REVIEW - JAKES: THE JAKES PROJECT

Format: CD/ 4 separate 12"s
Released: Now
label: DSR

There's a reason I've waited a while, after trying to tempt you with a few snippets of Jakes' prodigious talents a while back, to bring you the full skinny on 'The Jakes Project'. In short, it's because I've been wondering if this might be the album of the year.

Here is Jakes talking about it.


There are plenty of people straddling drum & bass and dubstep at the moment, but Bristol-based Jakes is unique in that he makes dubstep and MCs on drum & bass tunes by the likes of TC, Distorted Minds and others.

Some of these tunes have been floating around for a while, but collected here on CD for the first time they make up a serious body of work. The pace, switching from the slo-mo likes of vintage Def Jam sample orgy 'Rock Tha Bells' back up to the speedier thrills of Distorted Minds' remix of 'Warface' and back again, means it feels like a hefty but varied album.

You can even forgive 'Swerve', a mellower but still strident d&b tune, its slight similarity with a certain fictional web wizard's bedtime mantra, what with all that 'swerving the curve' business.


It's still way cool...


The link between the two styles is obvious - they're both gritty, booming, rooted in hip-hop and electro as much as sound system reggae and rave culture. But the cream is his highly distinctive voice - a lilting, toasting style (in contrast to other MCs' incessant ranting), with a unique line in sometimes funny, sometimes tough lyrics.

Yeah, album of the year so far, at least. The mass of clips and hitherto undiscovered gems out there mean this blog is sometimes happy to wallow in the past, but if you're after a true slice of 2009, this is it.