- Jam City's recent Trouble mixtape took a step beyond his unexpectedly indie second album. But a step in what direction? Not backwards towards the sleek forms of Classical Curves, but also not further into the pop wilderness of Dream A Garden. It headed somewhere new, pairing dance floor punch—through slow-mo styles like hip-hop and reggaeton—with a fuzzy pop sense. Cowboy delivers that sound in its distilled form, and it's a winner.
The explosive "Cowboy," sourced from Trouble, pushes both sides of this sound to extremes. On the one end you have the producer's voice, scratchy and half-drowned in a wash of shoegaze melody. On the other you have the drums, which deftly pivot between booming 85 BPM hip-hop and 170 BPM chaos. The rest of the EP picks a more careful path between rhythmic drive and wistful reverie. "City Hummingbird," appearing in a slightly extended "Club Mix," sounds like a careworn cousin of those killer DJC Club Constructions—all 808 throb and shrill, wheeling melodies—before dissolving into a euphoric coda. There's a crisper weight to new production "Air (Instrumental)," but it, too, soon succumbs to Jam City's romantic side, and the last word is given to a plangent guitar solo.
Tracklist01. Cowboy
02. City Hummingbird (Club Mix)
03. Air (Instrumental)