Bambinodj

(This article’s English version was produced with AI-assisted translation)

If your question is: "Can you float in the air?", the answer is a crystal-clear yes. Or at least, that’s what Bambinodj has convinced us of, as his ethereal-dancehall manages to keep the soul suspended, making it sway between the trance vapors of a light and imaginative universe. The post-club movement is perhaps one of the most refreshing curiosities of recent times, where arpeggios ripple through a Mediterranean groove that would have been unthinkable until recently.

Of course, a shadow of cultural appropriation lingers: it wouldn’t be the first time white people have absorbed and reshaped codes rooted in Black music, whether hip-hop or blues. Here, the formula is distilled into a dancehall that is indeed Jamaican but with a Latin American heritage that dissolves into a mirage of cosmic euphoria—a levitation ritual of astral embraces, amapiano delights, and wide-eyed emotional transports ("Carrier"). It’s as if Ini Kamoze had been dematerialized into a futuristic hologram or White Mice turned into an .mp3 file by a digital outsider ("Closure").

"Silent Dispatch" gathers eight tribal ceremonies from a virtual elsewhere, with autotune reigning supreme over vocal samples treated as pure sound elements: sculpted, radiant, summery, and pulsating. It feels as though Bambinodj has found his own inner harmony—a sensory bliss made of balance and joy, a cheerful ecstasy achieved not through the hypnotic meditation of the club but through the dematerialization of the self in a synthetic habitat, where every grievance seems to evaporate ("Jus' Pull Up", the delicate ballad of the album).

It’s not an album for everyone, and at times, the tendency to overindulge is evident—"Missin' You" features a vocal that, in another context, might raise some eyebrows. But even in its weaker moments, this trancehall remains elegant, both in its tonal choices and sonic craftsmanship. Every element—from the virtual maracas to the evanescent triangle, from the drum machine to the percussive crackles—resonates clear and floral ("Auf Long").

At its core, this album is a lucid dream, a well-balanced drift into weightless imagination. It’s as if the world had dissolved all disorder, transforming into an Eden with synthetic foundations—a promised land, a celestial space infused with an immutable lightheartedness of digital ecstasy.

03/03/2025