Jayda G

Jayda G

Photo: Franz Freitag

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Jayda G Talks New EP, Promoting Diversity In Dance Music & Sharing Joy

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The Canadian environmentalist/producer/DJ released the follow-up to her 2019 debut album, the funk-filled EP 'Both Of Us / Are U Down,' on July 3
Ana Monroy Yglesias
GRAMMYs
Jul 23, 2020 - 12:29 pm

With her ever-present grin and a vision of inclusivity and sustainability, Canadian-born, London-based environmental scientist/producer/DJ Jayda G is a much-needed positive force in dance music. While completing her graduate thesis in environmental toxicology, she was also working on her stellar debut album, Significant Changes (released in 2019 on Ninja Tune), bringing together her experiences with orcas and as a DJ impartial to old-school funk and house.

Related: Jayda G Is The Environmental Scientist & House Music DJ/Producer The Planet Needs Right Now

Now, with her latest project, a four-track EP called Both Of Us / Are U Down (with co-writing and co-production from Fred again), Jayda returns at a time we need her most, bringing more joy, funkiness and hope for brighter days.

Listen to the EP above (and order it on Bandcamp here), which was released on July 3 on Ninja Tune, and read on to hear from the "Move to the Front" artist herself about it.

In a recent conversation with GRAMMY.com, she discusses why she chose to release the project during these difficult times and shares the meanings and inspiration behinds the two songs and their remixes. She also talks representing diversity and inclusion in dance music and how others in the industry can do more.

How are you feeling right now? How have you been coping with these difficult times?

Honestly, I've been actually doing pretty good, obviously ups and downs, as everyone, I think, has been feeling. I've been using this time to really get centered, and just be rested, and also work on a lot of projects and ideas that I haven't really had as much time to give to. So, it's actually been productive and fulfilling in a lot of ways.

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Your new EP, Both Of Us / Are U Down, dropped on July 3—what does it mean to you to share this project at this time? What do you hope listeners will experience with it?

Honestly, to share it at this time, it was a bit difficult. I, at first, thought I shouldn't drop the EP just because things seemed so bleak at the beginning with COVID-19 and such, and that it just didn't seem the time to be releasing an uplifting dance song. But after contemplation and discussion, it seemed like this was maybe the best time, because people need it right now. People are stuck in their homes, and aren't able to go back to normal life. So what better time to really be releasing a song and an EP that is uplifting and makes you feel good? I hope that listeners experience exactly that.

The contrast between the giddy jubilance of "Both Of Us" and the cautious-yet-excited anticipation on "Are U Down" is really fun and very real to the human experience. What does that contrast represent to you, and what did the moods of the tracks feel like for you while making them versus how you hear them now?

Well, in terms of the contrast of the songs, it's interesting. The lyrics of "Both Of Us" are rooted in a time in relationships where you want to just be with a person all the time. That feeling of "I just want to be with you!" that you get at the beginning of meeting someone—that's what "Both of Us" is speaking to.

Contrasting that to how things are now, it's still very similar. Right now, a lot of people are not able to be with each other. We're kind of isolated. And so, this is a great song that expresses exactly what I think a lot of people are feeling, whether that is a loved one or family, friends, colleagues, or however that speaks to you, right?

And with "Are U Down," is kind of a call and response with the sample that we used [that says] "Are you down," and then [Jayda says] "feeling super down." It can be taken as however you want. When we were making the song, "Are you down?" means, "yeah, I'm down to hang." I'm down to do whatever this is, be it relationship-wise or "taking the plunge," which is also part of the lyrics. And so in terms of how it is now, I think maybe it's not as relatable as "Both Of Us," but I think it definitely can be related to the feeling of "we are doing this." Where we are in this world even right now and having to get through it.

The "Both Of Us" music video is super fun and its funky Sunset Bliss Mix remix feels like a whole new track—what were the inspirations for both the video and the remix?

"Both of Us" is a very nostalgic song for me, personally. When we were writing it—this leads to the remix question as well—I was trying to pull some of my favorite house track productions. I really wanted to emulate that sound, especially in the remix. With the house claps, etcetera, that was really pulling from early '90s house references that I love and play out when I'm DJing a lot. And the same goes for the original as well, it's just stronger within the remix.

And for the music video, I really wanted to emulate that nostalgic feeling of a time passed, and I think we hit home with using an old video camera from the '90s, and using old footage from when we were DJing and such.

Read: How 1995 Became The Year Dance Music Albums Came Of Age

You hosted a handful of "Virtual Get Down" livestream sets for a few of the cities you were supposed to play in this spring—what did engaging with your global fans in this virtual way feel like for you?

Oh man, it gave me so much. It was really I did them when the whole lockdown things were still pretty fresh, I think. And to really see people engaging, dancing, and chatting on the group chat, it just like ... man, those group chats were so ... just looking back at them, were people just meeting each other for the first time, bringing together people who would've never met otherwise. And seeing people on Instagram dancing and engaging ... This one guy was like playing violin to the set, and stuff. It was crazy. It just gave me a way to engage with my fans that I never thought was possible during a time where you can't be with people. So, it made me so happy, and yeah, I was just so elated that we did it.

"It means exposing Black and queer people more within this music community that has become so White. For me personally, I'm doing the thing because I personally represent that just by existing."

 

Disco and dance music were created by Black and queer people, yet the modern dance music scene can feel far removed from its roots. What do you think the dance music community can do to create and promote more intentional, inclusive and diverse spaces?

