de Fiesta Este Finde” indicates he knows what he’s doing, but he still has those blindspots where you can’t tell what he’s seeing.
But what saves him from the abyss is realizing the voice he is, and understanding he can easily get back at the top. “Ticket”, somehow sampling Oasis’ “Wonderwall”, is a well rounded piece of contemplating there’s a long way to go to keep on being who he is. “Mi Diablo” is the most electronic piece of the bunch, as if he was jumping on a digital trampoline (listening up until the end will make a very rewarding listen - a Porter Robinson-like move). But perhaps most importantly, he still knows how to get the hits. He gets together with superstar producer Bizarrap (I like to call him Bizahack, but he’s a decent producer) for “Malbec” and, knowing it’s going to be the hit off the album, he gives it his catchiest hook and the most amount of endearing hooks on top of a particularly inspired quena sample, as he celebrates his team won. It sounds like a bright future, even if the end of the world isn’t here yet.
After this album came out, he would get together with up-and-coming superstar producer Big One, and he’s now got 6 simultaneous hits, all as a feature. El Duko lo hizo de nuevo.
Danny Elfman - Big Mess (industrial rock, symphonic rock)
A nerd’s nerd’s dream! Anyone who’s watched a movie in the past 30 years is very well aware of Danny Elfman as a composer, but this is the first time ever since that time that we get to hear about Danny Elfman as beyond that; the face beyond the mask, the fears, the insecurities, the strengths, the zaniness, the magic, the horror. And make no mistake, this is a horror show, by all standards. Long gone are those quirky Oingo Boingo voices with that idiosyncratic sense of humor and menacing eccentricity. Now what’s left, after all this time, is the raw version of whatever kept Danny Elfman alive during those times. The freaked out compositions remain, and Elfman still portrays a sense of danger in his voice, but the colors are removed; what’s left is anger. This might be the single most pissed off release of the year; a maniac realizing the world has gone just as mad as he has, and he doesn’t like it.
Elfman creates an atmosphere in which the glee of understanding what has happened is too far gone, and he’ll indulge himself and face the storm head on. Using his power as a neoclassical composer, he directs an orchestra of misfits stuck in a factory of hatred and vicious cycles. The opener “Sorry” might be the most striking opener of the year: femme vocals singing on command, while strings announce the forthcoming of a figure too hidden for too long, now coming along apologizing for the nothingness that comes within this full space. Black mass being moved along, as the electric section moves with not much ease (purposely, of course), and the strings seem too scared to touch Elfman, until he gets everything together. It’s those tiny voices that stare at you from the corner of your eye coming all at once, collecting something you don’t know how you got into. Your house is on fire. It’s gonna break. “Pull it forward, puuuulll it back!”, and it all goes to shit.
A song so striking it’s hard to move past it, but oh, you must! This album is divided into 2 halves, and they’re clearly distinct. “Sorry” opens up the first half, and from then on, we get a run of 7 tracks extra scared of their surroundings, and the main figure. Elfman is furious, furious that such an era like the one we live today, one of fear and contagion, could even be possible. He wants names, he knows the names, he’s got the names, and within that quest, voices are turned into electric guitars, later to be smashed into industrial machines. The world is burning - the machine is burning - and Elfman can’t be too far off from the truth. After all, it’s not like he’s a nobody in the world - he’s beloved and supported. Yet, he feels ridiculed, having not been given his proper dues, others taking credit for his work, leaving him with nothing.
In that sense, he can relate to those who warned the world of the virus - yet, we’re being this blunt because the album is as well. These are all people who were casted aside when they had something to say, and now that the world seems to prove them right, they don’t get the credit they deserve. In some ways, a similar arc to also quirky veteran Sparks’ A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip from last year, although Sparks were never this openly political. Elfman’s percussive and orchestral purgatory is plagued by audios of Trump, as a little joke to the audience. This is all about him, sure, but it goes beyond him, it’s applicable to everyone who didn’t listen. Now, it’s time to choose your side, amidst the haze, and see if you can find some comfort.
Well, Danny doesn’t, and the second half takes a hold. The songs are shorter and snappier, the guitar riffs power through more pain, the strings certainly don’t let down, and what we have here is Danny’s version of plausible pop songs. Second half opener “Happy” goes through many phases, and Danny’s insistence on that false happiness can be found on the warning sign strings, or the incessant drumming (courtesy of Josh Freese)... until it’s all but broken in its more aggressive second half, that almost sounds like garage rock at points - ugliness for the sake of resistance. Meanwhile, songs like “Just a Human” and “Devil Take Away” get by on progressive influences that never go beyond Danny’s vocals, more processed than ever before, to signal that distance ever more present.
