Often spotted about town, it’s no secret that JCow is diligently, quietly (and not so quietly) crafting big tunes. This release on Potatoheadz Records is the sound of that inevitable 2020’s shut-in inspiration. Written during those periods, they are finally seeing the light of day.
With focused time in the studio, some serious imagined musical landscapes are the result. Tracks designed for dance-floor breakouts and closed-eye catharsis. We’ve heard these tracks come a long way from inception. Cerebral and kinetic, each track has a unique character, functional yet bound to stand out in any set.
Tracks like ‘a complex range of human emojis’ pay-no-mind in referencing the past with a sly smirk and an updated twist, while the title track ‘in my elem3nt7’ conjures up a certain mystical environment – The tracks bold narrative shift midway is a notable payoff. Swerving boldly into new territory, the percussive motifs fade and return from new angles, sounds cutting and slicing through the speaker like angelic machine gun fire. The drum programming is truly used like a weapon on this one, with those majestic horn samples like calls from the ether.
Exaels ‘swampbuggy’ reworking of title track on the B2 provides the perfect alternate universe, working its way from a sparse ambience into an inspired IDM-leaning breakbeat epilogue.
