Visions

So there's house for dancing and chillout for relaxing, but what if you want to unwind but not end up horizontal dreaming of the Café Del Mar? Enter Jakatta with his debut album Visions: not upfront enough to drag you onto the dance floor but certainly not drowned in contrived chillout synths and meandering downbeats. Having been DJing and making thumping music for many years under various guises, Joey Negro aka Raven Maize aka Dave Lee aka Jakatta has toned it all down and gone cinematic on us. His first hit under this moniker was the American Beauty sampling "American Dream", up-tempo and uplifting yet more ethereal than your average house tune. Much of Visions is made in a similar way, taking a good idea and running with it although depending on moods and personal taste, this can get a bit samey and start to sound like the same song repeated over and over again. The standout has to be the collaboration with Seal on "My Vision", same as the rest; nice beat, hook, bass etc but the vocal lifts it far beyond the rest of the album.