Album Review: Jump Cut – Hazel

Jump Cut is the new musical direction from Michael Mahaffie, a documentary film editor who decided to try his hand at making music under the name Jump Cut. His upcoming debut album, Hazel, came together after a ten year process of experimenting with sounds and his own voice as a writer of music, rather than as a documentarian. Jump Cut is an album about love, religion, rent, friendship, college, dreams and nightmares that is due out on cassette via Open Door Records on the 25th May and is available right now for download and streaming via Bandcamp.

 

There’s a distinctly surreal cinematic feel to the the beginning of Hazel, disturbing soundbites are overlaid with samples and after a full minute of this I really was starting to get worried, but my concerns were unfounded as this preceded what can only be described as a collision between The Star Fucking Hipsters and Nerf Herder. Eighties computer game keyboards sit alongside a full tilt anarcho soundtrack that, with the exception of the slacker Dinosaur Jr. feel of Uncarded Sake Bombs and Mahaffie’s Inferno, only ceases to make way for the samples that punctuate the album. Given the intense anarcho style of the album it shouldn’t come as any surprise that it’s on the short side, Hazel‘s twelve tracks are done and dusted in around 22 minutes, but what was surprising about the album was pretty much everything else.

 

The press release gave the impression of something experimental and cinematic, and to say that I was pleasantly surprised is something of an understatement as this is a solid album of furiously gruff anarcho inspired punk rock that approaches the sound from a refreshingly different angle. There are numerous unfortunate examples of people from the film world whose ego and ambition gives them the belief they can switch successfully, take a bow Russel Crowe, Keanu Reeves and Johnny Depp, but thankfully Hazel is an album that proves that it can be done.

 

You can stream and purchase Hazel via Bandcamp here and pre-order the cassette via Open Door Records here