“Is this war, Is this Life, Is this democratic, Or is this just strife?”
There are albums that express their musical sentiment and there are albums that make the listener feel them. Here, jRadx tries to make you feel all he is going through.
“Intro,” the starter track off this release, is a sprawling samba of tambourine sluggish, string heavy, lose-yourself-to-sounds ambiance. No words. Just blinks and bloops and mixes of melody against a building back beat for three minutes or so. Give it a listen below!
The second track is where things start to go awry. The stalled pace of jRadx’s flow mixes in with the creepy horror-core beat, but the mix is too wired. jRadx should go back and fix his vocals here because while he seems to be dropping political wisdom to listeners, I can barely hear what he is saying… and considering this is the first song on “Desert Power” that features his vocals, it is a bit disappointing that the vocals don’t match the beats from the get go.
Give it a listen below to hear what I mean.
However, the third track “AAAAAAA,” has the strangeness of the prior track without any of the sonic failure. The song is so wonky, it sounds like it was created inside a lobby for a PS3 shooter mid-way through the disk melting on fire. Some of the samples used here, a few seemingly taken from a convenience store clerk, really work for a song that is seven capital A’s in a row.
The rest of the album is hit or miss in the soundscape department. While his vocals get better, especially on tracks like “Strife,” there is an unfinished element to this album that makes it seem like jRadx rushed it all after the third track.
His flows could use some mending and a lot of these beats lose flavor due to repetitive ideas. Which is odd considering the intro is a wordless hodgepodge of all over the place independent bangarangin’ electronica.
Listen to “Jaded Mind” for yourself below!
If you like DanucD or Ela Minus, you might want to give this album a listen. jRadx has redone his sound quite a few times over the years, seemingly changing with almost every project he creates. However, with this latest release, so much refinement is needed that the album that it might have supposed to have been never truly shows up.
Hopefully, jRadx’s next release is mixed better because some of the sounds he brings to life are top notch.
