- Recently, Roska told Martin Clark about an attempt to get his fellow UK funky producers on the same page by holding meetings for scene VIPs that quickly turned fractious. "[P]eople thought I was blocking them out of the scene," he said. "I thought fuck it and after that, if that's the case, I'll just do what I do. That's why I'm just doing my stuff and not worrying about a scene."
On the first half of Jackpot, he ignores the scene by veering away from funky's bubbly syncopation in favor of the bruter, more mechanical side of grime production. The tracks are stripped down, though they sound thick: the hollow-cracking snare sounds and medium-pitch squeals of these Playstation-derived (though probably not Playstation-created) beats give them a rough, not-fucking-around sense, which is kind of hilarious given how plinky a lot of it is. On "Blame the Speakers," there's a nagging synth hook that evokes early '90s Belgian hardcore as well as the kind of grime instrumentals prevalent in the mid-'00s—it sounds like it's trying to drill through a wall...and succeeding.
The EP's second half is far fizzier and (UK) funkier. "Leapfrog" takes the title conceit into pretty cheesy terrain—pitch-bent synths that sound like the noise made by the title character of the videogame Frogger, an effect used to far better effect on the closer, "Wie Alt Bist Du." "4th Blind Mouse" counters with a melodic snippet (the first thing on the track, wisely) that does, in fact, seem to follow on from "Three Blind Mice" without simply restating it.
Tracklist 01. Jackpot
02. Roskallion
03. Blame The Speakers
04. Leapfrog
05. 4th Blind Mouse
06. Wie Alt Bist Du