Author Archives: Jammo

Review: Vesper

Vesper and her father's drone look from behind a wall. From the film Vesper

Read Time: 4 mins

Film: Vesper (2022)
Directors: Kristina Buožytė, Bruno Samper
Starring: Raffiella Chapman, Richard Brake, Eddie Marsan, Rosy McEwen
Soundtrack: Dan Levy
Genre: Sci-Fi, Dystopian

Anyone who knows me knows that I’ve got a soft spot for dystopian sci-fi, especially the biology-inspired subgenre. Bonus points if it looks utterly dismal and/or is set in some desolate Eastern European landscape (it must be growing up during the Cold War). With that in mind, I turn to the 2022 Lithuanian-French-Belgian film Vesper.

Directed by Kristina Buožytė and Bruno Samper, the film takes place in a seemingly not-too-distant future (at least, it feels that way at the moment), in a world where crops have been depleted and society has broken down. The classic dystopian tropes of the haves and have-nots play out in a clash of parallel worlds. The lower classes, who are essentially living in semi-medieval conditions, toil in the mud for seeds and wreckage, while the oligarchy (largely unseen) inhabit the citadels—encapsulated cities that resemble giant octopuses—which are only ever seen from afar.

The story follows Vesper (Raffiella Chapman), a 14-year-old girl with a gift for biohacking. She lives with her father, Darius (Richard Brake), who is confined to his bed, paralysed after a war injury. We are told that Vesper’s mother ran away to join the Pilgrims, a mysterious group of veiled figures who silently scavenge in the post-apocalyptic no man’s land that is their world. Though bedridden, Darius uses a drone with a childish drawing of a face daubed onto it as a proxy for his body, allowing him to travel with and protect Vesper. I particularly liked the juxtaposition of high-tech elements, such as Darius’ drone, with the rough cabin where they dwell. The daubed face is a touch of brilliance, giving the floating orb a sense of personality and playfulness, reminiscent of dodgy 60s/70s British sci-fi productions.

Vesper holds her hands up to a flower like lifeform.
Vespers creations

Darius’ brother, Jonas (Eddie Marsan), lives nearby on some kind of farm. It’s never clearly stated, but it seems Jonas has either fathered a good number of children or is running some kind of children’s home. Either way, his role is that of a crooked exploiter, selling “his children’s” (as he calls them) blood to the people of the citadel. It’s never explained why, but I enjoyed the vampiric subtext—the rich quite literally sucking the blood of the poor. In a world where millionaire biohackers like Bryan Johnson infuse their own children’s blood, it cuts pretty close to the bone. Jonas is also in possession of citadel creatures known as Jugs—strange, pale, genetically engineered humanoids who are essentially slaves, programmed to follow orders. There’s a harrowing scene in which one of Jonas’ ‘children’ is strong-armed into killing a Jug, or “put it out of its misery,” as Jonas coldly puts it.

The technology is all more or less biological in either appearance or structure: power comes from a gooey black liquid described as bacteria. Though the outside of the drone is metallic and spherical, the interior is slimy and brain-like, as we see when Jonas sabotages his brother’s drone.

Things take a turn when a citadel plane crashes near the shack. In a strangely beautiful and serene scene, Vesper discovers the half-dead body of Camellia (Rosy McEwen) being fed on by various plant/insect lifeforms. Vesper rescues Camellia, who has been separated in the crash from her father, Elias, and brings her home—much to Darius’ discontent.

Vesper looks down at the body of a crash victim.
Vester finds Camellia

Vesper dreams of working in a lab in the citadel, to which her father warns, “You don’t know the cost of dreams.” She wants to help Camellia return to the citadel and hopes that she will take her and her father with her.

As with all good sci-fi, class war is at the root of Vesper. There is a sense that the people of the citadel are inhuman, cruel, and vampiric—slavers who have depleted the crops, torn the land apart, and toxified it with genetically modified organisms. It is they who hoard the wealth (seeds, in this case, which are codified) away from the people on the ground. And, of course, it is Vesper who is tasked with restoring the balance.

The world-building in Vesper is second to none, and the plant life is especially well-designed. The soundtrack by Dan Levy is excellent too, though I can’t say the final track was my cup of tea.

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Review: Masayoshi Fujita – Migratory

Cover of Migratory by Masayoshi Fujita. Text on an abstract image of red clouds.

Read Time: 3 mins

Label // Erased Tapes
Released // 06/09/2024

Masayoshi Fujita follows up 2021’s Bird Ambience with the aptly named Migratory.

Recorded at Fujita’s Kebi Bird Studio in the coastal mountains of Kami-cho, Migratory opens with “Tower of Cloud”. Brimming with melancholy and romance, it evokes memories of more thematic music by Sabres of Paradise and Angelo Badalamenti. The laggard square bass sequence – delayed and reverb-soaked – provides a rigid skeleton for Fujita’s marimba flourishes and white-noise, staccato synth vamps to dance around. Although relatively light and airy, it becomes subtly discordant as it introduces long, oscillating synth pads, taking you into a far tenser headspace.

