The first album Jerome LOL and Samo Sound Boy made together, 2014’s Friend of Mine (released under the name DJ Dodger Stadium), so perfectly replicated not only the sound of vintage house and techno but its particular melancholy-tinged, ecstatic mood that they probably could have passed it off as a long-lost classic if they’d felt like it. So it’s commendable that on their second album, the duo (now going by the slightly less confusing moniker DJDS) decided to chuck the proven formula and try something new.
For Stand Up and Speak, the pair have rethought nearly every aspect of their collaboration, from the overall sonic identity all the way down to the way it was recorded. Instead of mining old records for samples like they did so effectively on Friend, they created nearly every element on Speak from scratch, going as far as hiring vocalists off Craigslist and recording live instruments.
Leaning on organic sounds and performances that aren’t computer-controlled gives the album a warmer feel throughout. The streaks of heartbrokenness that ran through Friend have mostly been scrubbed away and replaced by a more uplifting mood. There’s a hint of sadness in the chopped-up vocal melody that "In the Flames" revolves around, but it’s more than sufficiently offset by the nimble, burbling bassline behind it. The penultimate track "I Don’t Love You" is as much of a breakup anthem as the title suggests, but it’s less the "wallow in your own misery" type and more the "get out to the club and dance it off" kind, building over its succinct three-and-a-half minutes to an emotional and sonic climax that’s downright triumphal.
The pair also seem to have shifted their influences from club culture’s earliest, most underground days to the period shortly thereafter where it first began to make inroads into the pop mainstream—less Paradise Garage and more "Club MTV." References to late-'80s/early-'90s club pop and vocal house abound. Sometimes it’s explicit, like the vocal loop, syncopated synth-tambourine, and brightly digital-sounding piano riff that underpin the hooky "You Don’t Have to Be Alone." Sometimes it’s more subtle, just a touch of breakbeat on the snare parts and a hint of the same exultant mood that groups from Deee-Lite to Black Box rode to surprising crossover success.
Unfortunately, the pair’s willingness to mess with a proven formula doesn’t translate into a more satisfying experience. For every "You Don’t Have to Be Alone' or "I Don’t Love You"—instantly memorable anthems that pretty much every type of dance DJ could find room for in their sets—Speak offers one or two tracks that just don’t generate a spark. And unlike Friend, which still stands up as a solid front-to-back listen, their use and reuse of the same few production techniques—most noticeably two-bar vocal loops and snare rolls—gives the album the feel of a couple great singles packaged with the half-baked demos that led up to their creation. Speak isn’t exactly a step forward or a step back, but more to the side, onto a new path with plenty of potential, as well as room for future improvements.