Meanwhile, the online world becomes necessary to continue living on, and Danny’s more than willing to take on the task, even if the dangers (“taking a bath in cyanide”) will likely cost him his death - at least, through his uncharacteristic eyes. He’s walking a very thin tightrope between falling to his death and coming out as a hero of the modern age, and the result is neither. He knows better than to merely toast to “Better Times”, he knows going through with his pompous journey of comprehending this illness like a mad scientist will be an explosion thrown at his face. But he’s got nothing else - he’s too self-aware and cautious to only be an observed selfish asshole like on the frantic “Kick Me”, always too busy going to the next chord to focus on the one it’s at right then.
Maybe the last 2 tracks will give us an answer. “Get Over It”, that’s a pretty succinct answer, but his role as Pennywise is certainly too strong to give it up just now, and as he talks to his guitar (and his guitar seems to know exactly what he’s thinking), some things start falling down; the system won’t change, but a couple of bad apples of the rotten tree could be a start to destroy the entire thing. It sounds like a detailed supervillain plan, and that’s what we got. The final track, “Insects”, a rework of his 1982 song from Nothing to Fear, can’t be as strangely light as Oingo Boingo got, so instead the wonderful mix (courtesy of Zakk Cervini) separates all the elements to have them coalesce for a couple final lines. Sure, all the insects may have moved to Washington, but it doesn’t matter. Danny Elfman can be seen through the corner of every eye, as previously discussed. He’s telling us the fight is not close to over, and as the track implodes, as they suck out our brains… guess it’s time to wait for another hero. Danny Elfman can only warn - maybe this time, we’ll listen.
Pi'erre Bourne - The Life of Pi'erre 5 (cloud rap)
A collection of vibes that are both for the moment and for eternity. The main drawback is that Pi’erre isn’t that good of a performer himself - his voice is a bit too nasal, his lyrics are dumb but not in a way that they can be fully enjoyed, and his flow for the most part follows the patterns the beat already established. He hardly ever moves away from what the sound determines. Which is fine, but it essentially means you become another layer of icing on the cake, and you don’t get to be the strawberry.
Then again, that might just be by design. Everything seems to have a democratic and egalitarian process to it. Every song on the project matters and adds to the overall mood, and every element on each song is both pertinent and highlighted all in due time. A song like “40 Clip” can have a black synth oscillating between channels, out of time, but the main melodic drive of the song is still that hiding keyboard, doing its own thing, unbothered by the rest of the noise. “HULU” also focuses its main melodic underlining on its own quirky keyboard, but there’s also this strange, alien sound that acts like a protector to Pi’erre, to see what he’s up to and give him some rest.
That’s why many of us gravitate towards Pi’erre’s production; his sounds incorporate the Eno-esque thought of ambient music into trap, in the sense that he wants to add as many odd and colorful sounds as possible. It’s what’s going on inside his head what matters, since every element has a place in it. His rollercoaster synth on “Practice”, for example, sways and moves like it captured every sense of its movement with a camera, only to be caught off guard by ugly keys that sound like a bad trip gone even worse - only to go back to stability. “42” feels like a sleepy piece, with about 3 pieces moving, not knowing exactly where, but their yellow tones sound like they’re close to finding their home.
Possibly the best example of all of this “Retroville”: a long piece, possibly a centerpiece, but with the exact kind of tinkering synths in the background to make one think of tiny stars, and an accordion in the middle of it all that takes this song to space, since it walks in time to the 808. And for once, Pi’erre takes this somewhere else with his voice. Going from “Skrrt, skrrt, skrrt, skrrt” to “Skirt, shirt, panties, bra / She, take, it, all”, to then switch to his high register immediately afterwards? That has to mean something. It’s my life’s work to give in to moments like that.
black midi - Cavalcade (avant-prog, jazz rock)
It’s so easy to be a British rock band nowadays, everyone will love you. So easy you wouldn’t be completely wrong if you forgot to do something that was even mildly out of the box. That felt compelling and eye-opening. black midi could have easily taken that route, amplified their guitars even more and crunched their way through a sophomore success, but no! That would be giving up too easily to whatever demon is making us all do this. Cavalcade is a fight, a struggle, a constant state of trying to not be defeated by the decay of the entire world. They’re one member down, and this party can’t be brought down by that. They need to be able to survive while facing the consequences.
