Reflective, raw and creatively unrestrained, Somewhere Between Love & Misery marks a defining chapter for JeezJesus. In this interview, he unpacks the emotions, ideas and evolution shaping his most personal album yet.
1.
“Somewhere Between Love & Misery” feels like a personal turning point. What
emotional or creative moment made you realise this was the next album you
needed to make?
Well, I
already had quite a lot of ideas and music projects left over from the previous
years of writing and as I would work on finishing off the old ideas, I would
end up becoming reinspired to write new ideas from these older ones. Eventually
there were enough fleshed out song ideas that it felt appropriate to start
working on another album. Quite early on in the process there were a lot of
nearly complete songs, some only really needing lyrics. Once you enter this
creative flow it is a shame to stop and I have a tendency to really indulge in
the process of composition and songwriting. There were also a few personal
feelings and themes I feel I needed to express that I don’t think I quite
expressed either as well or as intimately in previous releases. I definitely
feel, that with “Somewhere Between Love & Misery” I have managed to craft
something very refined and precise, whilst also being incredibly raw and
honest. This album at this moment in time is the best representation of me as
an artist and a person.
2.
You’ve described the album as a closing chapter in your life. What part of that
chapter was the hardest to translate into music, and why?
In all
fairness, I haven’t really found anything in closing this chapter of life
particularly hard to translate sonically. Prior to the completion of the album
I had actually gone through a few months of targeted and engaged therapy that
caused me to be quite reflective on my life and very aware of issues that were
effecting me in the moment. I took a step back from my own reality to try and
understand it and music to me has always been the greatest place to drive most
of my feelings and expression, so if I felt it, I wrote about it. Once I was in
the frame of mind to write I just kept pouring my feelings, concerns and
frustrations into this collection of songs. If I had to choose one song that
was particularly difficult to write I’d definitely choose ‘Control’ as it quite
deeply relates to my relationship with misery and anger.
3. This
record blends industrial, post punk, synthpop and darkwave. How did you balance
such eclectic influences while keeping a unified direction?
The thing
is; though all these genres can all be very different, they can all weave in
and out of each other at points, as they share a lot of similarities.
Similarities that are widely accepted and satisfy the tastes of a very specific
audience. I think what helps most is I am using a very strict process of
creation with a lot of similar equipment and production techniques. I just
about manage to create enough cohesion to link it all together under one
project. My process and workflow is very personal to me and my music is
incredibly inspired by the artists and music I love, the music becomes very
much me. This ultimately manages to create some sort of direction and control
when I’m trying to unify the chaos of my musical interests and inspirations.
4. Many
tracks were born from older ideas buried in your hard drive. What helped you
decide which ideas were worth reviving and which ones you finally let go?
I took a hard approach on removing certain songs at different periods from my working hard drive onto an archive hard drive. I have a traffic light system when I’m working on songs where green is obviously good and will make it onto the project, amber is needs work, red and amber means needs a lot of work but if I can’t make it work it goes and red means it’s currently not going to work. I regularly reapproached the songs that needed more work, some made it out of the amber stage into green but a few remained red for so long that they were banished to the archive drive.
Originally
there were going to be about 16 songs on the album but I just couldn’t make the
remaining songs to work at this moment in time. ‘I Want a Pony’ was actually
one of the longest standing fringe songs in my hard drive and there were better
songs that I could have finished, but I just loved how weird and raw it was. I
thought it would be a nice wacky addition to end the album with some tongue in
cheek chaos. This song, having been around for some time and written at a very
different period, may mean it comes across as somewhat jarring in composition
and production but it is merely just a bit of fun to end on.
5.
You’ve released a lot of music between 2023 and 2024. Did that period of intense
creativity change your approach to writing or producing this new album?
Oh most
definitely. 2023 and 2024 were some of the most vital years of my creative
life. They have been years where I have spent a lot of time really perfecting
my craft and finding my creative voice. I already had a lot of the initial
technical training in both music production and music composition, I just had
never really felt creative freedom quite the same in my entire life.
