This Great Pressure by Jogger
LABEL: Alpha Pup

When Amir Yaghmai and Jonathan Larroquette of experimental electronic duo Jogger first set out to make an album seven years ago, Yoshimi had recently begun battling pink robots and a group of guys from New York City were turning on their bright lights for the first time.

That was 2002. Consider if you will, the multitude of indie music trends that have come and gone during that significant span of minutes and seconds and weeks and months. 

Listening to This Great Pressure, the painstakingly crafted product of Jogger’s near decade in the studio is a lot like listening to a trend time capsule that rather successfully captures a number of fashionable sounds that have bubbled to the surface between then and now.

There are multiple disjointed Aphex Twin drum machine outbursts. A sprinkling of DJ Shadow’s deadly drums. A frustrating attempt at Plus/Minus schizophrenic juxtaposition. Heaps of that slick, Madonna-era Mirwais sound. No lie, there’s even a little love for a corn-fed My Morning Jacket harmony.   

What’s clear from the start is that these guys have a lot of ideas. And a rather obvious inability to edit. 

Tracks like “Biss” seek to cram as many thoughts and sounds and ideas as humanly possible into less than six minutes. Acoustic guitars are plucked, vocals are twisted, drum machines sputter and what sounds like a sample from Nintendo’s Contra 2 crackles in there somewhere. The result is a mutilated Frankenstein mish mash when the goal was likely a more sophisticated melting pot. 

In areas, Jogger’s all-you-can-eat textures and stay puft soundscapes are stripped down to their birthday suits and really show the duo’s raw talent. The excellent album closer, “Superman (Live),” takes a distorted vocal snippet and delicately peppers in only the essentials—subtly hyper drums and a simple, steady beat.

This Great Pressure is indecisive and over the top in a lot of ways, but when the bloated layers are shed, Jogger begins to show genuine promise. Unfortunately for this particular effort, the removal very rarely occurs and more often than not, the best ideas drown in a swirling sea of has-been trends and forgotten fads. 


REVIEWED BY ALEC BRINEGAR
ALEC'S 3 FAVORITE TRACKS: Superman (Live) • “Just Briefly (Remix)” • “Champing At The Bit (Live)”