What puts this album over the top of their contemporaries is the constant, intense building of dynamics. 3 musicians who run amok, overwhelmed by their own abilities. They clash and crash and break over and over, only to find comfort in silence. The punches land better with the moments of space in between them, the lack of stability can only be there for so long before the frenzy becomes a mess with no sense of what is who and who is going where and where is when. There needs to be a sense of control amidst the chaos, and black midi keep their cards close to their chest. They’re not moving either horizontally or vertically, they’re moving through diagonals.
Those sharp edges are what contain the main bulk and main essence of this enterprise, as the focus of fighting against decay is what keeps this album alive. “John L” is the political centerpiece of this album, a smart cry against willy-nilly nationalism by nobodies, but there’s more. There’s the decay of idols, the decay of friends, the decay of the industry they reside in. They create characters such as "Hogwash and Balderdash" in order to see how their fear eats through them, but they don’t need to create when the world already provides them with a tragic "Marlene Dietrich" (with a pain admittedly not that well delivered - Geordie Greep is not built for this kind of disposition).
But there’s also physical decay, in a way that plays out through the main arc of the album in tracks 3 and 4. "Chondromalacia Patella" and “Slow”, put right next to each other, both talk about the meaning of the body destroying itself, being brought down by forces that they can’t control, but the way of looking at things is completely different on both. Led by Geordie Creep, "Chondromalacia Patella" is an impeccable form of organized chaos, where the musicians seem to look at each other with glee, to see how they can make each other suffer - the amount of crystalized colors beams through the track, as those colors become just different shades of grey by the end, a grey approaching closer and closer. But “Slow”, led by Cameron Picton, is much different. Cameron doesn’t panic, he accepts. He goes into that suit of armor and accepts all the punches, while analyzing their move. It sounds like sitting down and taking in whatever can be taken without much need for hesitation. The breaks sound even more final and finite when there’s no one to fight them and what they represent. It's just taking in every moment, wondering when it will all end. The one true moment where black midi question giving in, it’s a dabble into something more sacred and undignified.
But of course, they don’t - they can’t, there’s too much at stake. Were they to give up, all these sounds would go away! And who could live without this cacophonous movement of pieces that never coalesce completely, but when they do, they create the very understanding of looking at fate in the eye and deciding, “Not this time”. That’s why “Slow” is followed up by “Diamond Stuff” - after staring into the devil’s eye and passing through it, you get to find beauty. Cameron may represent passivity, but stopping is important to see just what is going on, to be reeled in, and afterwards, for people like Geordie to pick up where they left off. You need to see that decay and face it in order to fight it. Jumping into that abyss is eventually what will make you stronger, and destroying that which is necessary, such as the moments of despair and loneliness, or the sociopolitical systems built to keep those underground. That’s what black midi and, in particular, what Cavalcade stands for. Sure, everyone loves ascending fourths. But that’s not how they end their album - they’ll accept their punishment, it will come, but when it does, they have an army ready to back them up. Plus, taking it all in with a sense of humor and brilliant musicianship, it’s hard to be let down.
S280F - 28 (ambient, deconstructed club)
It’s hard to believe it, but it’s true. The 3-note piano hacks have been deserted, once and for all, in order to give way to something more extreme; and no, not just 4-note piano hacks. The meaning of ‘modern classical’ is torn to pieces with a meaning not too far gone from what is considered to be ‘horror’. The swellings and fragmented pieces of comprehension fall apart once the jury decides that color just won’t do it anymore - now you have to taste the music, embrace it, feel its spikes down in your cold bones. Slurping down hot beverages filled with black holes and mean fiber. What is classical becomes contemporary in a series of tweaking delights that seem to signify a more dangerous machine coming through. What was once nature now becomes digital, and the passage from one to both is tough to walk upon.
There’s no questioning, either. No one will ask you if you’re ready to be sucked up by a white creature too summoned by a dark, gothic one, because the swallowing is happening as we speak, even during the quiet moments. Traces of running and competition might make you a bit of a nuisance, but that’s the thing: it is not being put into question, you are. This record decides to judge you from its own perspective, too cold to run away somewhere else because it knows all it has is you, and you might not be enough. All it needs is that courteous response, in order to advance to the next level. It might just force it from you, but it will get it. I wonder how others who have never touched this land will judge it, if they ever could - it’s too grand to be understood in one sitting, but it needs to be one piece in order for everything to remain attached to one another. Because if not, you just have a bunch of pieces stuck together with no reason to leave the ground. But this is not that. This casts away those too far gone and attracts the ones who will listen. A limited edition of itself, perhaps, but if you get the chance for it to slice you up, it can be oh so beautiful.