I started
to let go of the perfection that the training had taught me, but utilised the
tools and knowledge I had gained to start refining my own style and my own
voice. Also writing a lot and never expecting much from what you’re writing
really helps you to progress. When you’re stuck in perfection and taking a long
time to finish anything you’ll never really make as much progress as when you
are constantly completing creative works. This point in life as a creative has
been very fun but also incredibly satisfying.
Ultimately,
from creating a lot and working a lot with the equipment and technology I have,
I have managed to find a process of creativity that is incredibly efficient and
effective, and works for me.
6. Songs
like “I See You” and “Cost of the Lost” take on political and social issues.
What role do you feel music should play in moments of global instability?
Today, it
does look like the world is in turmoil, people are so polarised and the future
looks kind of scary. I don’t know if this is just the media machine and social
media algorithms doing its best to have us all in fight or flight mode, or
trying to have control through fear. It sometimes feels like there isn’t much
hope for a brighter future. But art has always had this power to cut through
the noise and chaos of the world and provide an expressive narrative that
people can relate to and unify together on.
I guess,
the way people receive music is the way I write it, if I can’t quite understand
how I feel about something I try to write a song or musical composition about
it, and after that I understand a bit more about my own feelings and opinions,
I start to understand myself a bit better. As a receiver of art when you are
presented with an idea, feeling or opinion in the form of art, and you’ve
actively consumed that art, it begins to teach you more about yourself.
So, I think
it is very important as musicians we write about our own worries, concerns and
frustrations with current political and social systems, because there are
people out there without a voice, who aren’t being seen and heard. The voice
you can give to them through music can be so powerful in making them feel
recognised and giving them some sort of hope in a world that is starting to
look quite bleak.
7. Your work often explores themes of stress, burnout and modern pressure. How does creating music help you process or navigate those feelings?
Funnily
enough, I tend to be incredibly productive when in periods of high stress and
burnout. I start to become quite manic. I learnt a long time ago that the most
effective way for me to avoid becoming down and depressed is to outlet all my
feelings into some sort of creative project.
I think the
frustration of feeling stressed, burnt out and crushed by the pressures of
modern life motivates me to be more creative. My creativity gives me hope and
faith in an escape from these pressures. My artistic world is a place where I
feel like I have a lot of control, when in life I don’t always have that same
control. Usually if I can imagine it I can make it. This cycle of turning
stress and fear into creativity becomes quite a constructive process mentally.
8. The
album shifts from darker, heavier material into a brighter synthpop influenced
second half. What inspired that structural contrast?
I had a lot
of quite contrasting material I had written, originally I thought maybe
containing all of this within one project would be quite jarring. All the songs
were all born out of a very significant period of my life. I guess you could
say, a massive period of change. My decision to present such a stark contrast
within the album is significantly representative of this huge change in life.
The
beginning of the album progresses gradually from darkness into pure chaos
ending with the industrial and aggressive ‘Pressures of Life (Killing Me). The
second half starts by introducing the theme of love with ‘We Could Be Friends’
and then meanders around similar themes from the first half but with a much
more light hearted and sometimes comedic perspective. Eventually the second
half of the album descends again into chaos but a much less serious form of
chaos, something a bit more tongue in cheek.
So, to
answer the question briefly, life and personal experience is what inspired the
structural contrast of “Somewhere Between Love & Misery.”
9.
Tracks such as “We Could Be Friends” and “It’s Doing My Head In” reflect very
personal forms of affection and fear. How do you approach writing about
vulnerability?
I don’t
particularly write much about feelings of love and affection and tend to stray
away from those topics unless I feel they are absolutely necessary. I also
think it’s a bit unrealistic and dishonest if you are writing too much about
love and romantic relationships, there is so much more to life than the pursuit
of romance. It’s also not very healthy to completely immerse yourself in
feelings of love and affection, it can be quite destructive.
