With The Watchline, John Tejada unveils a striking new chapter in his decades-long career. Released on Palette Recordings, the eleven-track album departs from his earlier precision-driven techno and house, leaning instead into a more weathered, guitar-infused sound world. The result is a deeply personal, atmospheric body of work that prioritizes feeling over form.
The album unfolds slowly, revealing textures that feel both corroded and carefully reassembled. Tracks like “Until the End of the World” and “Until the Light Bends” pulse with breakbeats, heavy low-end, and distortion, while slower pieces such as “Driftreturn” and “Through the Watchline” linger in static, haze, and melodic decay. The instrumentation is stripped down yet dense—guitars, synths, and rhythmic fragments layered like ghostly echoes.
March Adstrum lends vocals to “Static Searching” and “Apricity,” adding submerged melodic threads that drift through the mix. Adstrum also designed the artwork, shaping a visual identity of storm-beaten landscapes, coastal grids, and hidden transmissions—an extension of the record’s liminal mood.
Tejada describes The Watchline as “a boundary, a place between memory and forgetting, between land and ocean, between who we were and who we’re becoming.” This idea resonates throughout the album, which sits in a space of transition: not bound by genre or strict form, but by the emotional weight of transformation.
For over 25 years, Tejada has been a vital force in electronic music, from his Kompakt releases to his own Palette Recordings imprint, as well as collaborations such as Wajatta with Reggie Watts. With The Watchline, he embraces yet another evolution, moving into guitar-led, atmospheric terrain that feels both intimate and expansive. It’s a reminder that the album format, in Tejada’s hands, remains a powerful vessel for exploration.
