Album Review: Jitter – Anxious Awakening

DJ Jayant aka Jitter

Anxious Awakening                                                                                                                             Â
Â

It’s rare that a producer is this aptly named. There’s a nervous unpredictability that courses through Jitter’s Anxious Awakening, an album released on Japanese label Wakyo Records, one that doesn’t shun the mainstream as much as it embraces the experimental. Most ideas are precisely timed and translate into the sound so deftly that as a listener, you can’t but believe they’re developing exactly the way they were meant to. The tempo is only a shell to contain an ever-changing amalgam of influences (sometimes Jitter isn’t afraid to take detours along the pace of a track, either) and tickets are at the door into the eye of an atmospheric storm.

Jitter is veteran circuit DJ Jayant, at ease treading the fine line between gimmick and flash, carrying foreboding psychedelic torches into rarely charted minimal tunnels. Peppered with nods to ambient and even house (“X-Static” stands out as an example), there are doubtless several personal favorites buried deep in Anxious Awakening’s dark folds.

The shortest track clocks in at six and a half minutes, however: there’s plenty of patience involved in letting each one find its footing. Also, “Chemical World” comes dangerously close to sounding like club-friendly radio clatter, hitting a press-hold-release vibe that fails to impress. The chunky beat and a few choice effects can get quite tedious after a couple of listens.

What I particularly liked about the record, though, was that, like East Stepper’s Blue Leaf last year, it’s dressed smartly Indian complete with temple bells and tablas, but never forces anything in where it doesn’t belong. I assume the message here is that the music comes first. No-nonsense mixing (by the competent Gaurav Raina of Midival Punditz) ensures that every channel purrs along in orderly fashion ”“ make sure you discover this on high quality audio.

If your music leans to the minimal, techno or even the psy-trance, you’d be hard pressed to find a contemporary Indian release that pushes so many buttons right.

Key tracks: “Machine Glitch”, “Mi Classica Machina”.