Jega – Variance (Volumes One and Two)

Label: Planet Mu
Rating: 3.5 Guns

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Written By: Kian Abedini

Jega’s new album title is not a misnomer.

This is like that one night, fall semester of college, freshman year. You meet friends of friends in someone’s dorm room. Drinks are shared. A few more drinks are shared. Someone produces a bag of crumbly weed, and although it’s not your thing, you take a few labored breaths off the pipe when offered. The next few hours pass in a soft mist of laughs and secret stories blurted with abandon.
 And then, the second part of the night begins to play. 
The pot mixes with your stomach’s contents of cheap vodka and the watered down Cran-Tangerine leftover from last week. Sick turns to nauseous turns to a toilet water vista.

“Variance,” comes in two volumes of nine tracks each. “SoulFlute” and “Sakura” are triumphs of the first (Downtempo), while “Shibuya” of side two (IDM) is the stuff dreams – dreams of Pink Floyd and late Portishead dropping LSD and running through a jungle made entirely of metal – are made of. Sit up in bed next time you can’t sleep, and play “Dark Side Of The Moon.” You’ll see what I mean.

I recommend Volume One – The perfect soundtrack for a smoky late night gathering of friends, and friends of friends.

Like Jega? Check them out on Myspace

One Week Till Jega

Described as the Stanley Kubrick of electronic music, having not released an album in 9 years, Manchester’s Dylan Nathan a.k.a. Jega is finally set to release his brand new album “Variance” on the Planet Mu record label. In 2003 a draft version of the album was leaked onto the Internet forcing Dylan to return to the drawing board and re-write vast chunks of the material. Since then factors outside music have meant Jega’s relocation from Manchester to New York and now LA, where he currently resides, and the delay of the project even further. The resulting double album, 18 tracks spread over two CDs, bears little if any relation to the leaked material of so many years back.

The album is split into two 9 track journeys each given their own CD / LP. “Variance Volume 1” is the light, and “Variance Volume 2” the darkness. On Vol.1 beautiful synth arpeggios battle with sampled flutes and organic sounding hip-hop and soul inspired breaks. On “Antiphon” a lone piano weaves around synthetic rhythms that sound like insects chirping and plastic sounding strings impart a real futuristic sheen to the song. The overall mood is one of joy and hope with many of the melodies featuring rising cadences of notes, resolving in the major. Vol2. is altogether starker. Starting with “Tensor” an electro-acoustic sound sculpture and building up into the dystopian melodies, electro beats and dubstep bass of “Shibuya,” In tracks like “Kyoto” and “Hydrodynamic” digital processing and harsh jungle breaks heighten the tempo and the mood towards the end of the disc.
Although Dylan’s discography is relatively short considering he has been in the game since 1996, it does include releases on Skam and two seminal breakthrough albums on Planet Mu. The single “Type Xer0 E.P.” and it’s follow up album “Spectrum” were what inspired Mike Paradinas a.k.a. µ-ZIQ to start up the fledgling Planet Mu as an independent label in 1998, an achievement in itself that should not be overlooked. Dylan’s second album, 2000’s “Geometry,” went on to push his evolving sound from hardcore influenced melodica to futuristic techno inspired stark digital landscapes. Both “Spectrum” and “Geometry” were also licensed by Matador Records, resulting in extensive tours of the United States.
It has been a long nine years for many fans waiting for the follow-up with rare occasional live shows offering the only chance to hear new material.

VARIANCE TRACKLISTING:
VOLUME 1:
01 SOULFLUTE
02 ANTIPHON
03 MOMENT
04 THE GIRL WHO FELL TO EARTH
05 SAKURA
06 EVA
07 DREAMS
08 AQUEMINAE
09 ZENITH
VOLUME 2:
01 TENSOR
02 SHIBUYA
03 CHROMADYNAMIC
04 CASCADE DECOHERENCE
05 AERODYNAMIC
06 LATIN HYPERCUBE
07 KYOTO
08 HYDRODYNAMIC
09 THE GIRL WHO FELL TO EARTH (REPRISE)

Like Jega? – Check Them Out – Discog – Myspace – Website