I think my feelings
on romance probably made it a lot easier for me to effectively express my
emotions. As I don’t do it very often, it gave me a whole new world of
expression to explore sonically, and I wanted to explore this world. As with
everything else, as I was engrossed in the process of writing, once I felt
something I had to express it, and these love songs were songs at the time I
needed to write.
10.
You’ve adopted several musical identities over the years, from GIMP to
JeezJesus. How has your artistic evolution shaped the person you are today?
Before I took on these solo projects, I was always in bands where I wasn’t really the predominant creative voice, except for the screamo band I played guitar in when I was 14 years old. Other than that, most of my musical experiences I was merely aiding another dominant creative in their artistic vision. So for a big period of my life I wasn’t writing or playing music I really wanted to be playing.
Adopting
these solo identities was the chance for me to wholly explore myself. Although
I had written my own material previously, GIMP was my first musical venture
into a solo project. It was incredibly performative and maybe at that time that
was most representative of me, but being so performative it felt more like a
front, it felt like I was holding myself back from the world and hiding behind
a mask.
My first
album as JeezJesus, “Dr. Electro Love,” was originally planned to be my first
full length album as GIMP. That first album was released a long time after it
was actually finished. I completed it in the first few months of the pandemic
but I got so stuck trying to figure out how to market it effectively, also it
was so different to the GIMP material it felt so hard to release under that
alias. Eventually I shelved the album and took a massive break from music and
art. Which led me to cut ties with my GIMP alias.
After
having given up on music for years, I was curiously looking through one of my
old Dropbox accounts and unearthed the album. After listening to it again I was
suddenly reinspired to write music again. “Dr. Electro Love” covered very much
the same themes I’m still covering today. It was reflective of a period of time
where I was out of work and had quite a lot of my own personal demons to deal
with.
I chose to
use the name JeezJesus to release “Dr. Electro Love” under as it was my
Instagram name and it felt like the most personal alias I could go by. These
musical identities have heavy ties to my own personal journey of me becoming
more comfortable with myself and understanding myself more.
11.
Visuals seem to be a strong part of your 2025 rollout. How important is the
visual component in communicating the world of this album?
Visuals
have always played such a massive part in music, there is always an album
cover, artwork on gig posters and merch, music videos and a fashion aesthetic
associated with the band. In order to promote the music, unfortunately you do
need a visual aesthetic associated with it. Due to the nature of music
marketing throughout history, none of this is very new at all. The only
difference now is we live in such a massively visual, over-stimulating world,
that without the visual the music just gets lost within the algorithm. The
visual gives it half a chance to stand out, especially as an incredibly
underground independent artist; it’s necessary!
Fortunately,
I’m grateful that this is the case, because it has introduced me to worlds of
expression I would have never have ventured into otherwise. I love all
multimedia arts and I love having the opportunity to create a fully fleshed out
artistic world with the audio and the visual. I do all my own video editing,
photo editing, the majority of my single artwork and all the graphic design.
When I want an artist to come in and do some of the work to fill in my artistic
gaps, I am lucky to have had some incredible artists on board. For instance,
the main design of “Super Creeps & Spooky Beats” was designed by my tattoo
artist Batch and the main skeleton artwork on “Somewhere Between Love &
Misery” was drawn by my partner Dominika.
I’m
grateful for the tools and knowledge I have to successfully be able to craft
this world of artistic expression in a variety of ways. So, as for the
importance of the visual, to me it is incredibly important as this is a world I
have created for the audience to indulge themselves in.
12.
Looking ahead, what do you hope listeners take away from Somewhere Between Love
& Misery, both musically and emotionally?
I can only
hope that listeners can relate to my music and amongst the chaos they find some
sort of familiarity within it. All I ever wanted was to be heard and seen, so I
hope when someone listens to my music they feel recognised. At the end of the
day, writing this and building this world is my escape and I welcome my
artistic world to be the listeners escape too.
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