Bomb the Bass - Jai-alai Savant

"You need to get your ****in' hand outta my face before I knock you the **** out," barks Jai-alai Savant frontman Ralph Darden as an alcohol-drenched Friday night in Glasgow rapidly turned ugly.  The shock-haired Philadelphian Jujitsu expert's personal space has just been invaded by a blitzed Glaswegian advising him to stop sticking his finger in the socket, and that was all it took for Darden to start rolling up his sleeves, so to speak.  Thankfully, his friends defused the situation, although it wouldn’t be the only time that night.

Darden was not in a patient mood.  He’d just played what he says was the worst gig of the tour and everyone around, it seemed to him, was drunk, incomprehensibly Scottish, and had "something smart to say".  He felt he couldn't have been more conspicuously out of place had be been "riding a ****in' horse down the sidewalk".  Five minutes later Darden found himself confronted again: "A crew of really drunk girls comes up to me on the street and this girl goes 'Oh my God!  Can I touch your hair?'  And I was like,  'Oh my God!  Can I touch your boobs?' She’s like, 'no' and I said, 'Why not?  You don’t like random strangers coming up to you violating your personal space  treating you like your some sort of pet?'" 

The manic, feverishly colourful energy that's pouring into Gigwise's ear as Darden talks from his room in Chicago is partly Woody Allen melodrama and partly the lurid hyperbole of his beloved comic-books.  Mostly, though, it's just Darden's unabashed relish in simply being a great story teller, even when the main character is himself.  The near-violent picture he paints of what he emphasises was the one negative episode in JAS's experience of the UK is hardly a genuine bother to him now, as he looks back on the Glasgow experience realistically.  "I think they were just having fun," he says.  "I think they were just like, 'Oh look, I’m drunk!  Hey look, there’s a crazy looking black dude -- you don’t see that every day -- oh, lets say something funny to him.'  They were just trying to be friendly."
 
The gig-related frustrations that sparked his moodiness aren't so easily forgiven, no matter how hilariously absurd the situation seems now.  "We were playing a show in the basement of a club," he recalls, "and apparently behind the stage was some sort of storage  kitchen facility and as we were on stage performing, in the middle of our set a woman working in the cafe up stairs comes down, walks up on the stage, lifts up our backdrop, walks in, does what she has to do,  and comes back out in the middle of the song as if we weren’t even there."

Stemming from a similar outrage at the idea of being ignored, it’s the determination to ensure that that never happens which characterises JAS' debut album, "Flight of the Bass Delegate".   The crafted horn-lines and vocal melodies streak like expertly wielded spray-paint, brightly defined against post-punk choppiness, chaotic Mars Volta-esque swirl and dub breakdowns.  All the creative overflow -- especially in songs like 'Arcane Theories' and 'When I Grow Up' -- sounds tightly packed with the pop aesthetic of Motown at it's soulful sweatiest coupled with a Talking Heads-like precision. 

It's as rapid-fire and diverting as JAS's namesake, the Basque sport Jai-alai (pronounced hi-a-lie), which is illegal in all US states but Florida.  A fan but not a player, Darden says, "once or twice a year somebody will get seriously injured or even killed."  He describes the sport as "some gladatorial type shit. ...  A bunch of guys throwing this rock-hard ball at each other at 180 miles per hour with a hook strapped to their arm."   It's the dexterity, the risk and the sense that if something goes wrong, it will go wrong spectacularly that fits Darden’s vision of the JAS.