Dijf Sanders – To Be A Bob (Dub/Creative Vibes)

Dijf is a young Belgian electronic producer who is producing kooky music that seems to fit somewhere within that home studio crafted glitchy jazzy idm folktronica world. You know the one, where everything is possible – yet it all still sounds like everything else. There’ lots of fun, lots of energy and lots of cool jazz moves, all mashed together in the real spirit of fusion, and although electronica has the stranglehold, here’ the kicker: Dijf has broken out of the straightjacket. It seems most of these bedroom producers have been blinded by Warp, and are pumping out the same preset sounding crap. Dijf is the antidote, there is a real confidence to his off kilter constructions, yet it’s not technical wizardry, rather he conjures up these amazing sound worlds – he makes you believe, then he extricates himself from them with a quirky devilishly clever logic. This is a guy who isn’ being played by his computer, the song is king and the song is fucked up. A guy who previously played with Beck plays trumpet, and there’ also real double bass. These considerably add to the real world jazz elements, though Dijf is also tinkering on the piano and he plays it with a noticeable jazz sensibility and sense of space. There’ also a bunch of singing on a few tracks, which seems to come from Dijf himself, drawing upon the gravel of Tom Waits or even countrymen Deus. In fact if Deus were electronic they’d probably be DIJF, sharing a similar dark pop jazz groove. It’s a lot of fun, though his skills are hidden so carefully under the songs that it’s possible it might just pass you by before you realise you’ve hit kooky clunky electronic jazz fusion gold.