Belfast’s Jet Project take on dubby house works to mixed effect. Eschewing typical house structures, the duo choose to envelope their echo-laden tracks with bongo breaks and ambient ‘tribal’ vocals (alongside the occasional delayed word as spoken by a Jamaican fella). When the formula works, as it does on ‘Let’s do it’, the result is blissful yet cleverly offset by jarring, off-key, curling notes that lend the songs energy.
Heads in the Clouds progresses with minimal changes to the underlying blueprint: kick drums are altered to sound more like a ‘woof’ than a thud, and the signal to the ethereal realm becomes stronger with a song like ‘The Chant’ sounding like a remixed Sacred Spirit track.
An occasionally interesting album, though heavily toploaded, the unvarying nature of the music renders a majority of the content here a requiem for dub-house.
Heads in the Clouds is released on June 29th (Darkroom Dubs)