Album Review: Ropechain by Jookabox

The term "melting pot" has been used to describe the United States of America's citizens since the country's inception, so it comes as no surprise that those citizens should produce art that's equally "stew-like. " David Adamson (aka Grampall Jookabox), not content with the usual lo-fi, art-folk templates of 21st century home recording, has unleashed a truly genre-defying beast with Ropechain, the Indiana native's first full-length for the Asthmatic Kitty label. Adamson's heady blend of Odelay-era Beck, Roky Erickson paranoia, cosmic hip-hop, and general Animal Collective weirdness sounds like a train wreck in print, but his knack for odd melodies, stealthy programming, timely pitch-shifting, and macabre (and occasionally hysterical) subject matter helps to keep things consistently interesting throughout Ropechain's easily digestible 45-minute runtime.

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Ropechain, the second album by beat aficionado David Adamson as Grampall Jookabox, begins with a mass of remixed voices that may well be from a Bollywood movie. It’s impossible to make sense of what they are saying, but there is a definite hypnotic quality to the loop and the thumping bass that underlies it. By the time that Adamson makes his first appearance, talking about “black girls building skyscrapers with their brains," we are already predisposed to his particular kind of madness.

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