- John Tejada's 15th album adds some fuzz to his pristine melodic magic.
- For close to 30 years, John Tejada has been refining a particularly melodic take on dance music. Whether he's exploring post-dubstep, working with composer Ulrich Krieger or turning out his bread-and-butter house tunes, you can recognize a Tejada melody from a mile off. As Resident Advisor reviewers have noted before, this isn't a bad thing. If you reach for a Tejada record, you're bound to find a polished chord progression oozing emotion. On his latest LP, though, he swaps his usual technicolour studio wizardry, for a scuffier sound, touching on shoegaze and trip-hop alongside his usual club sorcery.
To get a sense of what's changed inTejada's sound, compare Resound's opener, "Simulacrum'' with opening track "Shattered" from last year's Sleepwalker LP. On paper, the two are pretty much the same: crisp drum programming, ethereal melodies á la Dixon and a ropy bassline. But Tejada combines these elements into two completely different moods. With "Shattered," the vibe is wiry contemporary techno with a hi-fi polish. On "Simulacrum" (and the rest of Resound), everything is fuzzier, covered in a distorted patina of feedback and whiffs of sci-fi Western guitar lines. This is Tejada swapping Innervisions records for the 4AD back catalogue as he toys with white noise, fuzzy melodies and lashes of organic instrumentation.
This reverb-forward aesthetic gives Tejada plenty of room for experimentation. On "Fight or Flight," he brings in March Adstrum from his synthpop band Optometry for a lo-fi breakbeat and pop number. It's the album's most surprising tune, somewhere between My Bloody Valentine and the Gorilla vs. Bear blog circa 2007: a chillwave throwback from a producer who actually knows how to program basslines. He reaches even further into the past—'90s Britain—on Trace Remnan," with a trip-hop swagger under New Age-y synths.
The back half of the album is closer to the Tejada of Kompakt lore: spacious drum programming and basslines that move like breakdancers. "Different Mirrors," in particular, could have records as he accents the drama with little 303 squelches. Or take away the hissing white noise on "The Disease of Images" and it's one of his classic four-chord melodies and tight hi-hat duets.
In an interview about the record, Tejada explained that his focus on fuzzy guitar and synth feedback was a way to make an album that felt more intimate, "I wanted to do something more personal and unique to me, but also not reinvent the wheel completely." Tejada's description is both understated and accurate. The throughline with the rest of work is, of course, there, but Resound is as close to a John Tejada Unplugged record as we'll ever hear.
Tracklist01. Simulacrum
02. Someday
03. The Disease Of Images
04. Fight Or Flight feat. March Adstrum
05. Centered
06. Trace Remnant
07. Different Mirrors