Title: Musical Introspection
Artist: JCreate
Release Date: 17 Feb 2014
Genre: Jazzy Trip-Hop
License: CC BY-NC-ND
Label: Dusted Wax Kingdom
I’ve been leaning towards more down tempo, trip-hop and jazz type releases lately, and JCreate’s Introspection certainly fits the bill for my mood.
JCreate has set up 14 tracks of old school boom bap trip-hop with heavy use of jazz samples, and lots of groove. This is JCreate’s first release on Dusted Wax Kingdom, and hopefully there will be many future releases from him of this style.
Now, getting down to why this fits my mood so well. It’s the end of winter here in the States. In fact, as I write this review it is officially the first day of spring. It’s also just a couple of weeks after the official seasonal time change for us here.
And, while we have more daylight at the end of the day, the morning always starts off dark and gloomy. I find it’s difficult to get myself motivated to kick the day in the face when the sun isn’t up. And, when I feel like that I need to find a way to ease myself into the day. I need a way to get myself moving. Basically, my engine runs more like a sedan at first, than a muscle car.
But, JCreate has been great for getting myself going. Not too fast, not too challenging. Downtempo with lots of groove and swagger. It’s just enough to get me moving, and by the time I am ready to leave for work, I have my engine revving and ready to go.
Of course, the other thing about this release is the organic feeling that JCreate brings to his use of samples. Sometimes it’s easy to create a bunch of sample loops, and then start laying down all sorts of sounds that transform the samples into something else. But sometimes it’s best to just lay back and let the samples do their own transformation. This is the kind of art that LTJ Bukem did on his Journey Inwards release (one of my favorites of the early DJ / Producer releases). While this work is certainly a transformative use of samples, it remains true to the feeling of the originals.
It is also something of an introspective work. JCreate’s strength on this release is to create something that is as easily used as a slow motion motivation, as it is to allow the listener to focus on themselves. And, sometimes the two things go hand-in-hand.
JCreate: Musical Introspection
Free / Donation
7.5
