- A thrilling fusion of classical and electronic music from the reigning champ.
- Jerrilynn Patton may still live an hour's drive from footwork's Chicago origins—and just minutes from her hometown of Gary, Indiana—but her artistry as Jlin has refused genre or geographical boundaries. Perspective, her 2022 collaboration with Third Coast Percussion, was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize in Music last year, an honour that reinforced her growth as a classical composer. Akoma, her latest full-length, finds her working with a stellar cast of guests, including Björk, the Kronos Quartet and her mentor and icon Philip Glass. It's her strongest project to date, a thrilling fusion of classical and electronic music delivered in astounding clarity.
Labelling Akoma as "footwork" would be diminutive for an artist whose output has proven her breadth of scope and talent beyond the genre she started with. In conversation with RA last year, Patton shared her frustrations with these industry-enforced confines, especially as they've applied to visionary Black artists before her. "There are genres that are created, but to me, they're all the same movement," she said. "That's why I can bounce from this to that. I don't see classical music as separated from trap because they're very similar to me."
On Akoma, Patton interrogates this uncanny valley between high and popular art, combining her guests' virtuosic playing with relentless, rapid-fire percussion that bridges trap, techno, dubstep and yes, footwork. Opening track "Borealis"—which Patton told Tone Glow was originally intended for Björk's 2022 album Fossora—cuts up her the latter's vocals and flute-playing into bite-size pieces that skip over Patton's signature, blitzing production. This intensity expands through the rest of Akoma and to its masterful closer, "The Precision of Infinity," which builds its strength from another collaborator, Philip Glass. Patton summons a roiling sea of low-end bass, snares and hi-hats that threaten to submerge Glass's ardent, expressionist piano playing. It is a bold and fearless arrangement whose dark hues and classical instrumentation add a massive depth to Patton's production.
While Patton's percussion in earlier albums approximated the intricacy and efficiency of an HBCU drumline, on Akoma she animates her band to life. Patton, a self-avowed maths geek, arranges her drums with detailed precision. Snares ratchet, hi-hats sizzle and sampled percussion resonates throughout Akoma, sometimes within the smallest fraction of time before moving on to the next passage or idea. Her experiments with classical music, on the other hand, occasionally misstep. The abrasive strings and pinging chimes of "Summon" are dense and chilling, but lack the movement and inertia of the rest of Akoma. Her collaboration with Kronos Quartet, "Sodalite," feels similarly forced. Her clattering trap instrumental doesn't quite mesh with the group's grandiose playing, which sounds more suited for an episode of Bridgerton than on this album.
But by following a linear style of composition as opposed to loop-based arrangements, the beats in Akoma strike a pleasure center poked at by few other electronic producers. "Challenge (To Be Continued II)" relishes in the high and tight bounce of tom-toms that punctuate a strutting marching band, while "Eye Am'' peppers in grunts that turn the clattering drums into a sacred experience. The percussion is just as vivid in Akoma's more club-oriented tracks, which delight in the raw energy of hard-edged electronic music. In "Speed of Darkness,” a trance synth dances over an intricate and flawless combination of footwork, trap and dubstep rhythms, all tightly snuggled inside the song's five minute runtime. Tracks like "Iris" and "Auset'' harken back to the '90s heyday of IDM and techno, while "Open Canvas" rattles with recoiling saw synths and pummeling bass that upgrade the reckless euphoria of EDM figureheads such as AraabMuzik and Skrillex.
As a whole, Akoma baulks at the idea that percussion is mere accompaniment to classical music. They are one and the same. Patton melds centuries' worth of rhythms and instruments so finely as to resemble something like a universal music. For that, she's more than earned her flowers.
Tracklist01. Borealis feat. Björk
02. Speed Of Darkness
03. Summon
04. Iris
05. Open Canvas
06. Challenge (To Be Continued II)
07. Eye Am
08. Auset
09. Sodalite feat. Kronos Quartet
10. Grannie's Cherry Pie
11. The Precision Of Infinity feat. Philip Glass