“Pale Purple” begins with piercing shō notes and low drones (perhaps an organ?) that loop in sequence, punctuated by marimba and vibraphone parts – a spell at dawn, the sound of mountains waking up. Something about “Blue Rock Thrush” reminds me of Wagner’s “Das Rheingold: Prelude”. It’s not the music, though – it’s the structure, the slow birth of something elemental. With its lulling vibrato sax circling, it’s almost spiritual, and it sends me flying.

“Our Mother’s Lights” features guest vocals from the inimitable Moor Mother, dripping words like honey over Fujita’s dreamlike marimba arpeggios and a sax lead reminiscent of the great Yasuaki Shimizu. As Moor Mother says: “We are just travelling through open space, in the darkness of our mother’s light”. “Desonata” has a meditative quality. A repeated, filtered synthesiser sequence, the vibraphone long and majestic, soaring like some cosmic bird, juxtaposed against the marimba, earthly and sassy, like a cat at play. This same feeling continues in “Ocean Flow”, though far less cosmic, where seabirds and subtle tidal tones wash in and out of the sound picture.

“Distant Planet” paints a far more minimalist picture; the marimba takes centre stage here, innocent and stripped bare, its melody almost childlike – in awe of something else, something greater. As the synthesiser comes in halfway through, you get the sense of a conversation being had. It’s as if a child, looking up at the stars in wonder, poses a question through the marimba while the synthesisers provide the answer from somewhere out there.

The sax and shō return on “In a Sunny Meadow”, and it’s heartbreakingly beautiful; the dulcet saxophones blend exquisitely with the shrill tone of the shō. “Higurashi” features the hauntingly beautiful vocals of Hatis Noit over a bed of what sounds like cicadas (perhaps synthesisers) and light marimbas. I won’t lie – I shed a tear on this one.

More delicate soundscapes appear on “Valley”, where vibraphones and drones float over distant winds. The album closes with “Yodaka” – which, according to Google Translate, means nighthawk. Whether correct or not, it certainly sounds like it. Drones and the shō create a sense of drama – a dark incantation to the moon – gradually relaxed by the marimba and vibraphone parts, which counterpoint the darker tones. It encompasses so much of what I love about this album: the interplay of dark and light, the mystery and the beauty of the mountains and the coast. It makes me homesick; it’s wild, romantic and honest. I’ve never been to Kami-cho, but I’ve been to Ceredigion, and I know there’s magic in them hills.

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Review: Dogpatrol – Ya Playin Yerself

Read Time: 3 mins

Label // Sneaker Social Club
Released // 21/02/2025

Mannheim’s clown prince of bass, Dogpatrol, returns to the ever brilliant Sneaker Social Club with another instant classic in the form of Ya Playin Yerself EP.

“1200kcal”, with its strange off grid feeling locked groove and a snaking bass, really sets the scene. It occupies that rare space between real meat and gristle, underground bass music, and good old-fashioned silliness. Lessons from Hardcore, Grime, and Garage are deftly executed here. Whether it’s dog barks, ice-laden eski-melodies, PS2 ambience or a flatulent bassline that sounds like a giant ‘Godzilla like’ caterpillar rampaging through Baden-Württemberg, Dogpatrol has an innate ability to summon the spirits of disparate bass oriented subgenres, like some type of sound system Voltron.

Pound shop robotics, ring modulated breaks and more dog barks open “Baby Flame” as we join our sweaty palms and dive into a smoked out world of seaside arcade laden grime. Think of staples like Skepta’s “Autopsy” and Davinche’s “Mega Drive“, but squeezed through a bit crusher—like meat through a sausage stuffer– it’s naughty, it’s fatty, you know you shouldn’t, but you want it, don’t you?

The title track takes an almost soulful turn at first. Opening with light and wafty pads reminiscent of so many Metalheadz releases, it first gives the track a sense of breath—only to brutally cut out, dropping you into a dark Keller of disorientating, clinical funk. Out of tune, weird as fuck and delighting in its off-key samples and pitched ramblings, “Ya playin yourself” teases the listener with depth and drama before pulling the rug right out from under them. 


“Offenbach HBF Riddim” completes the set with Dogpatrol at his maddest. It’s kind of a party breaks thing, I hasten to say it, but it almost reminds me of Big Beat. Now, usually I’d only say this with a sense of scorn, but “Offenbach HBF Riddim” is the exception that proves the rule. It just works! Perhaps it’s a touch of nostalgia, it reminds me of long ecstasy-filled halcyon days, escaping the main floor at the Source (zodiac, Oxford) coming up hard on Mitsis downstairs, Toby Kidd on the decks, doling out happy cuts like Deeds Plus Thoughts’ “The World’s Made Up Of This And That” and De La’s “Three Is the Magic Number” before catching myself and heading back upstairs for some more dark dystopian drum and bass.

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Jammo – The 14th b’ak’tun

An old all vinyl mix, broadcast live during the Mayan apocalypse of 2012 on Mixlr (fashionable at the time) to about 3.5 innocent listeners. I figured if, as I believed was possible at the time, we would all perish in a ball of fire, I may as well have a bevvy, load up the Graham Hancock samples and do an all vinyl prog mix. As it turned out, we all survived and instead entered the 14th B’ak’tun, an age of so-called civilisation which, so far, has made my original apocalyptic concerns seem like kindergarten.

Note: I sent one copy of this out on tape to an unlucky competition winner.

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