Aaron Jerome - Time To Rearrange

Author

Paul Lindsay

Published

Wednesday 19th December

Aaron Jerome for many is not a household name even for the dance music enthusiast. However up until now Jerome has been quietly working in the background creating a name for himself remixing the likes of Zap Mama, Bugz In the Attic, and friend Nitin Sawhney. It is probably his exceptional remix work on Nicole Willis and The Soul Investigator’s track Feeling Free that made a wider group of people start to sit up and take notice of the humble young man from south London.

From it’s anthemic and epic opening you would be forgiven for thinking that Time To Rearrange is going to be something to behold. However, Jerome’s debut album is a mixture of a realm very safe to Jerome of Nu-Jazz, folk and a sojourn into more ambient tech and deep house territories that provides for a varied and rich listening experience.

The range of vocalists will offer a mix of opinions and does become a little tedious after a while and though live in it’s approach it doesn’t quite push the boundaries into new directions that nu-jazz is definitely screaming out for. The first instrumental of the album, the title track, does go some ways to demonstrating Jerome’s exceptional production talent and provides welcome relief from the up and down results of the collection of vocal tracks that precedes it.

Following this first instrumental Jerome rightly leaves his nu-jazz comfort zone and starts to explode with a wealth of different ideas. This is evident on the trip-hop sounding Silent Suffering or the cheeky Late Night Mission, seemingly about the misadventures of MC Yungun trying to get a gig to perform with Jerome, that make for a welcome change in direction from a listening perspective.

The standout track however is the enthralling penultimate track Marrakesh that takes the listener on a mesmerizing journey into the never never. This is a solid debut effort from Aaron Jerome who seamlessly demonstrates that pushing the boundaries and sticking to what you know can make for solid returns.