There is a theme of incompleteness that wanders through Jvox’s Address Unknown, an unfinished blur to the digital compositions as if elements were aborted, severed or otherwise detached from the larger picture being assembled. The introduction, “All Elements,” is thirty seconds of scattered voices, half-finished conversations that fill the room like echoes off the tiled walls of a subway station. While “Tomorrow” perambulates with delicate synth tones that sound like the ringing of crystal bells, it is the back-masked brushwork on the snare drum that lends an awkward movement to the track as if you are watching a three-legged dog try to run.
Two voices compete throughout “Nearly Conscious,” one intoning the phrase “you are nearly conscious” like a digitized auto-doc caught in a memory buffer loop while the other voice is pitch-shifted as it admonishes you to “check this.” A dial tone warps in and out of phase, sometimes it is an empty phone line and at other times it is the core note for an elusive melody. “Sunshine” builds from a glockenspiel, a smattering of drum programming, and swirling, farting space noises. Field recordings of rain and street noise confuse your sense of location until a more structured melody rises out of the pattering rain shower (and, for some reason, I keep wanting to call this the “mouse orchestra” track).
“Brane” whispers with static, the compressed squelch of radio noise that obscures the hollow moan of a distant organ. You lean in, fiddling with the settings on your stereo in an attempt to more clearly hear the sound of the church hymn and a local relay picks up the signal, turning the faint song into a watery swirl of lightly brushed percussion and liquid synth work. “Word-293” is filled with audio effects applied helter-skelter to the repeated voice sample of the title, and the voice is looped forward, backward, slower, faster, upwards and downwards like an engine that continually lurches and sputters as it attempts to function. “Smokin” is a bit of aquatic dub, reminiscent of the Porter Ricks/Techno Animal collaboration, Symbiotics, though it doesn’t sink to nearly the same deep dark depth. Voices mingle with a carefully drawn out piano melody while the drum programming and a somber squelchy undercurrent send up swirls of aquatic dub atmosphere.
“I don’t want to go there. It’s the last place I want to end up, but that’s where I always end up anyway.” This voice sample anchors “Keep Those Eyes Open,” a slumbering, prickly piece of scarred percussion, glockenspiel, butterfly static and reoccurring vocal loops. It’s a summation of the record, capturing the disc’s reluctance to commit to a fully formed sequence of melodic motifs and structured compositions. Address Unknown—by design—hovers just outside the door, not quite ready to enter the room, content to stay out in the hall, humming and dancing by itself. It is alluring and interesting enough that you find yourself being drawn into its fragmentary shuffling and whispered half-sentences.
Address Unknown is out now on Component Records.