Oh gosh, there's so many things. Look, it's the fact that Black and queer people made dance music, and then it was basically appropriated by White people, so it's also up to White people to take responsibility and accountability for what they have taken from this dance scene. And I think that comes from knowing your history, understanding where it comes from and really diving deeper into what that actually means to you personally. Are you taking something that really means something energetically when you're DJing? Or are you giving back? Are you trying to express or give space for Black and queer people?

In terms of what that actually looks like, I think it means, for artists who are White, maybe that's hiring a manager, a rep or a photographer that is BIPOC, or is queer; that represents the community that the music actually comes from. And then also in turn, it means exposing Black and queer people more within this music community that has become so White. For me personally, I'm doing the thing because I personally represent that just by existing.

And in terms of my actual team, when I hire photographers, or work with stylists or makeup artists, or anyone, I'm very conscious about who actually is in the room with me. Are they people who identify with me, see me for me and understand the things that I've gone through? It all makes a difference. And in terms of DJing within the scene, I try to uplift people who also identify with being Black and queer. That's always been important to me, but also, I think a bigger issue when [White artists are] speaking to other White people, it's their responsibility and their problem as well.

This year has proven to already be one of major upheaval. What are your biggest hopes for changes we see coming out of 2020?

A [COVID-19] vaccine! [Chuckles.] That is my biggest hope for changes for 2020 is a vaccine. And also, kidding aside, look, we are during a time where we are having to stop and think and be reflective about how we are living our lives. And I just hope that people really take that to heart, and I think we are. I like to be hopeful in that way, that people are stopping and thinking and looking at how this world is conducted, how our system and economy is being run. And maybe it will help people to make better choices for themselves within the economy, within voting, and move forward to a bit of a brighter future in so many more ways than just one.

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Chicano Batman

Chicano Batman

Photo: George Mays

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Chicano Batman Talk Creating Visibility For 'Invisible People,' Representation Of Latinos In Media & Repping Los Angeles

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The beloved L.A. psych/soul rock band dive deep into their powerful, danceable fourth studio album, 'Invisible People,' identity, racism and what the West Coast city means to them
Ana Monroy Yglesias
GRAMMYs
Sep 4, 2020 - 12:25 pm

There is real power in music that gets you dancing, feeling joy and thinking about critical human issues. That is exactly what Chicano Batman's music does—drawing you in with their groovy bass lines, warm and soulful vocals and all-around funky, sun-soaked instrumentation and aesthetic. With their fourth studio album, Invisible People, released May 1 on ATO Reords, they double-down on the funkiness and deliver their most powerful, rhythmic project yet.

Founded in 2008 in Los Angeles, the four-piece embodies the true beauty, creativity and diversity of the city they call home. Since the release of their self-titled debut album in 2010, the band has brought their infectious energy and vibrancy to countless shows and festivals through Southern California, the U.S. and abroad, with a (typically) active tour schedule.

Read: Quarantine Diaries: Le Butcherettes' Teri Gender Bender Is Watching "Little Fires Everywhere" & Reading Simone De Beauvoir

With their 2020 tour with Le Butcherettes put on hold until 2021, the group has stayed busy with virtual appearances on "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert," NPR's Tiny Desk, KEXP and more. They've also stayed engaged with their community despite quarantine, offering youth music workshop livestreams with the Young Musicians Foundation and a delicious fundraising taco at L.A.'s HomeState.

In conversation with GRAMMY.com, Bardo Martinez (lead vocals, keyboard and guitar), Carlos Arévalo (guitar), Gabriel Villa (drums) and Eduardo Arenas (bass) dive deep into the creative process and meaning behind their latest album. They get real about identity, racism and representation, and the marinization they have experienced as Latinos in the indie-rock space.

You guys dropped the fourth Chicano Batman album, Invisible People, just back in May. What was the creative process like on this album? How long were you guys working on it?

Villa: A few years?

Arévalo: [Laughs.] A few years. Yes. That's it.

Villa: A few years. Next question. [Everyone laughs.]

Arévalo: Maybe 14 months.

Villa: We had to go on tour, so, we had to stop a little bit. We had writing sessions, but we basically started in 2018.

Arenas: In 2018, we talked about different ideas we wanted to introduce to the new record, and we did a lot of demos. At the end we chose 12 songs. Everybody kicked in on this one and helped develop it, where in the past the Bardo wrote the majority of the songs. This time Carlos was kicking in stuff, Bardo was kicking in stuff. I would join up forces with them and throw in stuff. There were all these different combinations of things that happened that we had not explored in the past.

Martinez: Recording was a big part of it, us using our home studios to record stuff and vibe that way.

Villa: Carlos, talk a little bit about that moment where you came into rehearsal and you were like, "Guys, I know we have to do this album, but wait listen!" [Everyone laughs.]

Arévalo: I had my own little idea of what I thought the record should be in terms of a theme or a direction. That's something I would keep to myself on the past records and then just have my own personal goals for my instrumentation. But this time I shared it aloud to the group. That's choppy waters you can get into because you're asking a drummer to play drums a certain way or a singer to sing a certain way. Well, it's more recommending or showing examples of like, "Hey, could we try it this way this time and see how that goes?" That was a vulnerable place to be. But I've known these guys for so many years, it was time for me to be real with them and hope for the best.

They were receptive, everybody needed a little bit of time at first to just take it in. Once we started trying out these ideas, everybody else started bringing in other stuff they'd been wanting to try before, but maybe never thought this was the project to do that. So, I got the juices flowing creatively for everyone. It was cool.

