REVIEW: Jam City – Dream A Garden

If you’re listening to ‘Dream a Garden‘, use surround and a serious sub as not to insult the industrial sound and the on point ambience. The newest addition to the Jam City catalogue hits deeper than the previous effort ‘Classical Curves’. Coming in after a night on the liquor, laying in bed and slipping slowly into madness is the best way to describe this short walk of an album.

The reason we call it a short walk of an album is because following the first half, it begins to sound less diverse than its predecessor. ‘The Garden Thrives’ the opening track and if you have got a strong enough imagination (or if you’ve smoked enough), you can actually see a garden painted by sound. That’s not an easy task, but Jam City captures it with some D.I. Y atmospherics and draws up a perfect picture. Those calm, warming vocals finally come to surface during the track ‘A Walk Down Chapel’ but are almost drowned out by the percussion and synthesisers. 

‘Unhappy’, released back in January as the first single, focuses more on Jam City’s vocals; a strong choice for first release. The beat remains the same throughout and is completely carried by the drowned vocals until the very end. It’s interesting that despite the repetition, the track is so absorbing. The same, however, can’t be said about, ‘Good Lads, Bad Lads,’ which sounds like something you would find on a DVD title menu, over and over again.

‘Crisis’ is a song that looks to be massive live on stage. That synth snare drum echoing throughout would bounce of the walls in a club, but that is nothing compared to what sounds like a wah pedal in effect on the closing track, ‘Proud’. The classic rock vibrato wraps things up perfectly.

Jam City is about to release an album of pure musical awareness. If ‘Dream a Garden’ was an emotion it would be a lot more extreme than the uplifting debut.

Pre-order your copy of ‘Dream A Garden‘ here. 

Written by Dylan O’Regan