Transitions: New Jackson

Close your eyes and dream of the club with New Jackson, all the way from the wilds of South Kerry

Having released on such luminary club labels as Permanent Vacation, Hivern Discs and Dublin’s own All City Records, New Jackson’s evocative and sophisticated club music has found itself swept out to Europe’s finest dancefloors, and into the record bags of its most esteemed selectors.

Principally inspired by strains of Chicago house, melodic electro and acid ambience, the sound of New Jackson is outstanding machine music with a rare soul. Reflecting Kitt’s extensive musical history, each of New Jackson’s dozen-or-so releases thus far is characterised by an adventurous musical spirit, often weaving unexpected influences from acoustic, experimental and classical genres to rousing and authentic effect.

His tracks exist firmly in dance music’s underground diaspora, stripped of novelty and nonchalance into something emotive but always physical. The woozy vocoder at the centre of “Sat Around Here Waiting” continues to turn heads in clubs since it’s sudden, delightful arrival on John Talabot’s Hivern Discs imprint in 2013, matched by 2014’s “Having A Coke With You”, an unforgettable slice of acid-house melancholy, defined by a memorable sample and poignant strings.

This steady stream of singles laid the gradual foundations for New Jackson’s debut LP, ‘From Night to Night’, released in 2017 on Dublin’s All City Records. Hailed by The Irish Times as “a gratifying and hugely satisfying collection”, it perfectly framed his dancefloor impulses with a wider palette of sound, deftly blending influences as disparate as Larry Heard, Pete Rock and Arthur Russell. 2019 was another busy year with a string of big releases on Permanent Vacation, Maeve and Cin Cin rounding off the year with his now classic “The Night Mail” featuring as the opening track on Sven Vath's 'The Sound of The 20th Season' comp for Cocoon.

His live show recently made its Ibiza debut at Pacha Destino as part of Solomun's Plus Live series.

Currently working on a follow-up LP for All City, New Jackson continues to impress with his expansive sound and musical philosophy.

Transitions is a series of 30 min vignettes from five Irish electronic producers, each of whom provide a short accompanying musical response to the idea of transition - so much of which has been forced upon artists in the past 12 months.

The performances were filmed across two locations from opposite spectrums of the island, but linked by their proximity to two separate but continuous coastlines, and each of which, in their own way, faced the energy of transition due to COVID 19.

The Space Between in Dublin 2, and a new contemporary cafe space in the very heart of South Kerry - Driftwood Cafe - which looks directly out across St Finian’s Bay at the Skelligs.

In itself, the position of Online Performance as an accepted artistic medium is in transition. One of the key issues with the medium is the loss of the truly ephemeral immediacy of a live performance - there is no doubt that the ability to pause, or re-view a moment in time erodes the weight of that moment.

To combat this, to underline the coastal links of both locations, and to give the piece an extra sense of temporal reality, we will frame each performance with the opening and closing sea area forecasts from the day they are recorded.

Artist: David Kitt
Curator: Emmet Condon, Homebeat
Film Makers: Steve O'Connor, Adrian O'Connell
Lights: Conor Biddle
Sound: Simon Cullen
Commissioned by St. Patrick's Festival