GENRE; Electronic/ Rap

LABEL; Darla

REVIEWED; 19 November, 2025

RATING; 7.9

Newcleus’s debut Jam on Revenge is a time capsule and a blueprint: part roller-rink party record, part paranoid sci-fi fable, all built out of early-’80s synths, drum-machine slaps and vocoder theatrics. The album’s two flagship moments, the vocoder oddity “Computer Age (Push the Button)” and the infectious party-engine “Jam On It” establish the record’s twin personalities: futurist anxiety and pure dancefloor mischief. The release year, personnel credits and original Sunnyview catalogue are well documented; this is very much a product of 1984 Brooklyn electro. 

Production-wise, the record bristles with the era’s DIY curiosity: bright, choppy synth lines, clipped funk bass, and vocal processing that turns human voices into cartoonish machines. Those production choices give tracks like “Auto Man” and “I’m Not a Robot” a playful narrative thrust, they read like short radio plays scored by an affordable Roland setup. Even when arrangements feel repetitive, they’re intentionally hypnotic: groove is the point.

Context matters here. Newcleus operated in the same electro orbit as Afrika Bambaataa and early electro-funk crews, and you can hear that lineage but Jam on Revenge keeps enough personality (wikki-wikki chants, sci-fi gags, campy bravado) to stand on its own. That said, the album’s backstory — label meddling, contested mixes, and royalty disputes shades how we hear it: moments that could have been rawer or grittier were flattened by outside hands, yet those polished touches also helped the singles cross into wider dance and radio play. 

As a historical document the LP is essential: it captures a pivot when affordable electronic gear let kids reimagine funk and rap as interstellar theater. As a listening experience it’s uneven but frequently thrilling, a record whose best lines are still irresistible on the dancefloor and whose weirdness rewards repeated spins.