Album Review: Mathew Jonson / ‘Her Blurry Pictures’ (Crosstown Rebels)

Mathew Jonson Her Blurry Pictures

★★★★☆

Mathew Jonson is in deep thought. Sinewy house and electro strands weaved with quick fingers like a hacker running rampant on a computer keyboard, his high zoom digital lens progresses into the languid deep, catching itself on its way to slumber while something inside fidgets all night long. The Canadian spins relatively close to his chest as a real advocate of letting the music do all the talking. His sentinel stance slickly makes sounds tick over and applies pressure with seemingly little exertion, next to no friction but plenty of lubrication; the funky efficiency of “Touch the Sky” champions how to avoid overextension but still carrying forward the stamina of a marathon runner. Very Crosstown Rebels, in fact.

Then, mixing trance chords and blunt breakbeats on “Lightweight Champion” makes a logical step when it should be incompatible; Jonson recalibrates the timekeeper persona of precision dynamics and starts swiping like a grizzly trying to claw at a bug. On the other hand, the excellent techno-acid spasm “Body in Motion” is the trigger to becoming the aggressor — still wiry, but now revving its feet back like a bull — and will please those hoping he’d hop out from the DJ booth and get amongst the throng below. Closing with the title track’s ambient swirl makes an even less seamless path from A to B as Jonson quietly evolves within the space of just eight tracks.

File under: Cobblestone Jazz, Modern Deep Left Quartet, Midnight Operator