Merry Christmess exudes a frantic sense of fluidity, similar in nature to that of my personal favorite Hip-Hop-minded Christmas comp. Peanut Butter Wolf Presents: BADD SANTA - A Stones Throw Records Xmas. After initially pitching a batch of holiday-themed beats to an East Coast-based crew of emcees to no avail, John "Jumbled" Bachman, unfortunately, aborted his then-untitled Christmas EP for a planned 2016 release. Now, nearly a year later, Jumbled is back with his fully-realized 15-track Merry Christmess comp. Following The Ghost of Len Bias EP with MGNTK. emcee UllNevaNo and THE INSULT with long-time friend and emcee Dwell (as Bully Preston) Merry Christmess is Jumbled's third proper release of 2017. While Merry Christmess is, in fact, Jumbled's first beat-minded Christmas release, John Bachman's Indie Rock/Power-Pop band, Soft Peaks actually issued a 2013 cover of The Kinks' raucous "Father Christmas." Merry Christmess features contributions from frequent Jumbled collaborators Dot Com Intelligence and JBerd, as well as new-comers ALYX Ryon, Che Rock, The Hell Hole Store emcee Darko The Super, and fellow educator/emcee Reason hailing from Pittsburgh.


Dually functioning as both a conventional beat tape and a vocal-led album, Merry Christmess effortlessly switches back-and-forth between Christmas jingle-sampling instrumentals and emcee-helmed tracks. I would have to say my personal favorites are Reason's "Just Another Holiday" and ALYX Ryon's "Chestnuts," both contributions from extremely talented East Coast emcees I hadn't heard of prior to Merry Christmess. Jumbled's Merry Christmess additionally features a John Bachman-designed album cover, which is a particularly festive re-creation of a shot from inside Nirvana's Bleach (1989) CD booklet; @NapalmDef even Tweeted, "Hey @KristNovoselic, I drew you as a deer -- hope that's cool," of course, aimed at Nirvana's long-time bassist and founding member Krist Novoselic, days prior to release. Merry Christmess is now available to stream, download, or add onto your holiday playlist from Jumbled's Bandcamp page on a Name-Your-Price basis. Word on the street is Jumbled's currently working on a "Bmore Club"-stylized EP to be released at some point during 2018.

"I like Christmas and Christmas songs, but I'm also tired of hearing the same ones (or covers of the same ones) over and over again. These beats were created for a collaboration that never came to fruition, so I sat on them for a year; most are pretty simple—but all were sampled from Christmas songs. In Fall of 2017, I reached out to many artists and a few responded and sent me some great tracks." 🎄

- John Bachman (Jumbled)