Martinez: Yeah, this record was a lot of push and pull, as it's always been with our music. It's four dudes in a band, so everybody's pushing for whatever ideas they had in their head. I mean, Carlos was pretty straight forward. He was like, "Well, we should make something we could dance to, danceable music." It was a great idea. It brought us into the late '70s and '80s in terms of aesthetics, in terms of sound—it was new territory for me. It was a lot of fun. It's a dope realm that we eventually got to.

Villa: It was definitely fun to create. The whole process was just fun, fun, fun, and a lot of communication. We learned a lot. We're always inspired and happy to be working with the team so it really, really paid off. You can hear it in the music. If you compare the Chicano Batman discography, you really hear that this album is so different from the rest. It definitely has that element of dancing—for the first time we're doing a lot of 16-notes. [Mimics fast drum beat.]

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Carlos, that idea you came in with, was it "dancing" music or something else?

Arévalo: I had started a little DJ night as an excuse to play records that I was collecting on the road with being on tour—you hit up shops in Michigan and you find amazing 45s that are just so overpriced in L.A. or that you can't even find them. I was playing once a month at bars and exploring what music has that universal appeal to people, that makes them want to get up and move or sing along. It's a cool way to experience music when you have the sound system at your behest. I was controlling the PA and it's bumping, I could control the bass. I could see what was going on from the mixer. That inspired me.

There's so many 45s that I love. I would play stuff like Talking Heads' "Naive Melody," Tom Tom Club. I'd play Prince's "Erotic City," that '80s music that had amazing songwriting appeal, but simultaneously were hit records. I feel that doesn't go hand-in-hand all the time anymore. Now, you have writers that get together to make a song sound exactly like this other song so it can be a hit and make money. It's about capitalism and it's about getting that publishing. Back then, it was more so you can make an art piece that was also danceable. It was really appealing and inspirational to me.

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When did you finish the album? Since you were working on it on and off, was there a period of time where you huddled up and finished all of it?

Arévalo: Yeah, so we started writing the record, like they said, in January 2018. And then we demoed it when we could and we started amassing demos amongst all of us. We had little sessions in between touring and we finally started recording the album in February 2019 at Barefoot Recording, which used to be called Crystal Industries. It's where Stevie Wonder recorded one of his epic '70s trilogy albums, Songs in the Key of Life, those amazing records where he found his synthesizer voice. So many hit records were made there. Sly Stone worked out of there and George Clinton. So, we made Invisible People there for two weeks and then Bardo flew to New York for another two weeks to do vocals and some overdubs. Then we had to wait a year to put it out.

Martinez: Well, it got mixed and we put all the music together. Leon Michels produced it. He definitely put his hand in the sound of it. He's an amazing producer [he's also worked with Lee Fields, Aloe Blacc, The Carters and others] and has an amazing hip-hop sensibility. He knows how to make everything knock. He definitely added some amazing vibes, and then he passed it over to [five-time GRAMMY winner] Shawn Everett who mixed it. So, that was the whole next process of, "okay, well he got the music" and we were in the dark for a week or month or so.

Once we received it, I'm telling you, for me, the summer of 2019 was lit, 'cause it was just blazing, f****ing listening, bumping that in my car. I had just moved into this house that I live in now. It was amazing. Imagine, you move into a new house and you're playing a new record. I had my friends over and it was amazing. It was perfect.

Read: Aluna On New Album 'Renaissance' & Making Dance Music Inclusive Again

The title track, "Invisible People" is really powerful and very pertinent to this moment we're in right now—calling out racism. Can you speak to the message behind this song and how you feel that it informs the rest of the album?

Marinez: We came up with a thesis statement, which was the title itself. Carlos was like, "How about we write a song about how the marginalization of Latinos?" "Invisible People"—for example, not being noticed in the indie music world or being on tour and feeling marginalized just entering spaces like the liquor store in Tennessee. That was one piece of it.

I started tackling different pieces in different verses, and I only have three verses. I wanted to make sure that whatever I was saying was going to be very strong and very poignant, straight to the point. I didn't have time to cut corners, so I was going to be direct with it. I wanted it to be as strong as possible because the music was set up that like that. We went into the studio and that song was [originally] a little bit faster and Leon suggested we slow it down. The instrumentation is super sparse. The beat is heavy, the bass drops on the kick in the perfect place. The music is there for the vocal to just shoot out.

I approached every verse as a different thing. My first line is, "Invisible people, we're tired of living in the dark. Everyone is trying to tear us apart." So, it's obviously pointing at some type of marginalization. It's not necessarily specific. The second line—"smoke a spliff so I could feel now"— I don't even smoke spliffs by the way, I like joints, but it was a homage to maybe Bob Marley or something I knew a lot of people were going to relate to. Something edgy, something cool. The next verse is about race, "The truth is we're all the same. The concept of race was implanted in your brain." I definitely wanted to call that out, race as a construct pretty much.

Also, just to challenge all of that because as a band, as, we're Chicano Batman. We decided to use this name, which has its own meanings as a Chicano, as an identity. I don't know if that's problematic, but it's going to challenge norms within our own community, and also in the superstructure status quo. That's the more obvious knot.

Also, anybody could be invisible in society. It wasn't "Just Latinos are invisible or just people of color." The privilege that White people have in this country is not good for them. When they walk onto the street, into the supermarket, there's a lot of psychological weight to all that history, to alter that reality which is based upon history, decades and centuries of oppression, that White people really have to deal with as well. Everybody, regardless of who you are, if you're living in a city, if you're living in society, you're a part of it. You're complicit in it. You're subjugated by it. People don't necessarily talk about it like that on Instagram. People on Instagram are just pointing fingers at each other. So, that's really not the goal of it. The goal is to be like, "Yo, the truth is we're all in this together." It's not some "We Are The World" shit. It's also, "This record is fire, we're spinning the world around you. We got this record, we're ready to tour and do it big." It's all those things wrapped into one.

