Jlin Composes a Genre-Bending Future on Akoma

The last we heard of Jlin on a studio record, she left with one final display of prowess for anyone who would rise to the challenge. The footwork barrage of “Challenge (To Be Continued)—the closer to 2017’s Black Origami—was an intricate and exhilarating sequence to chew on in the years since, blending drumline samples, techno tags and whistle sound effects for a climactic finish. But the parenthetical of the track title made it clear that Jlin still had big plans for the future.

Though Akoma is the first studio record from Jerrilynn Patton in seven years, she’s been far from silent in the time since. Notably, Patton has filled those years with multiple stints in compositional work, recently garnering a Finalist nomination for the Pulitzer Prize for her Perspective EP. The venture has proven organic—as a Jlin album can often feel less like a smattering of stray songs and more like a larger intentional series of movements constructed from the same percussion sounds and samples—and it just as organically feeds back into her latest record.

Akoma is, at once, a continuation of the footwork mastery Jlin displayed on records like Dark Energy and Black Origami as well as a synthesis of her influences across genres, footwork or compositional or otherwise. The bridging of Patton’s spheres is clear in the record’s guest artists—which count Björk, Kronos Quartet and Philip Glass among its luminaries. And yet, in the record’s de facto second part of “Challenge (To Be Continued),” Jlin finds an entirely new way to chop up the same host of percussion samples that made the Black Origami cut so striking—as if rewriting her own production language on the fly.

The truest thrill of Akoma comes in Jlin’s expansion of her arsenal, accomplished without deviating too far from the sonic headrush that has come to define her work. On a track like “Speed of Darkness,” Jlin pairs her signature flurries of footwork with a break that hews closer to deep house. Just after that, she pulls yet another reversal on “Summon,” with a stabbing violin loop that gives the aura of a remix to a horror movie score. Björk’s contributions to the record come in the form of broken flute samples and near-unrecognizable vocal chops on opener “Borealis,” while Philip Glass’ piano hailstorms bring an added layer to the freneticism of closer “The Precision of Infinity.” If this all sounds like it may come together as too dissimilar, however, Jlin proves herself a jack of all trades in her remarkable ability to find kindred bones in each permutation her music can take, making the most of a consistency in song structures and sampling.

Like much of what has defined her career to date, it’s the most forward-thinking avenues Jlin takes that make for the biggest standouts on Akoma. Acting as a mirror to “Summon,” late track “Sodalite” finds Jlin weaving her own bass-heavy production through Kronos Quartet’s weeping arpeggiation, the cascades of strings at once a sidewinder and emotive powerhouse unlike anything in her previous albums. If there’s any new predominant thread that emerges from Akoma, it’s that tangible stirring sensation that grips the record. In a recent interview, Patton made the connection between the album’s title—the Ghanaian symbol for “heart”—and percussion as an evocation of the heart, literally tied to the rhythmic beating of the heart. On Akoma, she expands the boundaries of what percussion can be capable of—the forms it can take, the instruments that can embody that family of sounds, and the emotions it can conjure.

Where Jlin’s past albums were less concerned with melodicism and more rooted in an almost-formidable sense of brain-scrambling technological precision, Akoma finds more glimpses into an achingly human side for Patton. Highlight “Grannie’s Cherry Pie” stakes its core not on any drum samples, but a chirping keyboard melody. An archetypical footwork beat rises to the surface, but it’s the cheerfully rhythmic qualities of the keys that remain in the spotlight, the root melody morphing in time with each new progression the beat takes. There’s a warmth to this symbiosis that’s new for Patton, and while it may not be as explosive a revelation as Black Origami was, it makes for a record that feels like a vital new step in Jlin’s evolution as an artist.

Natalie Marlin is a freelance music and film writer based in Minneapolis with writing in Stereogum, Bandcamp Daily, Pitchfork and Little White Lies. She was previously as a staff writer at Allston Pudding. She is always at the front of the pit. Follow her on Twitter at @NataliesNotInIt.