Broken boxes: Time to Jack

Jamal Moss, an Insane Black Man

Been wanting to do a write up on jack / jakbeat for a while now, and Tulley's post about Sun Ra made me think more about another Insane Black Man and all-round Hieroglyphic Being. Dunno how familiar you all are with jakbeat but here's my take on it.

Where to start? I think it was probably mnml what done it. Maybe it was dubstep. At any rate, some time ago I started to get very bored with the clean, highly-produced digital sound of modern electronic music. I'm talking about drum patterns carefully painted with a mouse into intricate "interesting" combinations, overworked 'wobble bass' lines, the sort of cleanliness that's almost unavoidable when every element is exactly quantised and in perfect time (even when they're trying not to be). If you know what I mean? Maybe it's just me...

Anyway about four or five years ago I started to get a lot more excited by disco, post-disco, post-punk, early acid house, certain areas of industrial, roller-boogie, early Chicago house, up to the current (slower) Detroit sound. Chic, ESG, Liquid Liquid, Colonel Abrams, Throbbing Gristle, through to Detroit Beatdown, KDJ, Theo Parrish, that kind of shit. Music with a dance energy, but that still has a bit of grit, imperfection, humanity.

Basically I'm talking about the roots of house and techno, as they evolved out of disco, punk and industrial in the 80s. Specifically the work of a handful of DJs: Larry Levan at The Paradise Garage, Ken Collier in Detroit, and Ron Hardy at The Music Box in Chicago. Each in their different ways evolved the sound of disco (in its original underground gay black nightclub form) into the 80s by adding elements of post-punk (Liquid Liquid, New Order), hi-NRG and italo (Giorgio Moroder, Cerronne) and industrial (Nitzer Ebb, Throbbing Gristle).

I started listening to more and more of this kind of stuff, as the current scenes mostly left me cold - dubstep and mnml particularly. Neither seem designed to make you lose it on a dancefloor. It's all too chin-strokey, self-conscious, and doesn't facilitate the loss of ego required for true dance music. Shamanic trance states are not an option. Everything sounds squeaky clean even when it's supposed to be filthy as fuck. To me at least, it seems a long way from where this whole thing started out.

Then I came across Jamal Moss. Also known as Hieroglyphic Being / The Sun God / Insane Black Man / Africans With Mainframes.

Jamal Moss makes filthy jacking Chicago house music influenced by Ron Hardy, Adonis, Steve Poindexter and the like. This ain't house music for handbags that's for sure.

The first mix I heard was a Ron Hardy tribute done for Tweak FM on two belt-drive turntables, an old Gemini mixer, a reel-to-reel machine and some other boxes, recorded onto VHS longplay! It's as mental as it sounds and pretty representative of his work. Full of fuzz, hiss, scratches, and (un)intentionally wonky beats. About as far from Ableton as it is possible to get.

This is a guy who uses overdriven boxes, fucked sound quality and unmatched beats like Hendrix used feedback. Distortion is an intentional and necessary part of the mix. It could be described as god awful machine noise, but I find it absolutely addictive. He takes Ron Hardy as the launchpad for an exploration through house and techno into frankly terrifying industrial noise, more akin to Throbbing Gristle or Nurse With Wound than any modern dance music.

Here's a selection of his mixes from around the interwebs:

Ron Hardy tribute mix for Tweak FM

"This is Jamal M, AKA Hieroglyphic Being. Enjoy this exclusive, uh, mix... on Tweak FM, Copenhagen, Denmark."

Sample/Pattern mix (Freeform series)
"Process: experiments & demonstrations.

Instruments: tape edit machine, reel to reel, two SP 404 units, Dual belt drive turntable, Gemini disco stereo mixer.

Agenda: demonstrate the process of the evolution & inception of box energy that manifested the worldwide phenomenon of house. It was the experimentation of chicago disc jock Ron Hardy, a freeform innovator that evolved the sound of now and days 2 come. The sample/pattern/freeform series will demonstrate this experimention from it's zero point (326) & genesis (Ron Hardy).

Note: old & outdated equipment was used in the process in order to emulate the process from that era. Glitches & scratches, also strong old analogue textures & sounds will occur in the process.

Limited edition for historical use & purpose."

Madness mix

Disc Jock By: Jamal Moss

Sample / Pattern / Freeform

Muzique Tracks & Jacked Edits Series 3.0

"Warning: (Only 4 The Deep & Insane / Sound Quality Is Not An Option)"

(Thanks to http://chaplinski.jottit.com/ for the three mixes above.)

Live PA for Machining Dreams

"this PA is live; and happens somewhere in Western Europe banged out with some drum machines. Jamal takes you on an astroplane of banging drum patterns of beating rhythms."

'I LOVe U DanCer Dj Edits'
meakusma presents Live Pa by Hieroglyphic Being for Samurai FM.

Fixed link here!

Plus a full list of his work on discogs.

Jamal is elusive, pretty much unique, and moreorless incomprehensible when interviewed. But there are a couple of artists working on this kind of music. One of them is Melvin Oliphant III (surely a candidate for the 'Best Name in Dance Music' award), more commonly known as Traxx. He's a bit more vocal about the ideas behind the music, has given it a name (jack or jakbeat), and describes it thusly:

"The misconception is that Jack is only House. The truth is that Jack encompasses all. Jack isnt something that can merely be described, as it is feeling, an emotion, a mental state of transcendental connection - a spiritual connection with the higher being through the physical vessel of the body- Pulse.Kode.Modulation. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Influenced by Ron Hardy, Farley JmF, Liaisons Dangereuses, 808 State, Phuture the drippy experimental counterpoint basslines of the 303 and similar squelch style step-seq arpeggiations, trax of the 80's-90's sound (only the jackingest variety), interestingly juxtaposed and sometimes nonmusical hypnotic cycle phrases in dance music. The Composer and Recording Artist, Traxx calls combinations of these elements "the kode". This musical code can be found in many styles of dance and ritual music and is a crucial element in the sound."

Still cryptic as fuck, but you start to get where they're coming from. And it's a place where analogue boxes, obsolete hardware, damaged circuits, machines pushed to (and beyond) breaking point, seem to make music that has soul and energy, that is challenging, difficult and makes you want to dance like a Siberian reindeer-herder.

Other producers/DJs worthy of note in the (tiny) jakbeat genre/scene are James T. Cotton and D'Marc Cantu. They're on Traxx's label Nation Records, and his website has various live sets for download.

Have a listen, digest, and let me know what you think.