Connan Mockasin - Jassbusters Two
A slow-burning sequel that could use some jazzing up.
Connan Mockasin has been around for a while now, either touring with his band, supporting Charlotte Gainsbourg or Radiohead. The New Zealand multitalented artist (musician, composer, producer) is a one-of-a-kind avant-pop blockbuster. When he decided to go off the rails and create a fake band of schoolteachers from even-more-fictional daytime TV miniseries ‘Bost’n ‘n Dobs’n’ and record an album out of that, we were here for it. ‘Jassbusters’ in its originality, blabber-gibberish lyrics and stretched out strange sounds, got us hooked up on Connan’s new nerdy character. Sadly, some characters are not supposed to outlive their original storyline. Yet we got served a sequel, ‘Jassbusters 2’.
The album’s opening track ‘Jass Two’ lures us in distorted, high-pitched vocals reminding us of a creepy child’s first words to slide into an eerie ballad of sorts set in a cave with potent echo qualities. It’s quite a pleasurable dimension that we got transported from, through the ‘K Is For Klassical’ Spanish-guitar-styled and lute-like instrumental tunnel, to ‘Flipping Poles’. It’s a gentle throwback to ‘Jassbusters’ and a lovechild of slowly-burning melancholia and laid-back sci-fi. So laid-back that we hear Morpheus’s steps as he’s heading in our direction and inviting us to close our eyes and dream away. Connan’s music is a perfect soundtrack to explore psychedelic, eery peripheries to. ‘In Tune’ is kind of a prelude to the voyage, a waiting room for the proper take-off in ‘Maori Honey’. We now drive off in our shiny silver Cadillac to the setting sun on Mars, smoking space cigar and blowing the smoke in our darling’s face. ‘She’s My Lady’ continues on a similar instrumental route, featuring smoothly distorted guitars with psych-tendencies. ‘Shaved Buckley’ is the most interesting fellow out of the whole assembly of the album and definitely the strangest one. It’s sounds like a cry for something transcendent that we’re always after. Without really knowing what it really might be. A great track for chasing phantoms to.
In ‘Jassbusters 2’ Connan Mockasin resurrected a spirit of the previous record. Even though the sequel isn’t anything we’d call necessary or ground-breaking, it’s got a beautifully soothing quality to it. It makes you want to melt into the bed of last-summer roses and lose yourself in a slow-paced sci-fi romance.