Since her last solo album Black Origami – which musically still feels of the present moment, but factually came out in something of a time that land forgot, way back when in the spring of 2017 – the Indiana composer Jlin produced scores for new dances by the choreographers Wayne McGregor and Kyle Abraham, wrote Perspective for the Chicago-based new music ensemble Third Coast Percussion whose acoustic rendition of the piece was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and subsequently released her own version of Perspective as a mini-album while for sustenance also partaking in pandemic-era fare like remix projects for Steve Lehman, Marie Davidson and Galya Bisengalieva, a duet with the late trailblazer SOPHIE and a live set at The Met Cloisters which drew upon the site’s Romanesque and Gothic architecture, its vaulted ceilings and collection of medieval art.
Stretching and snapping like putty the conventional patterns of footwork, evoking both the lavishness and sensuousness of sixties jazz and soul, the treble of the tabla in Hindustani classical forms and the warped strains of early-nineties intelligent dance music while her twining triplets and waxy polyrhythms continue to cut a swathe through the electronic narratives of the Midwest, her dark and skeletal sound at first seems iterative but shifts and evolves like a Rubik’s Cube with the curve and transparency of a crystal ball, routinely flouting all expectations. Thumbing her nose at loops and samples, her collaborations with Kyle Abraham and Third Coast Percussion pushed Jlin to experiment with organic percussion, the depth of her engagement with contemporary choreography and aspirations in the realm of opera coagulating to make her new album Akoma both a fitting recapitulation and flush with new ideas.
Like the track ‘Speed of Darkness’ which sets a template for the album, Akoma is not short of four-on-the-floor bangers but some such as ‘Summon’ are smothered in a tensile mesh or show a more balletic restraint. ‘Iris’ with its coiling synths is more interested in sci-fi terraforming, and ‘Open Canvas’ lurches forth with a syrupy swagger and the sting of a hornet’s nest. A high school science teacher with a penchant for mathematics, while the sound here is more refined and its alchemies more pure, the eleven tracks of Akoma are never academic but always closely attuned to bodies in motion, with seamless transitions and the dancefloor stretching into view as the logical endpoint.
There are snatches of house and shattered glitchtronics, snippets from movies and video game beat ’em ups, and collaborations with Björk who first contacted Jlin with a view to a track on Fossora, the renowned string ensemble Kronos Quartet and the iconic New York minimalist Philip Glass. Whereas the epigraphs and inspirations on Black Origami included birdsong and Hindi vocals, Baltic folk samples and Resident Evil, on Akoma – a term which signifies the heart in Ghanaian – doumbek and darbuka drums and dancehall riddims segue effortlessly into the drumlines or batteries of a marching band, with its bass and snares. That combination which appears on ‘Challenge (To Be Continued II)’ repeats on ‘Eye Am’ with added chants and shakers. ‘Auset’ has a more all-out techno vibe, while on ‘Sodalite’ with Kronos Quartet the composer suspends stringed instruments like so many spinning plates, never letting the bow complete a glide or scrape until a momentary final flourish plunges us into the plangent sweetness of ‘Grannie’s Cherry Pie’.
‘The Precision Of Infinity’ with Philip Glass proves the final helter skelter ride, the electronic maestro yoking and harrying the limpid piano runs of the New York minimalist as abstract rhythms, vertiginous bass drops, choral coos and moments of four-on-the-floor beat-work send Glass careening with a shapely stagger into the barest bosom of the club, before Jlin blows what feels like an early whistle, leaving the breathless punters rasping for more.
