Some have called Lil Jabba (real name Alex Shaw) the ‘Prince of Footwork’ and the title aptly fits. Scrolling through the producer’s SoundCloud page you will see he has a thorough understanding of the intricate and dizzying rhythms of footwork and juke, seeing as he mastered his chops being a member of the perpetually-unfuckwittable Teklife collective. Though we here at Truants love his classic soul sounding juke tunes like “Loe End” and “Windy City” it’s his deeper and darker tracks that deserve some more attention. Mr. Jabba calls himself a cave-dwelling producer and coins his sound as grotto music. If you take a gander at his online presence you will see an array of images depicting tribal masks and ritualistic paintings. Tunes like “Skate”, “Alone”, “Silencer”, or “Aztec” seem more fitting for a shaman dance around a bon fire in a deep, dark cave instead of a normal club dance floor.
Alex has been hibernating in his cave somewhere in New York City, escaping the deathly frigid and barren landscape by keeping hard at work on a release for True Panther Sounds. A couple of days ago he posted a stellar stand-alone track titled “Dusty” that just begs to be played out in the springtime. The snares, bass drums, and claps are another example of his expertise with staple footwork rhythms but it’s his sampling skills that make this track really shine. The woozy slide guitar played against the swift strings brings his normal ritualistic dance moves out of the cave and into the full on sunshine cruising along the coastline. The track takes a pit stop in a nearby meadow with an organ breakdown and fluttering string arrangements before building up to a double time juke bounce that you cant help but bop along to off into the sunset. A tune like this only builds the excitement for his future release. Don’t forget to check out his previous release Scales out now on Local Action.
