Dan Hillier
Life in this grey little country is defined by constant, breathless motion. Every second must be dedicated to grinding away in the name of capitalism or progress, often for others’ benefit. Even our downtime, once precious moments dedicated to well-being, has been incorporated into this system. Doomscrolling has become the de facto pastime of our generation, a ritual where one spends what little free time they have immersed in social media feeds where updates from loved ones are interspersed with live-streamed atrocities, algorithmic marketing and ceaseless torrents of AI slop. As a result, true stillness has become unnerving. The so-called ‘peace-and-quiet’ relished by older generations has become something to be avoided, even feared. Perish the thought of being left alone in one’s head for even a second. Truth has also become a victim; reality is now a commodity presented in fragmented posts designed to manipulate and influence. The new record from Jake Healy is a record based on all the strange juxtapositions that have resulted in this style of living.
Now, depending on your musical orientation, you may have heard the name Jake Healy from several places. On one hand, he’s known for his work in everyone’s favourite mserable bastard doomgaze band Sugar Horse. On the other, one might know him for his electronic and noise work under guises such as Twin Siblings and Grand Times. If you’ve ever found yourself hearing crumbling walls of noise, frantic turntablism and bowel-bursting bass in venues around Bristol and Cardiff, there’s a good chance you’ve encountered Healy’s solo work already. Life Splice, the second record to be released under his own name, essentially distils elements from his various musical projects into something more concise. There’s more focus on structure, digestibility and less grating noise wall. But in turn, this allows more fluidity and greater emphasis on the juxtapositions that this record explores. There are moments of childlike innocence, gilded nostalgia, urbanite grime and nocturnal ambience, all blending and contrasting wonderfully.
‘Grand Stretch’, a blissful ode to fading nostalgia, is a brilliant opener and introduction. Bound by crackling tape loops and sun-kissed ambience that harkens thoughts of those childhood summer evenings that used to last eternally, the track serves as a great contrast against the neon-lit, synth-led dreampop of the minimalist ‘Version Of’ and the initially jarring ‘The Anguish of a Mother Creates a Child in Herself’, a repetitive and mantra-like song that’s one part sparkling excitement and one part something that sounds like someone flipping through brain-rotting Instagram reels at rapid speed. This run of tracks doesn’t just mirror the constantly churning and shifting deluge of information that defines everyday life greatly, but it also highlights a key feature of this record: the ‘less is more’ approach.
Whilst Healy has worked in more genres that the average person listens to, Life Splice operates more on ambience and atmosphere than convoluted instrumentation. Sure, such is the theme for ambient music as a whole, but here, the fashion in which such textures are organically woven together is sublime and reminiscent of similar acts such as Sulk Rooms. Take the gnashing urbanist texture that is the asphalt ambience of the title track, or the musical equivalent of the scent of blackened concrete that is the wonderfully titled ‘Fuck Folk the Earth is Scorched ’, for example. Both tracks are formed of one singular musical texture that feels vivid and alive. However, the greatest example of this does ultimately come to be the single ‘Yearn 4’, a track featuring Ellie Godwin (PEACH, Sans Froid, No Violet) that explores the ancient escapism of dance through industrialist dance beats and sparse yet heaving percussion.
Come the clash of lonely ambience and frantic breakbeats that defines closer ‘Down on NYE’, it’s hard to describe this record via the specific genre tags that streaming services and algorithms will demand it to be classified under. Rather, Life Splice is a record that can only be described by the feelings it invokes. The sensation of feeling isolated in the most connected time in human history. The feeling of watching concrete towers being built, knowing they will crumble once everything collapses. The want to escape to a quiet childhood free from the perpetual information overload where truth is twisted by social media. And perhaps that’s what makes this record so authentic; it’s the sound of both chaotic modern living and the sound of Jake Healy presenting his own truth without it being influenced by outside actors or the demand for it to comply with chaotic conformity. Either way, this is a brilliant record that ebbs and flows between being quietly meditative and grimly dystopian al whilst carrying the essence of Bristol’s unsanitised music scene as a whole.