Caught, cooked, brewed, stewed, pickled and bottled under one thousand grey Yorkshire skies, next to kilolitres of Balearic Sea, by gigawatts of clean Berlin electricity, jellyskin’s debut album - In Brine - took a long time coming.
The duo evolved through the trophic levels, from shoegaze bottom-feeders to indietronica second producers to the inception of this album, where four-year hibernation offered the slim chance to become genreless apex predators.
While days came and went, months spooled by, and the years performed their wicked dance, In Brine took on its final form. Iridescent electronica bloomed, tungsten-tipped techno was tempered, and clammy art pop moiled, with feeding grounds at gutted jungle, bruised electroclash, and queasy, brown acid folk.
Each ghost of a song was initially formed in snatched wellsprings of inspiration - but this was no Cambrian explosion. Their meticulous arrangement and rearrangement, sculpting, recording, and mixing was a glacially slow process of adaptation, mutation, cooperation, growth, and, yes, natural selection.
In Brine is an album shot through with longing: a desire for the succour of fresh fruit, the elusive vulpine slumber, a journey to the “crackling north”, the thrill of vertical travel, the lonely leviathan’s futile search for a ten-tonne mate. Its dark blue depths host strange apparitions too, like the cracked china relic of a fallen empire, the tangle of pink beachside bodies, and the first noble fish to haul itself onto terra firma.
And what of the music - the rigging, the tackle? Mechanical beats and sonorous kicks anchor fathoms-deep bass. Simple, unadorned synthesiser refrains and chiming guitars float beneath canorous vocals. Intricate rhythmic scaffolding might give way to pockets of distortion, while a gnomic spoken statement interrupts candied harmonies.
Co-producer, mixer, masterer, boatswain, and consigliere Lewis D-t was the missing piece of the puzzle. He brought structure and beauty to the heaving tide of discarded DAW projects, corrupted WAVs, lost phone recordings, and half-remembered melodies - his was a truly lighthouse-esque presence. The wise and eternally patient Wrong Speed Records guided the vessel along its winding salty path towards safe harbour.
Caught, and now released, In Brine is an introductory siren song from the jellied deep. Landlubbers, will you hear its call?
