RAP - Junction

Guy Gormley and Thomas Bush's second record under the easily-Googleable RAP moniker finally turns up on vinyl having floated around in digital form-only for a few months, and like its predecessor, Export, is heavily possessed of that same past-midnight outsider tenor that shapes the Jolly Discs universe. Across a number of aliases, Gormley has cultivated a very specific, London-centric aesthetic for Jolly Discs, but the true thrill of Junction is the way is in which it stands at the edges of several intersecting sonic spaces, an interzone that joins the fringes of dub, synthpop, grime, minimal electronics, techno, and Dean Blunt/World Music style post/anti-(indie)pop. In some ways the Dean Blunt comparison feels a little uneasy, for RAP is far less arch, much more sincere (and artschool prank-free), its sleeve adorned so obviously with a big grey heart of melancholy. And this is what keeps me coming back to it, trying to work out its strange sadness, which simultaneously seems to express the shared lamentations of London living as it acts as an undefined loveletter to these same experiences. Big City music, in the most accurate kinda way.