Backxwash - I Lie Here Buried With My Rings and My Dresses (horrorcore, industrial hip hop)
Sure, a little bit of pain can be a good thing. Let something out, let something in, basic emotional alchemy. This isn’t that, though. This is a lot of pain to let out, and if this is, indeed, only a “little bit” of pain, not only do I admire Backxwash’s sense of resilience, but I also inherently must take myself, even for a brief second, out of my position as a critic, and look at this from a person who simply cares a lot about the artist in question. This kind of pain? It’s something I don’t get in the concrete, but I get in the abstract - the quantities, the severance, the sequels it leaves behind, the sheer moment of terror once you realize it’s going to be like this for a long time. From me to Backxwash, I genuinely hope making this music you’re presenting us helps you find some semblance of peace, even if it’s temporary. I’m only a bystander, but that doesn’t mean my sense of empathy should go away like that. Feel as much as you need to, the fight can be won.
Now, putting myself back into the position of a critic, I Lie Here Buried With My Rings and My Dresses forces the listener to dive into this world of constant hedonism, giving in to all habits born out of emotional and religious trauma. Backxwash has found a loophole in the search for happiness: finding it, no matter the cost, is the principle of it all, and if that means going through some shady and self-destructive methods, that’s the way to go. “My therapist told me try happy thoughts in the midst of it / So I did it with alcohol and some pill poppin’”. That’s about as blunt as it gets, and Backxwash’s method of saying the quiet part incredibly loud is only reinforced here, as her lyrics mark the ideal of staring at the world with fear of being brought down, metaphorically or literally. It makes sense she sides with Angela Bassett as much as she does. Her position as a black woman is already something to empathize with, but her transness is something more difficult to deal with, something that makes Censored Dialogue’s testimony on “Terror Packets” one of the most striking moments in music this year.
By all means, the lack of security makes sense in a way - self-destruction before the world does it to you. That means you have some semblance of control of yourself. Backxwash is a very empathetic figure to everyone she gets involved her, except herself. But there’s something about the dissonance between her delivery and her words - the latter, meant to be rotten in a dead tree, but the former fighting with the thoughts coming out of her words. There’s resistance here, there’s a constant fight to not lose herself, even if her actions say otherwise. That double-edged sword is what makes her such an empathetic figure - you’re not watching a trainwreck, you’re watching a woman being brought down by the system, indulging herself into pleasures that she can’t even appreciate, only swallow it down.
It would be easy to say, “But she finds a way”, but not really. That’s not what happens. She refuses to die down, and her spirit, while horribly corrupted, is still there, but the trouble doesn't end. Her fear of her religious mandate that still kicks and she still fights against is one she needs to travel, unfortunately by her own, and the fact that this is all going on in some machinery somewhere, where the spaces of anger are too brought down to provide some sense of something new growing, only makes this worse. She won’t burn to ashes, but is willing to nonetheless, and that’s what matters. She will die for her cause, become a martyr (of what? To whom? It feels strange answering the question), and she won’t let all this industrial trapping be the total end of her.
But the fact that she does all this while still coming out with music that feels so final, so close to the end, never panicking even though it’s about panic, the panic of her complex gender journey and acceptance of who she is, is something impeccable to witness. Throughout the entire album, the music bursts with a sense of glass breaking, industrial patterns being brought down, and yet so physical. A broken, open wound separating itself from the flesh and the skin, sowing seeds of discomfort throughout the village. Her last album, God Has Nothing to Do With It Leave Him Out of It, was removed off streaming services because of its many uses of inspired samples, so seeing this be a full body of work of original instrumental material feels like an artistic breakthrough. So getting to sample one of Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s artistic peaks right at the end is a moment of catharsis - she’s making it out on her own, and yet she finally has the clout to ask for something else to guide her through her artistic and personal journey. There’s more down the road to explore, and she’s got her allies.
Skogar - Paradise City Jams (ambient, drone)
At first, I didn’t know what it was. It felt like something long gone, a forgotten piece of something no one knew exactly how to classify, that was left to collect dust in a bin somewhere. Even now, as I type the ‘genre’ tags alongside its name, I’m left thinking it’s not enough. Sure, technically, it’s music that’s very sparse and atmospheric, so you could call it ‘ambient’, and there are enough moments of stability to call it ‘drone’, but… that’s not it. There’s something truly lost about this piece of music that feels like it goes beyond labels, beyond thinking that it could be something worth discussing. It feels like music meant to be played for no one: empty stadiums, empty malls, empty theaters, empty theatres. Sounds you weren’t meant to hear.
