Neue Grafik – Rachael

His Dalston Tape, Vol. 1 from 2024 was already striking. Now Neue Grafik – born Fred N’thepe – follows it with Rachael, and in doing so gives the year an unusually strong opening. So strong, in fact, that for a moment one can forget that the coming twelve months, beyond this dense jazz–house–hip-hop hybrid shaped by British club traditions, will likely also hold less pleasant developments.

On Rachael, things feel infectiously bubbly. The groove is occasionally roughened up by touches of acid, or ambles along comfortably with subtly reverberant breaks. Whether a track remains instrumental or turns into a vocal piece is decided, if in doubt, by the material itself. Neue Grafik handles these shifts with assurance, weaving the far-from-homogeneous tracks – including sparingly deployed string interludes – into a larger whole through carefully judged contrasts. There is even a loose concept underpinning the album: the title refers to the character of the same name in Ridley Scott’s film Blade Runner, while the track »Voight Kampff 808« also directly invokes the science-fiction classic. One does not need to know any of this to be drawn into the music. But it certainly does it no harm.