Having made music in private for years, Melbourne-based artist Jaime Sacchero arrives with a resolute and fully-formed sound on the new EP ‘Play by Play,’ the first under his JASA alias.
Sacchero describes this body of work as ‘non-functional dance music’ - taking aesthetic cues from techno and alternative electronic genres, while disregarding the imperative to make dancefloor ready cuts.
As a result, JASA floats in an evocative twilight world between the collectivist energy of the club and solitary reflection, reminiscent of stylistic forebears like Actress, Jan Jelinek and Aphex Twin.

EP opener ‘Better’ weaves serpentine filters and spiralling synth textures that trace around a groove, rather than spelling it out. The simmering ’16-8-18,’ meanwhile, is underpinned by sparse percussion in the lineage of Burial, a melancholy undertone offset by optimistic sax melodics. ’Tube’ forms the record’s dark centrepiece, a thick fog of glitchy drone and dissonant keys heaving to a peripheral beat. Subtle additions - like distant vocal chatter, or steamy high-end hiss - hint at movement and a flickering, shadowy imagery.

‘Aleatoric Form’ paints a landscape of variably overlapping analog arpeggios, shuffling hi-hats and low frequency thumps, uniting the chance-phasing stylistics of Steve Reich or Terry Riley with something more akin to dub techno minimalism. Finally, 'FL4TPK' introduces itself with a four-to-the-floor backbone that’s so prominent it somehow fades from view, redirecting your attention to effervescent synth layers and more abstract percussive interjections. Occasionally breaking away from its central motif to suggest atmospheric breakbeat detours, the track nevertheless retains an insistent momentum making it the record’s most DJ-friendly entry.

For Sacchero, the recordings on ’Play by Play’ represent a process of inspiration, experimentation and careful development - latching onto spontaneous ideas that pique curiosity, before leaning into a series of edits and reworks, often retaining elements of noise and incidental artefacts along the way. The result is a record that feels immediate and sanguine, but deeply thoughtful - rewarding repeat listens, but arresting from the first spin. It’s to our great benefit that JASA has emerged from various sharehouse home studios to bring these sounds to the wider world; we can only assume there’s plenty more fascinating work on the horizon.