Arenas: Piggybacking off what Bardo said about Instagram, they're probably not saying that on Instagram because White cops are too busy killing Black people and shooting them in the back. That's a reality that White privilege has led to, it's not only capitalism, but genocide. That's also what we have to live with today. Not only with religion, but with the way communities are divided, with the way we think, with our mental health as a people, with our communities and the disinvestment in them and the lack of education and resources. This is all very implicit and designed to be this way, to lack people of color of the resources while the few good resources go to the top. That's the system that we've been living under here in the United States for a very, very, very long time.

I think for me, "Invisible People" has a very open open-ended meaning, it's a very big concept, and I think it can definitely be understood differently in 10 years, in 30 more years, et cetera. But right now, to me, it speaks so much about the murder of innocent people, invisible people, who are our family members, our voices, our activists. They're actors of change in our society, the heroes. So, to me, we need to put some extra highlight on that at this moment right now.

Arévalo: For me, the idea for the song was explicitly about people of color and the struggle we've endured. I don't know how many bands GRAMMY.com has interviewed where they get pulled over by border patrol in Florida for driving in a tour van, but that's our experience. I don't know how many indie rock bands have gone through that. Dealing with stuff like that was in my mind when bringing up the idea of the song, and the lack of representation we see of Latinos in the media, you don't see us with parts of substance in movies or TV shows. It's always cliched, and it makes me sick, because we're multi-dimensional. We are more than caricatures.

So, that was part of the idea. Also, just tongue-in-cheek like, "Do you see us now? Here we are, this is our record. Will you acknowledge us yet?" Because there has been a hump of, people keep saying, "Chicano Batman is breaking through with this record, this rising band." And every time we put out a record, we're always this new band that's coming out of nowhere. So, it's a critique on that and how the status quo in the media views us.

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You've said "Color my life," which opens the album, is about experiencing nature versus being stuck in the city. Was there a specific experience, feeling or place that inspired this song?

Martinez: That's the first time somebody asked me where, what's the location. I appreciate the question. Honestly, it's Oakland. I lived in Oakland for a year and a half. That was the first thought, literally what I was thinking about when I was writing those verses. I had some lyrics that were taken out too. During the chorus, "You've got to color my life..." I had something about birds. Anyways, Oakland was definitely the place.

Do you feel now when you perform "Color my life" now, especially in a virtual setting like on the NPR's Tiny Desk, do you feel it has taken on new meaning?

Martinez: I'll be honest, it's hard for me to connect with the virtual stuff. It's difficult. I'm a little numbed by the whole virtual reality experience. But what's the new meaning? I just went to the forest recently, to Mammoth for four days with my family. I needed to do that. Honestly, it's been a long time since I've actually gone camping or anything that because of doing the music thing and touring. This pandemic has given me the opportunity to do some of that. I want to do it more often because it's the most freeing thing, just to be out in nature, it's fantastic.

"L.A. is what I carry with me all the time... It's what I try to represent in my music, at least respective to the instrument that I play and the swagger I input and the way I want people to move. We want them to feel that this is the way L.A. moves you, when we're in Germany, Brazil or France. It doesn't matter where, it's rooted in L.A. and L.A. is international because our roots are deep." -Eduardo Arenas

As a Los Angeles band, what does the city mean to all of you?

Arévalo: It's a forever home for me. My dad immigrated from El Salvador and lived in an apartment complex in Hollywood and went to Hollywood High, which I can't even imagine—what a dichotomy that must have been. My mom is third generation Mexican-American, so her family's been here since the '20s and they all have roots and stories that come from L.A. It's always been a big part of who I am and where I come from. I still have family that lives out there and also family that lives in L.A. It's an important part of my identity.

Villa: For me, L.A. feels like home. I come from very far away. I was born and raised in Colombia and I've traveled around the world. I had the opportunity and was so lucky to able to go to Europe and live there before coming to the United States. I lived over there for many years. Coming to L.A. straight from Toulouse, France was a big cultural shock for me, learning all these new set of laws and lifestyles. And there's a lot of things I probably will never understand, like the freeway, but L.A. is special, it has so much, it's a place for everyone. I feel it's a big blender and that's something that I like about this city. When I was in France and went to Paris and rode the Metro and saw all these different cultures together, I was like, "This is good. I want to live in a city this."

And I ended up living in L.A., and you have the same feeling just like riding on a Metro in Paris. It's like a dream and every day I'm learning something new. There's a lot going on here in terms of opportunities and work, especially music and media. It's crazy. I'm super glad and lucky to have found my brothers here. The band has embraced me as a Chicano, as a brother, and that's the world for me. Yes, I feel home.

Arenas: I'm born and raised in L.A., I'm from the generation of kids that used to walk to the market and get a gallon of milk and a pack of tortillas. That's how I grew up. I used to sell flowers in the street on Mother's Day and Valentine's Day. We used to sell fruit and vegetables that we'd get, extras from the produce market in downtown L.A. and resell them on the streets. L.A. is me.

I grew up with Hollywood movies and TV shows, all this '80s and '90s action stuff—the vanity that comes with that. And the vision of wanting to be something else that also comes with that. Like Carlos was saying, there's no representation of Latinos on TV, especially when you're growing up in the '80s and '90s, only dumbasses or a donkey mother****ers. Or some, "arriba, arriba" type shit, which we tossed around as culture when we were kids because we don't know better. But, in a lot of places in the country, they still perceive it like that.