So, what is this? Technically, logically? Well, this is the debut album from Swedish composer Johannes Brander, also known as Skogar. If you want to dumb it down even further, it’s a guy playing around with a guitar, and possibly some synths. Looking at it from face value, there’s not much that seems all that special. But I guess, Paradise City Jams represents the value of music, of not being able to judge a book by its mysterious cover. And this is mysterious, indeed. It’s the sensation of not being there to hear something, and trying to figure out what it sounded like in your head. It’s being described something, and that abstract sound becoming its own piece of music. A flashlight in the middle of an empty cave. If these are truly ‘paradise city jams’, then, like we established, paradise must be empty.
Maybe that’s what this album aims for. That lost, hanging air of liminal spaces once they’re closed, shut down, isolated. Where there used to be life there once, but now it’s all but gone. The stage is shut down, and you didn’t even realize there was a stage in the first place - you missed your chance, and now you’re home, playing along with your guitar. The sounds are frustrated, aimless, pure intention of losing sense. Something has gone completely lost, and this is mourning music.
So, what do we get? Well, you can try to settle for the strong, alien guitar sound of “Beneath the Remains”, but once you do that, you lose track of what’s going on. It all seems to disappear, with no sense of melody that can bring you back to a sense of stability. “A Glow” sounds, indeed, like a glow, but a misplaced one, a lost lightbulb that wasn’t stuck properly in the middle of the empty night. Maybe “Passing the Torch” can make things right, as the sounds that move feel like places that couldn’t be discovered back in their time. Something old, something new. The guitar crunches, but that suppressed keyboard is what seems to make it all click. A lost night in an empty town. You can never truly settle, you can never truly feel that misty air because it will all be taken away from you, at once. You always have to start over and over again. This album loses its sense of time and space throughout its brief 30 minutes, never to be found.
The sounds are never invasive, or pervasive; they always seem to move along at their own speed, minding their own business, barely even acknowledging you. A long stretch of lost figures that found their place beneath the remains. They never look around, trying to find a place where they can belong, they always stand still, as if they themselves were an art exposition. Skogar seems to have found a place to put all these ideas in, and he realizes they don’t want to put up a fight. There’s nothing that sounds too out of place, even if the marimba sounds on “Reef Song” follow the crunch of the guitars of “Will They Ever Know” and “No”. Nothing hits too hard, and for that very same reason, they are so dislocating. Finding a sense of space between so many ghosts.
You have to try really hard to recreate this live, and even then, I wonder what it would sound like, and how the people would react. I can only assume they would all melt into different stages of goo, since walking out of this piece alive requires a certain amount of patience. Again, you weren’t meant to hear this. It almost seems as if Skogar himself is rejecting something that’s far too corrupted to be fully pure. “Golden Otter”, the possible centerpiece of this album (which of these could that even be?), makes it all clear. A low fidelity sound of a dirty synth playing a jealous 3/4. Dance to it if you want to, you’ll only find companions with no soul to dance to. Or even worse, swing along to the guitar-led second half, where it all quiets down to a musing of nothing. Far too broken to be recognized as anything.
Then again, its final track… the title track, “Paradise City”, finds some semblance of levity. There was light before, but now it’s focused, looking towards those lost ghosts and giving them a bit of redemption, setting them free. That paradise was empty, and it will remain empty, but so many sounds need to pass by it, or around it, in order for it all to mean something pure and true. The lost shells of what could be something not too discussed goes away quietly, in peace, knowing it can find a place. It’s disquieting, a little concerning, and definitely something you can’t have access to that often, but it really can be beautiful, even if not all of it all is beautiful all at once. At first, I found it difficult to recognize, and I still do, but I think I’m a little bit closer now. Paradise City Jams is the kind of music that exists before music, before proper sound is ever registered. It’s the ideas popping out, it’s the sound of sounds that might never see the light of day, but if they do, they’ll stay, forever resonating. You may recognize these sounds too; they’re in a little corner in your mind, that you may not identify, but that, when the time comes, you will need, in order to make sense of what you’ve just heard. Again, in essence, it’s a guy playing with his guitar and some keys. But to his mind, despite so many ghosts hunting him at each minute, that’s where paradise is found.