This latest signing to Kompakt is a real breath of fresh air, obscuring divides between dancefloor music and Animal Collective style electronic psychedelia. Jatoma have chosen to shroud themselves in secrecy, although we do know that they're Danish and may or may not be a trio who are already involved with better known projects. Whoever they may be, they're onto a winner with this vibrant and enormously creative debut; while other recent Kompakt acquisitions - Walls, for example - have cross-pollinated club sounds with home-listening, Jatoma take this blurring of boundaries to the next level, sounding admirably peculiar on off-kilter cuts like ace opener 'Little Houseboat', the grainy, almost chillwave-ish 'Alang Beach' and the tranced-out, pitchshifting sample regurgitations of 'Permafrost'. You're seldom too far removed from a 4/4 kick pattern in some shape or form, but equally, sonically beguiling liquid loops, guitars and munched up retro synth melodies are always close to hand too. In production terms, the likes of 'Bou' and 'Helix' seem to channel DJ Koze or perhaps even Matthew Herbert's knack for arranging field recordings into beat tracks - reportedly, some of the recorded content includes such strange, yet rhythmically malleable material as the slicing of carrots and the pouring of cereal into a bowl. Jatoma have also managed to nestle away one or two killer singles within the tracklist: 'Durian' is particularly addictive on this front, sounding like a weird, lo-fi club anthem bleeding through on a poorly tuned radio. Excellent stuff.1 Little Houseboat 2 Manipura 3 Dust In Wong 4 Alang Beach 5 Durian 6 Wood Face 7 Bou 8 Smoking Keys 9 Paper Lights 10 Permafrost 11 Helix 12 Ma10as 13 Luvdisc
