Decibel Festival

Leisure System; the collective, label and 4-year long famed Berghain party is back with a very special fourth addition to its catalogue: the inaugural release from JETS – a project which pairs two of dance music’s most eccentric and distinctive personalities, Jimmy Edgar and Travis Stewart (aka Machinedrum).

Having been friends for over 12 years, it was inevitable that a project like this would finally come together. After living in New York, touring Japan together and now taking full time residency in Berlin, the self-titled EP marks the culmination of roughly four years of staggered yet perpetual collaboration between the duo. The product, as expected, takes the contrasting, complementary colours of their individual visions of electronic dance music and pulls them together into one experience.

The alignment of both celebrated producers’ music as one creates something altogether new and yet, at the same time, ultimately familiar. Syncopated rhythms and stuttered drum clacks synonymous with the Machinedrum sound perforate the EP, whilst the electro-funk of Edgar’s material is layered over the top. First track, ‘In Her City’, is the perfect synergy of this relationship pulling together vocal cuts and soft stabs around an off-kilter, syncopated strut. Next up, ‘’Sin Love With U,’ works in much the same way with rising stabs, toppling drums and melodic samples filtering in and out. ‘Mue’ is filled with moody synth lines, decimated basslines and noodling electronics whilst final track, ‘Lock Lock Key’ phases, cuts and pitch bends its way through a four and a half minute rhythmic workout.

In a recent interview with FACT magazine, the pair admitted that on this EP, “there’s a sense of where we’ve been, what we’ve come to, and everything in between.” Be part of the journey.