The bedroom-produced collection demonstrates a remarkable understanding of textural layering, with Okada citing Shy FX and Congo Natty as guiding lights. These influences manifest not through slavish imitation but as subtle architectural principles governing her approach to space and rhythm. The Amen Break, that most sacred and overworked of drum patterns, receives fresh scrutiny under Okada's hands. Rather than treating it as holy relic or mere raw material, she approaches the break with surgical precision, chopping and rearranging its constituent parts until they yield something simultaneously familiar and disconcertingly new.
The production values merit particular attention. For music crafted within domestic confines, the polish Okada achieves feels almost perverse—each element occupying its designated frequency range with obsessive clarity, yet never at the expense of warmth or humanity. The low-end throbs with purpose while the upper registers shimmer and dissolve, creating the sensation of music that breathes and moves organically despite its electronic origins.
Okada's creative process, disclosed with disarming candour, involved therapeutic ketamine treatments for depression, during which she would annotate ideas for developing her initial sketches. This methodology—allowing altered states to interrogate creative blockages—belongs to a long tradition of artists seeking oblique strategies to circumvent the tyranny of the conscious mind. Whether one finds this revelation fascinating or troubling likely depends on one's comfort with the porous boundaries between medication, recreation, and artistic practice. Regardless, the results speak with coherence and intentionality that transcend their origins.
The EP navigates the liquid/jungle dichotomy with nimble intelligence. Okada understands that these terms represent not binary choices but points along a continuum, and she exploits the full spectrum between them. Moments of beatless suspension give way to percussive onslaughts; atmospheric pads dissolve into absence before reemerging transformed. The transitions feel earned rather than imposed, suggesting an artist thinking in terms of narrative arc rather than simply stringing together pleasing textures.
What proves most compelling about 'Liquid, or Jungle?' is how it functions as both love letter to DnB orthodoxy and gentle subversion of its conventions. Okada clearly reveres the genre's history—the careful deployment of breaks, the attention to atmosphere, the understanding that space matters as much as sound. Yet she also refuses to be bound by reverence, allowing her relative inexperience to become an asset rather than liability. The EP captures that precious moment when an artist knows enough to be dangerous but remains blissfully unaware of what supposedly cannot be done.
The absence of planned live performances feels almost criminal given the vitality of these recordings. One imagines these tracks unleashed in properly equipped venues, their carefully calibrated frequencies and precisely timed drum hits achieving the physical impact they clearly court. Yet perhaps the bedroom origins suit the music's introspective qualities—these are tracks for solitary nocturnal journeys as much as communal release.
Okada's parting note—the cheerful emoticon following her hope that listeners simply enjoy the music—undercuts any tendency toward pomposity that critical analysis might impose. The EP ultimately offers what the best electronic music has always provided: temporary escape, visceral pleasure, and the reminder that machines in sympathetic hands can channel genuine human feeling. For a debut from an artist barely a year into her chosen genre, 'Liquid, or Jungle?' announces Alice Okada as a talent worth monitoring closely.