Jam City

Substation presents:

Jam City - This summer Jam City returns with his new album My World. Bypassing the crowded dance floors and relentless hooks of his previous LP EFM (2023), My World finds the artist burrowing downward, ever deeper, into the dark, sticky underbelly of his singular groove.

It’s a groove pioneered and refined across countless Earthly DJ sets, and those paying attention will immediately recognise side one’s syrupy, hip-hop indebted knocks on tracks like My World, “Hung Up” & “Venice Loop”. These are relentless masterclasses in Pocket that few of his peers have been able to master. “I felt myself slowing down the tempos again, returning to the kind of hypnotic, psychedelic sounds of the Earthly mixtapes aswell as Dream a Garden (2015) & Pillowland (2020)” he says. It also marks another return, to a world much closer to home.

In recent years, the keen-eyed might have noticed an enduring fondness for a certain strain of provincial English nightlife permeating the edges of the artists work. My World, then, is Jam City’s half-remembered dream-soundtrack of suburban England on the cusp of a hedonistic weekend. There’s no real nightclubs to be found this side of the M25, but in the pubs, ex-servicemen’s clubs, and certain 2am living rooms, one might encounter the luxurious grooves of George Benson’s “Gimme The Night” bubbling through thick, pre-smoking ban air, or the kinetic drum machines of “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” soundtracking a hen night. Even the aging goths in the town square nod their heads to “Love Like Blood”, the late Geordie Walker’s melancholy guitars being drowned out by an E’d up ‘Think’ break blasting from a nearby boy racers car. On the dark outskirts of town, if you strain your ears, you might be able to hear the timeless, power ballad pianos of Orca’s “4AM”. “Increasingly that’s kind of how I remember where I grew up - top 40, rare groove, disco, goth, rave, garage - all this diverse and hype music colliding on a street level in a really mundane, normal way, all in the name of a good night out - that’s just my world” he remarks.

The collective euphoria and emancipatory potential of Britain’s nightlife has been a well-worn topic in recent years - including on EFM (2023). So why are we still here exactly? and why now? In truth, My World is a far darker listen, maybe even a comedown of sorts. The beats are slower, head-nod tempo. The mood is gothic at times. The vocals describe not fleeting dancefloor romances, but wrong addresses, failed reconciliations, “empty houses, empty streets” and alarmingly, “ghosts”, “rats” and “shadows in the night”.

One might even discern that to stroll down said English high street in 2026 is not to encounter a joyous collision of diverse dance-pop music and Big Night Out euphoria, but something emptier, lonelier and, worryingly, angrier. The artist seems to share these thoughts, but the resolutions are just out of reach. “I can’t describe it - there is a darkness to this record that I couldn’t help but let in. Once or twice a year I find myself back in my hometown, now with a 2 year old son, and it’s totally empty. We’ll sit in the town square for a bit and hear an old song from the 80s or 90s coming out of a Wetherspoons - and it hits me like a ton of bricks. There’s something missing”. He turns the volume down in his home studio, quiet for a moment as “Venice Loop” fades out - a distorted roller that recalls Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long”, now turned nightmarish with deadpan mumble raps about aforementioned creatures of the night. “I think this is me responding to that on some level”.

But not all is lost. He tees up side two with a smile: those power-ballad pianos again; “2AM” emerges out of the speakers, a haunting and ethereal piano folk ballad transformed via booming breaks into peak-time heartbreak. Trippin, a gorgeous slice of soul-sampled club-RnB sits somewhere between The College Dropout, Jersey Club and UKG. Pure Jam City terrain, in other words. “Songs like Memories” the singer opines, as though gazing down longingly from her own personal cloud, and it feels apt. “I just went deeper and deeper into my own world on this album, and ended up with the most “me” thing I’ve ever made” he laughs. “…It’s also probably the best”.

with support TBA

Music @ 7:00pm.

21+ only.

see you there!