9. JlinDark Energy
This I didn’t see coming. I think there had been an EP prior to the album but I wasn’t previously familiar with her work. It is completely singular, isn’t it? In way, it is the music of the laptop – yet it also has this political thread running through, with all the spoken word stuff. Incredibly personal – strikingly political.
The social dimension of the record flows from its anarchistic streak. It has a big element of social critique which obviously ties in with the hollowing-out of industry – a dominant experience from that part of the States (Jlin is from the rust-belt city of Gary, Indiana). Good records transport you – you feel you’ve been on a journey. You are changed by it. Which is something this album does – it’s just a great journey. You are inside somebody else’s world.
