After Hours opens like a dream sequence. Seagulls circle the sky, waves crash onto empty beaches. A crackly police scanner reveals a cop and dispatcher discussing arrests. It’s hard to tell if it’s dusk or dawn; twilight tends to warp time. But these are the protean hours that a certain set live for and that Jubilee recreates on After Hours. Where other dance albums often focus on just the club, for Jubilee, everything before, after, and in between is just as important.
On her long-awaited debut full-length, the Miami-born, Manhattan-based DJ and producer née Jessica Gentile pays tribute to the nightlife that raised her. Influenced by countless drives through Miami, the LP takes on a breezy, balmy feel different from Jubilee’s past Mixpak releases. Where her last three EPs (Pull Ova, Jealous, and JMZ Riddim) were harder and more percussive, After Hours is dreamier and more melodic. She still draws on many of the sounds she’s known for—dancehall, Miami bass, trap, among others—but this time, her music is concerned not just with the immediate moment but also with reflections on past ones.
Each track stands as its own memory and its own vignette, but as memories are wont to do, the edges bleed together, so that After Hours also functions like a 38-minute, South Florida-obsessed club mix. On “Stingray Shuffle,” Jubilee playfully references the shuffle that beachgoers do to avoid getting stung in shallow waters. A prickly, arpeggiated motif dances across a pounding beat, reminiscent of Frankie Knuckles’ “Your Love,” except faster and with a Detroit techno nod to DJ Stingray. “Sawgrass Expressway,” named after the expressway that runs through Broward County where Gentile grew up, also draws on house and techno, but with a sparser, more robotic feel. Both tracks are made for the club, but here they suggest spaces outside of it—getting ready beforehand, or barreling down an open road after.
At the club proper, lead single “Wine Up” is a dancehall jam with a chutney soca feel, by way of synthesized dhantal rhythms. A repeating four-note motif gestures toward Gyptian’s “Hold Yuh,” while Bronx-based dancehall artist Hoodcelebrityy demands the room, to “Wine up gyal, w-wine up yuh body!/Wine up gyal, r-r-ride di riddim!” Similarly, on “Bass Supply,” Miami mischief-maker Otto Von Schirach raps, “Swing that ass, swing it round and round!/Pound that shit, on the fucking ground!” Jubilee, meanwhile, interpolates the Miami bass track with an array of effects that she triggers as if playing Bop It—water droplets, slide whistles, unruly springs, 808 cowbells.
All throughout, Jubilee builds a consistent sense of place, shaping a loose narrative. In some ways, the album pivots on the track “JMZ Interlude,” which finds the listener ejected abruptly from the bawdy world of Von Schirach into the busy city streets. Using her 2014 Brooklyn-inspired “JMZ Riddim,” the interlude sketches the familiar scenario of trying to catch a ride to the next spot. Exclamations of “Brooklyn bruk!” cut through the cacophony of honking cars and blaring sirens. By the time the car doors slam shut, a slightly off-kilter stop/walk light starts ticking for what feels like forever. Finally, the ambient “Snooze Button” ushers in a brief daydream and some relief. At least, that’s one interpretation. The narrative arc of the album isn’t entirely clear-cut. But then again, neither are many nights out.
Either way, there’s no denying that After Hours is a meticulously produced affair. Every bass line and syncopated rhythm and subtle inflection fits precisely one into the other. Yet it always maintains enough space to breathe and, very often, to glitter: the same prickly pattern we first hear on “Stingray Shuffle” recurs throughout the record, shape-shifting just so to evoke different images and moods. On “Opa-Locka,” an homage to the city just south of Broward County, bells twinkle like stars over a spry reggae rhythm. The atmospheric “Spa Day” feels like speeding past the ocean, with the sun glinting off its corrugated surface. A slow-winding kizomba groove anchors the track, and 909 toms bounce from one side of the listener’s sonic periphery to the other as bits of conversation float by.
By the end, on album closer “Beach Ball,” swells of ambient noise rise and fall like columns of warm air, buoying bobbing flutes and skittering hi-hats. The tiniest gleam of morning light stains the horizon, easily blotting out any memory of police dispatchers or hungry gulls. Waves lap gently against the shore, and we feel it in our lungs: that these are the hours we live for.
