“Alone,” the title track from Jus Now‘s latest EP, is the Trini/UK production duo’s best work to date, embodying numerous genres —soca, house, dancehall, Afrobeats — at once, and none in specific.
In the video for the track (recently featured in Now Things, our roundup of new Caribbean sounds for Apple Music) guest vocalist Chalmer John escapes from the lively nightlife of Port-of-Spain to the idyllic Tobago coast, where he enjoys a sunrise rendezvous with… himself. A paean to solitude may be an unusual direction from a group rooted in the sounds of Trinidad Carnival, a celebration of collective energy if there ever was one, but Jus Now (Port-of-Spain’s LAZABeam and Bristol, England’s Sam Interface) continue to carve new territory with their hybrid sound.
“The tune is about breaking away from the normalcy of the daily grind and being comfortable in your own skin, but at the same time it’s a party track,” LAZABeam says. “We love juxtaposition in music and like to do things to completely break the normalcy of our own path. The sound reflects the triangle of sound that we love, and that is coming together so well right now in music: Afrobeats from Africa, Soca and Dancehall from the Caribbean, and U.K. Bass Music.”
Alone isn’t the only new project from Jus Now. The duo recently partnered with Indigisounds, creators of the world’s first comprehensive steelpan sample library, and the Laventille Rhythm Section to build a percussion sound database. The Laventille Rhythm Section sample library, available for $99 through Indigisounds, contains over 3,500 sounds from 42 different instruments played by the legendary Trinidadian percussion orchestra, from West African djun djun drums to iron wheel hubs, as well as eight original rhythm loops created by Jus Now using sounds from the library.
Get a taste of the sound library here, and watch the video for “Alone,” directed by Kiwan Landreth-Smith, below.