Rochelle Jordan : Through the Wall
You can dance anywhere: a dive bar, a house party, a vast outdoor field with thousands of other people, possibly (probably) with the addition of mood-altering chemicals. But there’s something undeniably appealing about taking that movement inside a plush nightclub outfitted with velvet furnishings, bottles of the good stuff, and a selector to guide you to beat-laden euphoria. Hypothetically speaking, the way you dance might be the same as it would be anywhere else, but losing your inhibitions with a luxury upgrade is all the more intoxicating.
Rochelle Jordan’s third album Through the Wall is like being granted exclusive entry to such a lush space, its 60 minutes a heady blend of house beats and gorgeously rich production from producers such as longtime collaborator KLSH and veteran beatmakers Jimmy Edgar and Machinedrum. Released some 16 years after her debut EP Alien Phase, Through the Wall is the end result of a gradual refinement and development of the British-Canadian artist’s singular blend of R&B and house, one that evokes ’90s-era Janet and contemporaries like FKA twigs alike. It’s her most immediately arresting album, seductive in sound yet entrancingly subtle.
As the brief intro “Grace” slowly rises in volume, its blend of harp, synths and Jordan’s voice begins to feel like walking through a fine mist. And when the pulse kicks in on “Ladida,” Through the Wall begins its hour-long trip through impeccable yet understated audio opulence. The atmosphere of “Ladida” is elegant but never overbearing, as Jordan delivers a breathless sequence of stanzas that reorients us to her baddie origin story: “Met KLSH back in ’09 in around/Threw me beats and I just hit em out/One by one yeah, bitch I been around/Not just one, I birthed a good amount.” Her vocal coo becomes a gorgeously ethereal against a crackly piano backdrop on “Sum,” she kicks a double standard to the curb (“Boys will be boys, and the girls should too“) on the magnetic “Doing It Too,” and manages to make an emotional wound somehow feel like ecstasy on the phenomenal “Never Enough.”
Through the Wall isn’t literally seamless—it’s not mixed or beatmached like a DJ-Kicks comp—but it nonetheless flows with the continuous groove of a great DJ mix. Even if dropping the needle on one album and sitting back and letting it the whole of it spin uninterrupted is faux pas, well, you absolutely could in this case. But its versatility is its greatest asset, energetic enough for the party, atmospherically cool enough for whatever comes next. Pick any venue of your choosing—living room or DIY space—and see it transform into a den of extravagance, no cover charge required.
Label: Empire
Year: 2025
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