L.A. is what I carry with me all the time, even when I lived in Brazil and Panama. It's what I try to represent in my music, at least respective to the instrument that I play and the swagger I input and the way I want people to move. We want them to feel that this is the way L.A. moves you, when we're in Germany, Brazil or France. It doesn't matter where, it's rooted in L.A. and L.A. is international because our roots are deep. Our roots go way back, they're not just bounded to the streets and these grids and these traffic lights, they go down really deep to communities in Mexico, at least for me. I think that's what I can offer.

Martinez: I grew up in La Mirada, Calif., it's a suburb [in L.A. County]. My dad came to Santa Ana, Calif. with his grandma in the late '60s. My mom came to Orange County in the early '80s from Cartagena, Colombia. They established the family. I was the first one to come out and there's only two of us. We moved to La Mirada and lived in some apartments over there for a while, and then they bought a house. Parks and beaches were part of my family's recreational activities. I look at L.A. as a massive region as a county, not just a city.

And to be honest, I'm infatuated by its natural beauty, these hills, the mountains, the wildlife, the ocean. I think of things like, "Wow, I can see the sunset over the oceans horizon because I'm facing directly west" in Redondo Beach. And conversely, the sun sets over the mountains when I'm in Long Beach because I'm facing south. After so many years I can visualize the panorama from various points in relation to the map. Although I navigate L.A.s streets and highways, I'd rather be on a bike, traveling at the speed of my own will, heading in whatever direction without so much regard to traffic or signals. I guess I try to feel the region I live in, as opposed to think of it in the confines of the names and boundaries, that actually don't exist.

What key things do you think are necessary for L.A. to become a place where all of its residents are celebrated and able to thrive?

Martinez: I think it's necessary for people to open their minds, drop the judgement. I feel like traveling definitely helped me see and feel things differently.

"For me, I'd say that following your heart can work!... I'm still marching to the beat of my own drum, because that's what I know how to do, and that's what makes whatever I do unique." -Bardo Martinez

It's been a decade since the band's debut—what have you learned about yourself as artists and as humans since then?

Martinez: For me, I'd say that following your heart can work! I've pursued music for aesthetic reasons, never really thinking about the markers of success, not to say those aren't necessary.

And I'm still marching to the beat of my own drum, because that's what I know how to do, and that's what makes whatever I do unique.

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Bearcubs

Bearcubs

Photo: Jacob Lindell

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Bearcubs Talks 'Early Hours,' Berlin, Art As A Platform For Change & Scoring His First Film

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The British singer/producer also talks how about discovering Flying Lotus inspired him to produce electronic music, writing "Everyplace Is Life" on a train and the biggest thing he's learned during quarantine
Ana Monroy Yglesias
GRAMMYs
Aug 7, 2020 - 12:39 pm

Laid back, curious and easy to chat with, U.K.-born, Berlin-based electro-chill artist Bearcubs, a.k.a. Jack Ritchie, embodies the relaxed, bubbly music he makes. Growing up playing drums, piano and guitar, he started producing chillwave-leaning electronic tracks in his final year of college in 2012, posting them to SoundCloud during that golden age of bedroom producers.

His second EP, 2017's Underwaterfall, featured steel drums, water drips and enchanting moody soundscapes and saw major outlets comparing him to James Blake and Jamie XX. Not long after, in 2018, he moved from his longtime home of London to Berlin, released his debut album, Ultraviolet, and scored his first film.

This May, while quarantining in Berlin, Ritchie released his sophomore album, Early Hours, 10 tracks of effervescent, cloud-watching daydreams inspired by memories from his final months in London and first year in Berlin.

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GRAMMY.com caught up with the British artist to chat about his latest album, moving to Berlin, scoring for film and learning to limit screen time during quarantine. Ritchie also shares how discovering Flying Lotus in college inspired him to produce electronic music, how he believes art as a major platform for social change and more.

You recently released your sophomore album, Early Hours. How are you feeling about sharing this project, and what was your main goal with it?

I'm pretty excited to share it, to be honest. Before I put these three singles out, I hadn't really released any of my music in about over a year and a half. So I took quite a long pause between previous projects and this one, just because I didn't really know exactly what I wanted to do. And I did a film score, which took up a big chunk of time. I had a lot of time to think about what I wanted to do musically. Also, when I moved to Berlin, it was a bit of a growing point in my life, because I was living in London for years before then and was leaving some of my friends and family behind.

I wanted to use the album a bit to sum up my past three or four years living in London and the experiences I had there, going out and working in pubs and living with a bunch of mates from home. All of this stuff, I just wanted to get this feeling into the album. Maybe a little bit nostalgic, yeah. I didn't want to go into that too much because I think you can overindulge nostalgia. It's a kind of bridge between my life in London a few years ago and then moving to Berlin and meeting new people and getting to terms with that whole situation.

That's so cool. When did you move to Berlin?

It was just about two years ago now, August of 2018.

Do you like Berlin?

It feels like home now. I love it. It's such a chill place to live. I was coming here on holiday and I realized I was coming here more and more often. It was every six months, then every three months, then every few weeks, and then it was like, "I might as well just live here." For me, it's got such a chill and kind of impossible feeling. And there's lots of interesting creative stuff going on. It's quite a 24-hour city. All of those kinds of things made me want to be here.

