ADJ - Artist Focus
7 Jul 2024
Recently picked up a copy of the record below and thought it would be nice to do a piece on one of UK Techno’s more under the radar artists, Andy Jaggers aka ADJ. It’s a logical starting point as his first ever release under the 3 Elements alias, which seemed to be a fluid collection of himself and different collaborators. Given the quality of the releases around that time, it’s probably easy to understand how this isn’t revered in the same way as classics like The Other World Collective’s Artificial World EP, B12’s Electro-Soma Album or indeed the majority of the Likemind catalog. However ‘Glow’ retains all those same qualities - deep, soulful, Detroit indebted Techno, reflected back through a UK lens.
After the 4 releases under the 3 Elements alias in the same vein there was a bit of a gap in output until the early 2000’s, after which you can hear a shift towards a darker, often Electro leaning sound. I love this one, a tripped out burner that sounds like it’s been beamed from the outer reaches. I’d definitely recommend checking out the whole EP which was a joint release with Junq.
Next one was his first release on Andrea Parker’s Touchin’ Bass label. ‘Hope’ sits perfectly in-between the 2 previous tracks - dark, brooding Electro contrasted with heartstring wrenching melody and harmony.
Jumping forward to 2011 with this one from his album ‘Beats, Blips & Other Dimensions’, the title nicely encapsulating the production across it. This one is a mix of stretched textures, crunchy pads & strategically placed bleeps and blorks for that dystopian Electro sound. I won’t get into analog vs digital, but you can definitely hear a shift sonically to a cleaner sound which is more than likely from a move to in the box production. This perhaps loses some of the raw character you get compared to earlier productions, but on the flip side you can hear the use of modern DAW tools to create a lot of the textures etc across this one. Either way the vibe is on point, and that’s what counts..