- Lil Jabba's itinerant music has made a few stops in the UK already. His last release, 2016's Grotto, riffed fitfully on garage and jungle, and elsewhere his slouching halftime rhythms have resembled dubstep. On MiZO the Brooklyn-based producer takes firmer a step across the pond, largely dropping the hip-hop and footwork flavours of much of his discography. With their fractured drum parts, winding structures and smoky minor-key moods, the resultant tracks don't sound miles off a latter-day Keysound release, though with an added layer of swamp ooze. The likeness is most striking on "WiCKeT," where the kick drums lope and the bass snarls and lunges under fogs of chilly atmosphere. Jabba, typically, can't settle on just one glowering drop, instead trying out a few, each one showered in broken glass.
He also tries out a 2-step garage shuffle and sway. On "DisTilleR" it frames a paranoid soundscape of bleeps and machinelike hums and whirrs. "Hot Bloc" starts on firmer ground—think El-B's dead-eyed flex—before transforming into viscous acid techno. (Jabba loves these midpoint transformations.) A dubstep halftime creeps in on "WounND," while "ForeST EdGE" builds from the sideways feel of many of Jabba's tracks to a deformed wobble-drop. The EP's mood is sombre, coloured with evocative flickers of modal melody. Only the title track offers some respite, courtesy of sentimental synth strings and a serpentine bassline. At the three-minute mark the track finally lapses into the booming 808 bass and trilling hi-hats of US hip-hop.
Tracklist01. WiCKeT
02. DisTilleR
03. Hot Bloc
04. WounND
05. ForeST EdGE
06. MiZO