In Case You Missed It: Jazzsteppa’s Hyper-Eclectic “Hyper Nomads”

–Written by Kevin Madert

Hi all. This is the first in a recurring series we’re calling “In Case You Missed It,” where we’ll feature non-new music we feel went unnoticed, as well as music that may have been somewhat popular but has since faded from the consciousness of the general population. Alert us to any music you feel fits this description by emailing contact@thealternatefrequency.com;  we love to hear music for the first time and we’re certainly not infallible.

If you put a couple of dudes on Mars with some production equipment, some Red Bull, a twelve-piece brass section and a sheet of LSD, you may just recreate the conditions I imagine were necessary to concoct an album as sporadic and multi-faceted as Jazzsteppa’s “Hyper Nomads.” In just over an hour, the London/Berlin-based duo traverse countless miles of sonic terrain; influences range from early-to-mid-2000s dubstep (think self-titled era Skream) to liquid drum ‘n’ bass to reggae to funk and soul, with plenty of stops in between. That’s all in addition to their own unique production and songwriting techniques. Thanks in no small part to their live backgrounds – BarBie plays trombone and Xperimentalist pounds on the drums – they manage to combining innovative song structures with well-placed and well-executed instrumentation. On first listen it all sounds a bit chaotic, but after a second and a third a method seems to slowly emerge from the madness.

We’re given exactly 25 seconds and a few ominous foghorn wails before being launched headfirst into a frenzy of grinding wobbles and ska-worthy synchronized horns on “Baby Jesus,” the album’s opening track. The confidence level this decision implies is impressive, and in my case it worked; I was hooked and wasn’t going to put the album down until I’d heard the rest. The very next track (“Raising The Bar”) is a breaksy hip-hop number featuring the seemingly everywhere Foreign Beggars – night to the previous track’s day, a complete stylistic 180 until the return of the grinding synths during a halftime breakdown mid-song. Track three is a thirty second jazzy drum interlude, and track four is a synth-driven number with Arabian-tinged horns and affected vocals assuring the listener “we’re gonna make the party.”

Aside from oft-utilized horn sections, these four tracks are only emblematic of the remainder of the album in that they’re vastly different from one another. There are several reggae-dub tunes ( “Stronger” and “Lion”), some real plodders (“Holding Ground” and “Rusty Trombone” appear back to back and slow the album to a crawl), and tracks that actively defy categorization (“Wipeout” is surf rock homage meets futuristic drum ‘n’ bass head-nodder, and “Sweet Tooth,” features eerie vocal accompaniment and a brooding, zipper-like bassline). Throughout the duo throws enough curveballs to keep the ears perked, like ragtime intros (“Investment Decision”) classical guitar intros (“Do U LoV_me”), and a chilled-out jam that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Nightmares On Wax record (“D U B”). There’s even a song named after a pornstar, and it’s not bad at all (I swear, I’m not making this stuff up).

I could prattle on all day about this album, but I’ll instead just say this: give “Hyper Nomads” a front-to-back listen or two. It’s an across the board success – and I mean all across the board – tied together by Jazzsteppa’s penchant for horns and the deftness with which they craft their melodies. It flew under a whole bunch of radars back in 2011, so here’s hoping this puts it smack in the middle of yours.