Jade Relics is the Vermont supergroup comprised of Elder Orange, IAME, and Rico James. The three have been in each other’s orbits for a while, but they have only recently coalesced as an official trio and started to work on music in that capacity. After teasing us with a couple of singles, we now have their debut EP, Mandarine.

The beautiful thing about Mandarine is that it sounds exactly what you’d want a trio of accomplished solo musicians to sound like, because it blends all of their sounds together and then pushes the music into a new realm for all of them. All three artists work as producers in their solo careers, and all three contribute in some form or fashion to that aspect of the EP, but the general division of labor is that IAME is emcee, Elder Orange is providing vocals and playing multiple instruments, and Rico James is flipping samples and drumming on the pads. Again, this is the simplified version, but it will give you some sense of where the music is going on this EP. As these three bring their influences to the table, something remarkable begins to happen. Yes, you get plenty of funky boom bap beats and skillful rhymes, but you also get so much more. IAME brings in these influences of synth pop and underground hip hop that give an eerie edge to the music, but then Rico James brings in some classic soul and funk along with some ‘90s boom bap to even it out. This is already getting good, but then you bring in a wild card like Elder Orange, who brings in pieces of old school soul, yacht rock, indie rock, and plenty of versatility with the live instrumentation and the vocals, and we get to somewhere special. That’s because they’re not just shifting here and there as different artists contribute, they are really communicating and collaborating, putting all of their influences in a blender, and pouring out something that doesn’t sound like a whole lot else out right now. The music can be weird, and IAME can lean into that anxious feeling with his rhymes, and at other times the music can be familiar and soulful with big hooks, and still at other times it can feel like a wild prog/jazz-fusion album from the ‘70s. The beautiful thing is that they manage to do all of this across the course of six songs, explore all of this space, bring it together coherently, and make it sound all their own. That’s no easy feat.

Mandarine is a hell of a debut from Jade Relics. It’s extremely inventive, just bursting with creativity, and it reflects how much fun they must have had putting the EP together. It will be fascinating to see where the music might go from here.