When | Jogging House
dauw (Cassette/DL)
Although the limited and special edition packages are sold out, cassettes of Jogging House‘s When are available after a slight manufacturing mishap. Femke Strijbol’s graphic design for the album is a fine fit for the soothing and big-bass infused electro-ambient music. Dauw, a Ghent-based tape label, seeks to ‘create unique hand-made art that flatters both the ear and eye.’ Not having a physical copy of the complete project, I can’t help but feel like I’m missing half the point. This missing of the material element however does enhance my conceptual grasp of the digital version. There is a pronounced agenda at play, ‘When is an album about time and how not to be bothered by it.’
Traverse – the first of this edition of Jogging House’s one-word track titles – is a tepid ethereal introduction to the rest of the record’s moderate-tempo and intricately engineered ethos. The minimalist settings sometimes compliment, other times off-set in tensions, the tonalities and rhythms explored in these eight tracks. None of them so restrained as this first track. With Stairs there is a place-set and right away, pronounced synth. Bouncing a bit at first but sinking into a rhythmic near-trance state, this six minutes rises like its title might suggest. Current has a generative pendulum between mid and low tones with higher frequencies just tenderly used to fill out a full audio range. The swells sort of triangulate around the steady beat.
Fires, Rust, Breaks, & Wounds by title address several destructive elements. Here, the listener is graced with cogent sonic continuances which at the same time challenge the listener to relax and absorb the measures free of time and furthermore, free from alarm. Nothing musically here points to conflict. What I love about this is that within a suspension of time (album concept) there is also a nudge to resist judgement against or prejudice towards these themes. Fires captures more the immaterial energetics of a flame and Rust has an endurance decay that makes sense given the title. Breaks bubbles a bit before the dazzling sustained fuzz within Wounds.
There whisps into a panning sweep. There is a casual intimacy here. On the whole, there must be a catch. It couldn’t be just between the listener, the artist, the when and where self-referenced, that this album seeks to create. Find within When a place of comfort created in atmospheric levity and an experience outside of the nuisance of time.
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