J-E-T-S

J-E-T-S is Jimmy Edgar and Travis Stewart (Machinedrum), two of the past decade’s most versatile and protean producers, who have artfully glided through techno, house, IDM, bass, hip-hop, R&B, and pop without being pinned down to any one of them. Their only commitment has been to lucidly fuse the mutant strains of the past into the vaguely familiar present. No ideas are original, but they’re singularly creative artists who could only comfortably exist in modern chaos, the strange invented future. Released on Innovative Leisure, Zoospa is fiercely cohesive but wildly varied. It’s a group effort casting a wide net of brilliant collaborators (DAWN, Mykki Blanco, KingJet, Rochelle Jordan, Tkay Maidza), but ultimately guided by the auteur visions of Edgar and Machinedrum. If many all-time great duos are guided by a competitive rivalry, J-E-T-S discard that sensibility to form a unified whole. If not in sound, they channel the two-heads-one-brain spirit of a more danceable Autechre or Outkast raised on the Belleville Three and first wave IDM. If you heard Timbaland and The Neptunes in 1999, this is what you’d expect pop music to sound like 20 years later.