Opium (Vinyl)

Limited vinyl LP pressing. It was in 1996 that Jay-Jay Johanson, a young man from a cold climate, fascinated by the Bristol sound they called trip-hop and Portishead in particular, first tapped delicately on our eardrums. In only a few songs he revealed a family tree that spread its roots far and wide: on one branch Chet Baker and Lee Hazelwood, on the other John Coltrane with Johnny Hartman, and in between a whole army of jazz or symphonic recordings sampled from everywhere imaginable. Almost 20 years later he has returned with an incredible 2015 album called Opium. It contains the very essence of Johanson's music: an ease with inventing melodies, a voice that gently caresses, and the jacked up, heady rhythms that lift and carry the songs. The songwriting is unnerving, the words have a suppressed poetry. This Jay-Jay Johanson is the work of a guy who has survived the avalanches, who is no longer looking for answers and is content to sketch out the perspectives in as many songs. The strength of Opium is that it asks questions that don't necessarily have an answer; it offers a collection of songs freed from any certitude but which convince through their modesty, through their precision. In short, Jay-Jay Johanson at his best.