Jordan GCZ – Hope Isn’t A Four Letter Word (quiet details) album review
Jordan GCZ expands his electronic tapestry to include warm, woozy melodica, dreamy Fender Rhodes and artful ambient pop to bring some optimism to these trying times.
Hope’s an embattled topic in the 21st Century. Post-rock titans Godspeed You! Black Emperor perform against a backdrop of a hammer labeled “Hope” during their cataclysmic live shows. Lana del Rey sings “hope is a dangerous thing to have for a girl like me,” wondering if she’d have been better off being born a debutante, before finally admitting “yeah, I have it.”
While hope may not be realistic, and can certainty veer off into toxic positivity, expecting to be okay without hope is every bit as unrealistic? Are we just supposed to float in a vat of perpetual okay-ness, simply accepting whatever comes our way? While hope can feed delusions and make us overlook obvious problems, it’s also the thing that keeps us going, keeps our eyes on the horizon and keeps us moving forward.
This constructive type of Hope is the theme of Jordan GCZ’s newest rumination for the increasingly essential quiet details label. Jordan GCZ’s better known for kicking out high octane, futuristic drum ‘n bass to crafting rough-hewn, unrelenting techno as part of Juju & Jordash or collaborating with the likes of Terence Dixon. On much of Hope Isn’t A Four Letter Word, Jordan GCZ abandons dance music entirely for something between trancey proto-New Age and abstract jazz with an ambient pop sensibility. Instead of beats, songs like the title track combine breathy melodica with opalescent modular synth, falling somewhere between spiritual jazz and the BBC Radiophonic Library.
Others are more purely synthetic, like the whirling gyres of the wonderfully titled “Pleasantly Disappointed,” which combines a bubbling modular patch with some g-funk organ, like Snoop Dogg being beamed into some virtual simulacrum.
“Patiently Waiting for the Collapse” is like a soul single heard from 3 meters below the waves.
“I Can Tell You A Thing Or Two” sounds like a band of cyborgs playing the house music on The Price Is Right.
“Clarity by Dint of Misdirection” is a drifty Fender Rhodes dreamscape over sublime pointillist handclaps.
Finally, things conclude with “Just Going Through a Rough Patch,” the longest track by far at nearly 15 minutes of trancy melodica, sweet bell tones and sci-fi echoes, delay, and reverb, as if listening from the other side of a wormhole.
Let this album serve as a reminder, you just don’t know what’s going to happen. We don’t know what today will bring, let alone tomorrow. Whatever happens, we’ll keep on keepin’ on as we’ve learned to do, aided in no small part by brilliant art like this serene, sublime offering from Jordan GCZ.
