JJAAXXNN vs MOOMAW “#ILY2015” (Become Eternal)

Two producers, one tape. In 2007 or 2008 that scat porn allusion probably would have drawn some big laughs. But in #2016 it just seems cheap. So let’s make the music found on “#ILY2015” the focus instead. Each producer gets ownership of one side and they both hope to make their listeners put a dancing foot forward. It won’t be enough to make them notorious on the internet like feces play would, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the shit. I’m going to cut the rest of the review here before someone cites it in a paper on Freud. Links below. 

Album trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNlysw5Oh9Y

Buy: http://www.coffeeheadduck.com/#!product/prd4/4264300365/jjaaxxnn-%26-moomaw-international-year-of-light-2015

-- Roy Blumenfeld

JJAAXXNN “Space Case” (Translingustic Other)

JJAAXXNN is really annoying to type, and originally I planned on griping about how tricky spellings and all-caps hijinks separate artists from the boots-on-ground, blood-in-teeth real world. But then I listened to the tape and realized that JJAAXXNN (still, sigh) isn't interested in the real world at all. The solo work of Josh Bruner, formerly of Californian hypno-psych desert-wanderers Magic Leaves, Space Case is a breezy collection of mellow-yellow synth pop that wafts around freely like a plastic bag in the wind, tethered tangentially to a group of voices that sing with all the slit-eyed conviction of a slacker sex/death cult. There's a shoulder-shrugging chintz to the sound on this tape, like Bruner lifted his gear from a low-rent wedding band, but figures you'll be too entranced by his washes of reverb-y haze-pop to notice the '89 Casio stock drum beats. And mostly you are. By the time you hit the B-side – all dubs, all the time – you'll be floating effortlessly in the dirty bathwater of your soul. And for $7.00 a pop, that's a  much cheaper ride than a weekend-long  Xanax jag.

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/translinguistic-other/jjaaxxnn-3-dreams-deep

- Ken McIntyre