Sometimes music can perfectly capture the sensation of something beyond words. A feeling or emotion that writers futilely dance around, never successfully skewering. Jabu’s A Soft and Gatherable Star is one of those records.
Previously known for crafting spectral R&B boosted with dub heaviness, Jabu’s third album proper emerges from the same woozy school of medicated sound as HTRK, Carla Dal Forno, Tirzah, Rat Heart Ensemble and Dean Blunt. Perhaps this is of little surprise seeing as Amir Shoat (who has worked with almost all of the above) was at the helm during the mastering process. Hulking sex jam basslines, slow syrupy beats, and gossamer vocals, with occasional hints of Elizabeth Fraser drizzled across the pots, converge to illuminate this record as if by twilight.
This is music for those uncanny hours. For half-night, when the mind starts to slip and play tricks. Voices slide beneath plucked strings, the rhythm of which seems just out of reach. Snatches of reality emerge between the heavy nods of sinking consciousness. This plays out in the persistent optimism of ‘Košice Flower’s clipped instrumental rising hopefully again and again like locked psychedelic thought patterns. And with ‘Sea Mills’, a track inspired by a mushroom trip gone wrong on the Bristol-skirting Downs, where, against a softly rapped triplet heartbeat, singer and guitarist Jasmine Butt’s voice climbs and falls as though playing Snakes and Ladders.
Other influences are less psychotropic. The title of the first track, ‘Oceanside Spider House’, is lifted from a hideout in The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. It’s a crepuscular crawl across sparring elements spurred on by Butt’s angelic evocations. Lightly struck guitar strings riddled with reverb and a gentle smattering of delay echo out across the darkened space, resembling, in that moment, the shimmering light of stars. It encapsulates the noir-lit mood from the off.
The album’s title is sourced from poetry by bassist and producer Amos Childs’ father. Lines which are then transformed, on ‘Ashes Over Shute Shelves’, into spoken word exclamations and performed by Daniela Dyson amongst gasps of damaged drones dragged through a tape machine.
Hidden within these nocturnal activities lie subtle communications. These songs are like illicit voice notes sung at a whisper. It’s as if we’re listening in on the intimate exchanges between partners, deftly coded and never intended for our ears. The synth pad shards of ‘All Night’ knit an aural quilt of unspoken dialogue whilst ‘Gently Fade’s delicately persuasive refrain of “Show mercy” is both a rule for life and a cry for help.
Through little more than fragile instrumentation, poetic lyricism, and spacious production, the Bristolians have crafted aural gloaming. Some balk at darkness’ incessant creep as the nights draw in but, if you find comfort in its obsidian embrace, Jabu will meet you there, lit by the light of the moon.
