Few names carry an identity weight like that of Armand Jakobsson: a Swede from Malmö who moved to Barcelona, he baptized an entire genre almost as a joke, that lo-fi house of the mid-1910s made of tape hiss and slowed down tempos; the label fell on him before he even knew what he was doing, and he's lived with it ever since. “If This Is It”, third album and second for Ninja Tune, is the album with which he closes that circle: he started it the same week in which the previous “Mirrors” was released in 2021, leaving it to mature for five years between one tour and another, fishing out demos fromhard disk and filing them until exhaustion. The concept declared is acceptance, enjoying the present instead of regretting the past: and ultimately it is also a way of setting aside that same lo-fi house invented by him, melancholic like a vaporwave anchored to the straight speaker.
On a sound level the brand is that of a melodic and crystalline UK garage, with veins trance and a slew of guests to fill a not particularly tasty cauldron. Fusing radio euphoria with interchangeable cues, the artist constructs synth-pop turns and Balearic refrains, ballad inspired by car trips and beat syncopated on ear-catching lines. It's a bit reminiscent of the latest Lust For Youth but with more verve sentimental, adding lunar synthwave to summer rhythms. What gives it away, however, is precisely the sanding. In seeking a new direction and yearning for stylistic maturity, Jakobsson smooths out all the roughness: the dirty grain gives way to a window-dressing veneer, to vocal manipulations already heard and thematic progressions that have been around in club circuits since time immemorial.
Merge elements uplifting and sugar in abundance gives the idea of a depth and emotional fragility that is more declared than perceived. The packaging is impeccable, as could be a YouTube music video that without a single error explains how to make the powerful one bassline; but which, having understood the mechanism, would not make you want to replicate it. The twelve tracks flow away with too much politeness, where too much interchangeable material floats, the kind that convinces more for technical expertise than for inspiration. After five years of gestation one would expect a leap, a tear; instead, an adult and tidy record arrives, which sands down every edge and, in doing so, forgets why anyone fell in love with that sound.
01/07/2026
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