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Last year, you scored the German film Relativity. How was the creative process for that project different than with Bearcubs, and is scoring something you'd like to do more of?

I was a bit nervous actually, because I've never done a film score before. But it was one of those things I just couldn't say no to it because it was too much of an opportunity. And it was a real challenge, but it was a lot of fun, because I'm used to working within I guess what you'd call a pop writing structure, with five-minute songs. To work with a film score, I had to think about things in terms of 15, 20 minutes and moments happening in the music—things have to become intense and then the music has to fade into the background and not interfere.

It was definitely a different process. The way I started most of the music for the score was I got a rough cut of the film and then I just sat with the piano and watched some of the main scenes. I sketched out the idea of what the mood would be on the piano and tried to get some of the timing right. And I had a lot of contact with the director, Mariko Minoguchi. It was basically a collaboration with me and her because it was her first film as well, so I was like her baby. And I think she entrusted me to make the music because she thought I could do something a bit different and interesting with it as opposed to going with a hardcore experienced composer.

When I went to Munich, she took me through a lot of the story and broke down what she wanted the motives of the characters to be and stuff. I made a lot of music that I sent to them where they were like, "No, that's not quite right." We did a lot of back and forth until we got to a good place. It was really fun to do.

How do you feel like moving to Berlin has influenced your art and/or creative process?

Well, it definitely just gave me a bit of time—for some reason, here compared to London, it feels a bit more relaxed and less hustle-y. Even though it's good to hustle sometimes because it drives you to do you stuff, in Berlin, I feel like there's a little less competition and it's more like people boosting each other up, like a community thing. I've definitely been influenced by that, as well as by the people who I've met.

I've met a lot of really cool, interesting artists here. One of the first collaborations I did when I got here was with a producer and a friend of mine, narou. Literally the first stuff we did, we ended up making "Overthinking," which was the first single on my new album. So yeah, I've done collaborations with people here and the vibe of the city and the people I've met have influenced me.

I feel like being in a new place can really do that. How long did you live in London? Or is that where you grew up?

I feel like I've always lived in London even though I didn't, because my hometown is just above London, about 20 minutes away. It's a smaller town called St Albans. It's quite a nice place. Growing up, I was always going into London, and later I lived in various places in London, for about six years in East London and Tottenham. I mean, I love London, but I felt like it was time for a change. I wanted to mix it up a bit. Especially since coming here to Berlin, I've felt new surroundings is always good for creativity and giving you new ideas.

You shared that you wrote the lyrics for one of the lead singles, "Everyplace is Life," while on a train in the U.K. Can you tell us more about that moment that inspired the song, as well as the creative journey that led to the finished product?

I often do this thing of making loads of notes in my phone. Sometimes it's just a word, literally, or I see a book title and I write that down, or a little stupid poem or something like that. I kind of use it as my little second brain that I can go back to. For "Everyplace is Life," I think it was a couple of summers back, I was on the train down to Brighton to play the Great Escape festival. And I don't know, it was just one of those days when you're in a really [good mood] and everything's just wonderful.

It was kind of that. I was in a good mood, and it was that thing when you're on public transport and you look around and you see everyone else—sometimes you forget that everyone else has got their own life, and there's all these stories. And you're like, "I wonder where that person's going. I wonder what they're doing." And you kind of imagine these stories about everyone's lives. It is kind of about that, about those little moments in life. And about slowing down and appreciating little moments, whether they're good or bad at the time, they're all kind of meaningful.

I love that. You said you wrote the lyrics a few years ago, right? And then when did you pick it up and create the beat and the melody?

Yeah. I can't remember exactly [when I revisited it]. I think it was maybe six months ago. I don't quite know what made me do it, but I was like, "Oh, I've got a song that I wrote a while back. I still haven't used it." And I remembered the feeling when I wrote the lyrics and just started from that and started making the beat and the chords. My influence for the track was the Little Dragon song "Ritual Union." I've never heard a track before that's very constant all throughout. The beat keeps going and it's very driving and repetitive, and I wanted to make a song like that, that kept going and didn't really stop. "Everyplace is Life" is me trying to do that, because the beat and everything is relentless through, and then the lyrics are the thing on the top that give the changes and make it interesting.

And then for the album overall, about how long was the process?

Yeah, it was maybe spread across a period of a couple of years, but I'd say in total it was probably only seven months of doing it. I wrote a couple of the tracks a couple of years ago, "Everyplace is Life" and "Diversions." And then I moved to Berlin and spent six months doing the soundtrack, so that took up all my time. After that, as I'd had a while off from making my music, I desperately needed to make something.

Basically, the whole of the rest of the album came in about a period of a few months. It came in a flurry. After that, it was choosing the tracks and refining them, and all of the boring technical stuff at the end. But yeah, it wasn't actually very long. It all came together at the end. I was just looking back at stuff over the past few years, and mixing that with the experiences I've had sincemoving to Berlin.

You launched the Early Hours podcast this year. What is your vision for it and what did it feel like to step out of your "comfort zone," like you said when you shared it, in that way?

Yeah, it was definitely something out of the box for me. I'd never done anything like that before, so it was a nice thing to do. Whenever I do something that I'm a little bit nervous of doing or I wouldn't usually do, I always feel like I get something more out of it. Once we started, it felt really easy. Especially because I was with narou and another friend James Hersey, who's a singer and also based in Berlin. It was kind of like hanging out with your mates, talking about music, which is kind of what I wanted the vibe of the podcast to be. 

