Club Dread is not club music. The production on Majetics new album alludes
to various
dance genres but never quite embodies them. Similarly, the characters populating
its ten
twilit tracks orbit the nightlife without taking to the dance floor. Amorphous
and peripheral,
it's music for the sidewalks adjacent the cluba score for the bittersweet
comedowns.
Club Dread marks a transition for Majetic. Formerly configured as a band, the
project has
exchanged the name CARE for something more emblematic of its singular producer,
Justin
Majetich. The palettes changed too. Majetic has built Club Dread, his third
LP, almost
entirely out of electronics. The result is agile and restraineda sleeker
vessel for the
songwriters vivid lyricism and emotive pitch.
Club Dread was conceived in Oakland, California, and though Majetic wrote and
recorded
much of the album upon returning to his home in Queens, New York, the Bay
Area
provides a setting for its fractured narratives. There's a glimmer of the
Bays natural beauty
evoked in its open, gilded moments. There's also an awareness of the racial and
economic
disparity run rampant against this idyllic backdrop.
Dystopian tension is present throughout Club Dread, and Majetics vision of
the club is
less defined by paradise than it is by vulnerability. But even as the album
combs the
margins of tragedy, it feels devoted to heal- ing. In the closing track, Majetic
captures this
quiet conviction, singing Club Dread like nothing bleeds / like baby gets what
baby needs /
like violence couldnt find us underground.
