When fans think about Jade and his style, some tend to pigeonhole him with precise yet intense neuro dancefloor chuggers and not much else but that is and always has been a misconception. While the Eatbrain founder loves his heavy bass and metallic synths, there’s a lot of nuance in his style and he’s had a number of tracks that break the mold of many fans’ expectations. Enter: “Angry” and “Never Be,” two such offerings that dropped Monday on his Eatbrain imprint.
Now don’t worry, both these tracks are highly danceable, aggressive and fun so that standard is definitely still there for Jade. “Angry” probably lines up with what people think of as his style the best out of the two tracks, with its chugging beat and crazy synth switchbacks but it also has a more subtle emotive quality and a complex message.
The emotion isn’t just in the track’s name, by the way, or the vocal sample “you’re not angry but you do have to start getting angry,” which seems eerily poignant for the current times we’re living in. There’s a sort of subtle sense of desolation in the sound design, an ennui that the main music, beats and vox are trying to rally against. Is it hopeless? Not quite yet, says the track, but we do have to rage against that hopelessness before it’s too late. There’s another surprise for fans: Jade’s much more political in his work than many might have previously noticed.
“Never Be” contains even more surprises for Jade fans as it’s the closest he’s been in a long time to a melodic track. The vocals are quite melodic, in fact, and while one might not go as far as calling the track “liquid,” the vox does have that ethereal quality and a slight R&B flavor. To even that semi-liquid vibe out, the vocals are juxtaposed against some really punchy, sort of Mad Max-esque drums in the intro (there’s that dystopian thread again) and once the drop hits there’s even more surprises in the way the drums work around the vocals.
There’s a cacophony of sounds that sort of fall down around the drums and vocals in shards and slices, both as part of each phrase and at the transitions. The vibe from “Never Be” is intense, apocalyptic and, again, carries conflicting emotions. That theme of hopelessness in the face of chaos is flipped on its ear here, as the vox provides a sense of calm and hope while the rest of the track crashes down around it.
It’s easy to assign a lot of current events-related suppositions and interpretations to any music coming out right now and Jade did make these tracks far before the world came to this state of affairs. That said, Jade’s work almost always has a message to it, quite often to do with themes around the human condition. He just tends to hide them in really heavy dancefloor vibes. “Angry” and “Never Be” are more outspoken in this way and attempt to connect those dots. Prophetic? It’s hard to say but at the very least, fans may be galvanized into “getting angry.”
“Angry” and “Never Be” are out now on Beatport exclusive on Eatbrain and can be purchased here.