I think in the future, I want to make it a bit more centered around having a record player in the middle of the room and everyone brings in a vinyl. When I was at uni, I had a record player and I'd go to the record shop with my housemate and we'd buy a record and then put it on and drink a cup of tea and listen to a whole vinyl. And just look at the front and back covers and the lyrics on the inner sleeve. I feel like that's kind of lost from streaming stuff online. That's my future vision for the podcast. It's kind of something which enables you to slow down and listen to music and chat about it in a relaxed way. Who knows what's going to happen with it, we'll see.

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When did you first start making music? And at what point did you think it was something that you wanted to do professionally?

I mean, I've kind of been making music most of my life. I started pretty young playing drums, at seven. And then piano and guitar, and in my teenage years, I was in quite a lot of bands. I played guitar in a funk band and I was in a '90s hip-hop band playing bass. I played in some hardcore punk bands as well. I didn't really get into electronic stuff until I was at university, because I did digital music and sound arts. I got introduced to electronic music by people who were in my course and I was going to university with.

That opened my mind up to electronic and dance music, because don't think I really respected it fully before. I was always into hip-hop and some electronic stuff like Prodigy and bands like that, but I was never really fully into it. But when I heard some of these producers, especially the early beat scene people like Flying Lotus, the way they make their beats, you can't tell what's going on. You're like, "How on earth have they made this?" I think that's what made me want to start producing. Now I've become a bit more jaded I guess, because I know how things are made and I've got my producer's ear a bit more, but if I don't know how some things were made, that really excites me.

I started putting stuff up on SoundCloud and getting a bit of a following, somehow. I got a paid remix, and I was like, "Oh my God. Someone's paying me to make music." That's what made me think, "Oh, I could do this professionally as well." So I started devoting more and more time to it. Before then, I might have made one song every six months, and now I'm trying to make one song every day almost.

I always love hearing about the evolution of the music that someone is into. When you started university, what did you envision you would be doing at the end of it?

I don't think I really knew. I kind of went to university for the sake of it. I didn't know what to do. I was into music, but I was also not really sure what I wanted to do musically. When I was 17, I wanted to be a guitarist. But after uni, I kind of stopped playing guitar and was way more focused on electronic stuff. I think I was just exploring and figuring things out. And then when I did start making more electronic stuff and when I started the Bearcubs project, then I felt like I had more of a goal of like, "Okay, this can go forward and can go somewhere."

Who was the first remix you did for?

It was a weird indie duo from the U.K. Their label got in contact with me and asked, "Do you want to do a remix?" And I was like, "Yeah, definitely."

And it was because of the music that you had put out yourself on SoundCloud?

Yeah, exactly. It was just people finding me through my SoundCloud stuff, which I was amazed about, like, "How have you found me?"

Do you remember when you put your first song up on SoundCloud?

It would have been 2012, the year I was leaving university. Yeah, it was kind of dumb, I only really got into electronic music when I was leaving the electronic music course. That's the way it was. It was a track called "Measures," I think, and it had a "Breaking Bad" sample in it. I hadn't even watched the show, but there was this awesome vocal sample where he's like, "You either take a half measure or you go the whole way," or something like that. I guess it was like chill wave. I was listening to stuff like Toro y Moi and Flying Lotus and Baths.

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What do you feel like is the biggest thing you've learned about yourself during quarantine?

That's quite a good one. I think I was getting way too much screen time before. I realized I was waking up, looking at my phone, then having breakfast, then working on my laptop all day, while looking at my phone in between when I was taking breaks on my lunch. Then having dinner and going back on my phone, and watching Netflix or films and stuff. So I'd literally spend my whole day on a screen. I don't know why quarantine taught me that, but I think it's because I was indoors so much that it just became more realistic to be [on] the screen so much.

Now I have a policy where I don't check my phone until like 10 or 11 in the morning, once I've got up and done everything. I've been trying to look at my phone less and read more and not be on the computer as much.

How do you think music and art can bring about social change?

I think the power of music and other art forms is that it can sum up a mood of a time or generation in such a subtle but precise way. It's such a powerful platform for change and rebellion because everyone in the world is consuming culture on a day-to-day basis. We are all affected by the events going on around us even if we don't realize it consciously. As artists, this manifests itself through what we create, and as people through what we want to see and hear. It resonates with our current mood and sense of place in the world. The '60s was such a big period of change in women's and Black people's rights as well as freedoms and the opposition to power structures—the culture, fashion, music and the ideas of peace and love were completely reflected in that and tied together with the political message.

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In your opinion, how can the music community contribute to dismantling racism?

I think now it's about going above and beyond to support and boost up Black artists. It's disappointing that the music industry has benefitted from Black music without acknowledging its culture. It's about checking our privilege and becoming aware of how we perceive Black and non-Black music; making space and giving Black artists a voice across the music industry; demanding more diverse festival and gig bookings; and making more of an effort as artists to collaborate with and lift up our Black brothers and sisters. In an ideal world, we would embrace all colors and races, but the level of inequality and racism now is so ingrained in our societies that we must face this and make conscious efforts every day to change it.

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Jayda G

Jayda G

Photo: Silvia Lopes

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Jayda G Is The Environmental Scientist & House Music DJ/Producer The Planet Needs Right Now

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While working on a Master's in Resource and Environmental Management, the vinyl lover began DJing and learning production. With 'Significant Changes,' her 2019 debut album, she combines her two passions
GRAMMYs
Oct 10, 2019 - 12:15 pm

Berlin-based, Canada-born Jayda G does it all (typically with an ear-to-ear grin), and the world is starting to notice. While she was researching environmental toxicology (specifically on killer whales) for her Master's Degree, Jayda started to take her record collection and love of funky beats to the next level by learning how to spin vinyl and DJ.

