Hmmm, masks, how do we feel about them? Personally, I’m not into them anymore. Maybe early SBTRKT was the last time I was like, “okay, masks are the shit!”, but now I feel like it’s less about ‘oh we just want the music to do the talking because we’re regular people’ and more ‘this is a very obvious marketing ploy’… anyway let’s talk about London’s Jadu Heart! (What a depressing way to start what I’m hoping will be a positive piece on this band). Shrouded in secrecy (aka, masks) Jadu Heart have been kind of bubbling away over the last few years, with what I would call a few ‘heaters’, mixed between some solid releases (+ a Mura Masa colab). But this new one (what I’ve read is coming from a debut album), really feels like the moment they burst from a what I would call ‘Hype Machine faves’ (if Hype Machine had any relevance anymore), to grade-a big-time players in this dark-electronic-pop-but-a-band mold that is undeniably hard to resist. From the intimacy of the early acoustic guitar lines to the way it drops into this powerful dark, synth-laden territory, it’s a fantastic piece of music. Lose the masks and show me the next phase of Jadu Heart, I will put money on it being a big one in 2019 (please don’t quote this back to me at the end of the year though).
‘Purity’ is out now via VLF Records.