Jumping Back Slash & BŪJIN – A Seat In Heaven
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Jumping Back Slash was born in the UK, but he was made by the house circuit and gqom scene in South Africa. After moving to Cape Town, the producer became entranced by the nation’s coarse take on dance music and never really left.
His latest release since carving out this niche is a collaborative album with BŪJIN, a Kenyan-South African polymath and freak-pop provocateur, by the name of A Seat in Heaven – the best project that either party has ever released.
The collaboration sees both parties reap rewards; the result is a heady cocktail of texturally futuristic production and entrancing vocal crescendos. The jaggedness of JBS and iconoclasm of BŪJIN are very much omnipresent, but there is a pretty and elegant side on show from the duo that makes A Seat In Heaven absolutely transcendent when they get it right.
‘Angel’ sees frenetic production wrestled into an intoxicating pop song, revolving around BŪJIN’s yearning vocals and low-end bass squall, whilst ‘Gemini Placements’ has echoes of Dean Blunt in its disembodied string sample and spoken-word delivery. The bone-crunching ‘Norton’s Whir’ is a highlight – gqom shards and shrapnel inside its reptilian grooves – whilst ‘Unfolding’, the heavenly closer, constantly threatens to become saccharine but only becomes more beautiful as it to it’s ethereal crescendo.
A Seat In Heaven is a hauntological deep soul record, a novel fusion of seemingly disparate elements that work so well together.