Right here and throughout the album, Alexander’s synths are essentially the most compelling facet of his music, telegraphing outsized feelings with a silvery flick of the waveform. However his drums come up wanting; too usually, his programming feels formulaic, a means of filling within the empty area within the combine. In “Persistence,” the regular hi-hats steamroll all of the subtlety out of Nia Archives’ trip-hop-like vocals. Within the hardstyle-influenced “Metaphysical,” flayed hi-hats and Amen breaks compete for consideration with overblown bass and a shouted vocal pattern that’s looped advert nauseum, as so a lot of his vocal samples are. Moderately than compellingly heavy, it simply feels leaden.
Alexander has described What I Breathe as a love letter to the dance-music legacy of London, the place he’s lived for the previous seven years. However past a handful of jungle breaks and a joint function by grime MCs D Double E and Novelist, nothing right here feels intrinsic to UK membership historical past. Genuflecting to what Simon Reynolds has known as the “hardcore continuum” is virtually de rigueur in sure corners of UK-inspired dance music lately; What I Breathe doesn’t say something new concerning the custom that runs from the UK’s discovery of acid home by breakbeat hardcore, jungle, dubstep, and dirt. Alexander merely gathers these sounds round him, badges of fealty to his adopted hometown.
There’s yet another featured vocalist on the album: Alexander himself. He brings a mewling falsetto to “With out the Solar,” a bittersweet UK bass/home hybrid that vaguely resembles Larry Heard and Mr. White’s “The Solar Can’t Evaluate”; fusing the atmospheres of the Remedy’s Want with brittle grime manufacturing, the closing “Misplaced in Harajuku” is extra surprising, however Alexander’s understated monotone sounds reluctant to take the highlight, and whereas the lyrics are onerous to make out, the glimmer of Misplaced in Translation-like disorientation that sneaks by fails to elicit a lot sympathy. Taking a function on his personal album comes off as a form of rhetorical trick, a suggestion that this, not less than, is a glimpse of Jordon Alexander at his most private. The issue is, he’s not a compelling sufficient presence to carry his personal. Seven years right into a profession spent flipping acquainted references into crowd-pleasing shapes, it’s nonetheless not clear who Alexander actually is, past the sum of his influences.
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