Audiojack – Inside My Head (Crosstown Rebels)

When Audiojack and Crosstown Rebels get together you can take an educated guess it will be a formidable release. Audiojack are one of those acts to whom that rare skill of consistency seems to come naturally. They also tread that finest of lines between genres that allows them to grace the playlists of deep-house, house and progressive DJ’s alike.

My first impressions of ‘Inside My Head’ is that it is deeper than your baseline Audiojack offering. Second listen and that nagging bass starts to creep in, those trademark percussive drum patterns and the sealer of the deal, the vocal.

Despite there being nothing ground-shakingly innovative here, the vocal is distinctive and familiar enough to make ‘Inside My Head’ a stand-out track. I have been playing this for some time now and it always prompts someone to ask what it is. The genius is the familiarity of the vocal itself. Originally from Cuba Gooding‘s classic ‘Happiness Is Just Round the Bend’ on Streetwise and since used on a number of releases including Nightmares on Wax‘s excellent ‘Aftermath #1’ on Warp.

What Audiojack do is bring it bang up to date, put it to the landscape of grooving bass, lush pads and snappy percussion. It doesn’t need much else to be effective. Sometimes less is more and this is one of those times.

The second track ‘Behind the Curtain’ is more of a heavyweight jam, it’s not as immediate with the first three minutes being very dubbed out if not full of clever glitches and drum workouts. When the old-school piano style synth riffs, high string and vocal snippets kick in it has an almost Detroit techno feel, like a crashing of industrial machinery silhouetted against the dark night sky. Behind the Curtain lays it bare, the drums, the groove, the samples, the generated tones. It is pure in its sparseness, not minimal nor full, not instant but certainly interesting.

An intriguing release from Audiojack. I would offer a guess it’s more about experimenting with sound than a departure from their normal trajectory but you never know. Solid.

Score: 8/10

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