J.Tijn MOR

This release captures kicks, rhythms, and snares—only to drag them kicking and screaming into a metallic underworld. In J. Tijn’s echo-sphere, there are only allusions to the status quo of sound and beats, and never a full-fledged embrace of the conventional. On Side A’s “Kanon V.I.P.” a grizzly digital war is left to play out between both kick and snare, with grainy battle lines drawn around upbeat and downbeat. Survivors of the conflict are rewarded with a groove reminiscent of grime, if only the genre had been reborn in a dystopian future. Side B opens with a roughneck beat on “MOR” before turning its hand into a fist and effectively destroying its own image. The groove lives through this barrage of sound, but as a heavy and dark undercurrent just strong enough to remind you where J.Tijn’s roots are. “Shy” lures you in with a rounded electro kick, before glutting the rhythm and ushering in a wall of sound. A snowstorm of screaming drum samples proceed to surround you: you may have been here before, but you are somewhere rhythmically unseen. Embedded in all of these tracks are perhaps a sign of the times: the things that used to be seen as normal have now changed and mutated.