Marathon Artists (label)
08 August 2019 (released)
08 August 2019
Present-millennial tensions abound on Jade Imagine’s ‘Basic Love’; a treatise on contemporary existence(s), one(s) perennially mediated, facilitated and filtered by an online presence: if it ain’t uploaded it don’t exist, that brave face must always be maintained. An ambivalent area where the glass is always screener.
Emotionally caught between the suburban drabness and perceived cosmopolitan glamness, where seeking escape from an claustrophobic mental place leads to a cramped high-rise space these 10 songs capture the cyber-commodification of the ‘self’ at odds with the desire to ‘be’; free of the machinations of industry where you are the capital. So far, so bleak …
However, all is not lost as the group sonically channel disparate sources such as Neu! and Can’s slack-onic beats (‘Gonna do nothing’), the Throwing Muses and Altered Images’ sunshine on a brainy day ode-codes (the grind-halting ‘The Weekend’, the media-massaging ‘The News’) and introspective clang-rock (‘Cut me off’) that off-set the inner turmoil.
The daily gloom and doom merchants that purport as the ‘Fourth estate’ are covered in ‘The News’ where the contradictory reportage and agenda-driven attention diverting meets it’s match with the resigned refrain: ‘Most of the time I try to avoid it, most of the time I try to ignore it’. Shoot the messenger before it shoots you.
‘Remote Control’ is augmented by an electro-throbbing pulse-beat that articulates and outlines the modern-day dilemmas of face-to-interface interactions. Letting go is not an option.
‘I’ll take you there’ is a psychedelic-technicoloured wooing where the promise of being taken to ‘down, down where the colours change’ is too irresistible to knock back.
The e-motional entanglement of ‘Cut me off’ acknowledges (un)conscious reflections as (the eponymous Jade) McInally concedes ‘we’re just two fragile human beings’, the mirror image that stares back not always the ideal representation we seek. Ergo, it’s best to sever the cord now.
The laidback groove of ‘Get out of your head’ reminds of Melbourne contemporaries Swazi Gold: the mantra - flee to be free, as dreams unrealised can manifest as perpetual nightmares.
The closing ‘Don’t say it’s over’ is a saxy-smother-hooker, a jazzy plea to remain, as leaving is unbelieving.
