Jkoomdai – Jo Vegas (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

Any musical genre is built on two forces. One playing by the rules, coalescing the genres traditional sounds and accepting its place in the pact, the other pushing the boundaries, testing new waters, beating fresh paths through previously uncharted territory. Jo Vegas is defiantly in the latter category. Yes, Jkoomdai is built around a hip-hop vibe but not like any you have heard before, this is hip-hop deconstructed to its basic building blocks, the beats and the lyrics, and then put back together using a musical mortar built of distant synth washes, strange electronic motifs and sounds which seem to have been harvested from deep space.

Leg Day, No Play Play takes this to the extreme using the minimalism and space of the track to deliver the less is more hammer blow to perfection and the strangely named Hella Yadada Digiyoubooboo Grrrtt Yeeyee sounds like hip-hop from the far future being detected by radio telescopes with time travelling capabilities.

None other than Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, and that sort of insanity is fine for those who just want to play it safe and tread generic water, but whilst Jo Vegas might seem to making music on the edge of madness, his progressive and exploratory nature, the bravery employed in taking new paths, facing new risks, actually makes him one of the sanest guys in the game. The mind is indeed a strange but wonderful place indeed.