Michael J. Blood

Joy + Pain

Genre: ELECTRONIC, TECHNO / HOUSE

Tape

Boomkat Product Review:

Your man MJB keeps it wickedly unpredictable with sick new refinements and explorations of a refreshed sound palette - still containing nuff crooked soul on a Detroit via North Manc tip - think early Lego Feet-era Æ and Irdial via Gerald Cleaver, Convextion and Mark Fell. Aye, it’s v strong.

At five years up to the hilt in his thing, Michael J. Blood has inarguably established a cult reputation for dare-to-differ takes on electronic soul music that works in the spaces between Detroit beatdown and experimental jazz and Chi-via-NYC trackiness, with a soupçon of North Manc crud that lends it a properly distinctive character. After shotting a slew of ‘Archetypal Artefacts’ through 2024, on ‘Joy + Pain’ he more finely sifts his sound for gold and rare minerals, resulting in 11 crooked new updates of a sound that errs more purposefully toward hallucinogenic tunings and illusive timbral chicanery whilst firmly keeping sight of physical, below-the-belt fundamentals.

Deftly distilling and messing with aspects of rhythmelodic meter and kaotic harmony, he keeps it one step perpendicular to established styles and patterns at every turn. Opener ‘Many Minds’ is emblematic of a newly chiselled aesthetic, encouraging heads to unzip and zone-out into weightless, cosmic electro-jazz with clouds of iridescent arps like details of Autechre’s fabled Lego Feet diffracted by Anthony Manning and Carl Craig, before curdling Shepard tone-like, nose-drip discord and harmonic mind-washes at a beatdown slouch in ‘Clout Storm’, and twisting out to smoothly shearing future techno funk like early SND meets classic Convextion in ‘Glottal Start’, and that’s only the first three moves.

With exactingly measured pacing, he locks into pendulous cruise control with the air-stepping swagger and ribboning arpeggios of ‘Cut Twice Measure Once’, before giving the jackers what they need in the effortless, expansive deep techno hydraulics of ‘Repetition Theory’ and nagging blue notes of his big banger ‘Snake Hips’, whilst cooling off to something like Gerald Cleaver reworking a Transmat ‘Relic’. His skewed soul urges are most explicit in the pleading, bloozy shuffle of ‘Conditional Love’ and the way he lets the digits drift on ‘Intuitive Expression’, thru the final spiral into lush oblivion on ’Self Destructive Tendencies.’

There’s no doubt this is a deeply rewarding new phase of MJB for those who’ve kept abreast of his shapeshifting sound thus far, and likewise primed to snag a whole new wave of ears on his slippery soul flow. Trust it’s just straight up fucking deadly.

Tape (11)