Dubai creative powerhouse Sarah R Jay returns to her pristine and euphoric instrumental roots this season, with a highly-anticipated full-length album, celebrating the divine escapism of techno and house music – and the conceptual blurring of lines between human emotion and cybernetic progress.
Exploding into action with the piercing synths and high-voltage energy of Cyberhuman Souls, the nostalgic enchantment of the sound is quick to raise the pulse – an unforgiving tempo injecting a bold and brilliant fusion of a distinct riff, piano backdrop, sailing synths, and fierce rhythms.
The track is perhaps one of the most intense and explosive of Sarah R Jay’s to date, but it also notes the same precise and skilful balancing of qualities found throughout her extensive production repertoire, and it makes for an unignorable introduction to CYBERHUMAN PULSES.
After this, the emotional chord pattern and rising melody of Beyond The Unknown creates a blissful and deeply moving sense of more contemplative escapism, but the tones and sound-design choices maintain their roots amidst the purposeful heart of the project.
Ten original instrumental tracks make up CYBERHUMAN PULSES, with intense floor-fillers like Wildfire proving addictive and infectious in their sheer brightness and uplift. As ever, the conceptual threads are crucial, and the music here blends ambient warmth and grittier, almost robotic or computerised tones, for a sharp and profound style; one that feels like the audio encapsulation of fireworks or vivid sparks of electricity.
Other highlights include the aptly-titled Speed, which begs for you to listen through high-quality headphones during your train journey or morning run. Then there are the retro gamer implications of I Am Spartacus, and the cinematic depth and tribal success, the winner’s anthem, that is Wave.
Moments of evocative wonder return through tracks like Lonely Heartbeats and Love Remains, Sarah R Jay always presenting a divine and intentional sense of story and meaning with her music. And for the mighty Escape, a mellow stomp of a groove backed by chaotic outer layers and rising melodic fragments, gifts that unrivalled cinematic presence once again.
Bringing the album to a close is an unexpected trap-style beat, a pulsating bassline, and distant, cinematic synths – When The Stars Align allures and engages the senses, rightfully capturing the essence of this meeting between the programmed realm and that which makes us human.
Find Sarah R Jay on Instagram.