Within the last few years, she not only completed her thesis, but she participated in a major 2017 Boiler Room x Dekmantel (the annual "electronic mecca" fest in Amsterdam) set and toured the world playing more international fests. Now, in 2019, she's continuing to bring her infectious energy and groovy jams around the world with more shows and mixes, including for Mixmag and BBC Radio 1.

An ambitious, dream-chasing individual, Jayda released her debut studio album, Significant Changes, this past March on London's Ninja Tune. With the upbeat-yet-real album and in her recently launched JMG science talks, she melds her two loves in a very powerful way, bringing environmental activism onto the dance floor.

Before you catch Jayda at Secret Project fest in Los Angeles this weekend (she's playing at 4:00 p.m. on Saturday), read on to dive deep into her album, her biggest hopes for the environment, her record collection and more.

Where in the world are you right now?

I'm in New York. I just landed last night. I have a show here on Friday and I also have a record store little party for my album on Thursday as well, so that will be nice.

I have not tapped into New York's nightlife scene too much but it always seems like there's a lot of fun little pockets in there.

Yeah. I feel when it comes to the real golden nuggets of nightlife, it's always about who you know, who can show you around and be like, "This is the spot." I like playing in New York. There's a lot of really nice venues here.

And then you'll be playing at Secret Project next weekend over here in L.A., which is really exciting.

Yes, I play New York on Friday, Chicago on Sunday, and then I'll be in L.A. all week next week and playing at Secret Project. I'm really pumped for it. It's such a dope lineup, it'll be fun for me as well.

I've got to imagine that getting booked to play a festival that you want to hang out at after must be an added bonus.

It is. A lot of times it's not, so when you actually are like, "Oh, yay. I have friends on the lineup and then we can hang and chill," it definitely adds to the whole experience. And then it's more memorable for you as a DJ as well.

Is there someone at Secret Project you're most excited to have a fan girl moment with?

Oh, that's funny. That's a good one. Well, it's funny because I wouldn't say fan girl moment necessarily, but my friend Daniel Avery, I've known him for a bit but I've never seen him play. So it's more just things like that where you're just kind of like, "Oh, I actually get to check out my friends."

That's really nice and then Ben [UFO]'s going to be there, so that's always fun. I'm not a huge fan of techno, but he makes me love techno. It's always really nice to see him.

That's exciting! You released your debut album, Significant Changes, earlier this year. How did that moment feel for you?

Oh, gosh. It was a bit surreal, because as an artist you spend so much time making the album and for me, this is my debut album, so I have no prior experiences in terms of releasing something like this body of work. I've done EPs and stuff, but it's a bit of a different thing.

You spend so much time making the album and making as close to your vision as possible, and that's the work. And then you're like, "Okay, it's done. Great." And you just move on, but then there's all this aftermath that I didn't really expect, that was really positive, obviously. It was overwhelming in a good way. I didn't expect people to respond so positively.

You just really never know because it's something that, for me anyways, the album was just a personal body of work that I wanted to put out and hopefully it would reach a few people. Yeah, it was really quite a real good moment in that sense and looking back, I'm really hyped about it. I was like, "Yeah, I did that and it worked out. Awesome."

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I would love to hear a little bit more about your specific vision for this album. I'm especially curious about the intersection of environmentalism and dance music because that's just so cool.

While I was making this album, I was also writing my thesis in environmental toxicology at the same time. When you're an artist, you pull from your experiences and that's kind of what I was pulling from. It was a compilation of my thesis and being a touring DJ and relating to the experiences I was having at that time.

Half of the album is about what I'm seeing on the dancefloor, like "Move To The Front," where you end up with a whole group of men at the front and women at the back. And me being like, "Wait, no. Come closer. I want to dance with you while I'm DJing." That kind of messaging that would happen in my head. I wanted to portray that in a song. Or the whole thing of seeing people on their phones all the time and not really engaging with the music. For me, usually you go to the club for two reasons, to meet people or to dance. And not to see either of those things happening, you really question it. That's "Stanley's Get Down."

And then the other thing, obviously, was my scientific background. It was just "can I use this whole life experience that I'm having?" because it's a lot to write a thesis. It's very personal. It really pushes you in terms of your abilities. It's really intense. Those are those more melancholy tunes that I wrote were relating to that specifically. "Orca's Reprise" because my thesis is on killer whales, on Orcas and it's very depressing work. A lot of scientific work is very depressing. It's a real thing where you're learning really negative things that are happening to these animals based on our own activities.

Same with "Missy Knows What's Up." The vocal clips that I sampled, from Misty McDuffee, and she is an advocate for the killer whales and what's happening to them. There was this court case in Canada, around 2010, where a group of environmental groups sued the Canadian government for not upholding their end of the Species at Risk Act. It's a federal act that holds the government accountable for helping endangered species and publicly acknowledging that they're endangered and showing how they're going to help them. And with the killer whales, they were not doing that, so these environmental groups sued the government and won.

The thesis I was working on, which was looking at the negative chemical effects on killer whales, really was a direct link. It was the direct outcome of that court case. I was having to write a whole chapter about this court case and so that song is related to that because Misty McDuffee was a big voice for the case. It was things like that, that were quite poignant in my work that bled into the album, and it's become this really nice link between my two worlds, which was the ultimate goal for me. It's like, how can I bring my two loves together in one?

Sorry, I could go on and on.

"As an artist who has a platform, it's your responsibility to speak about things that are important to you and be responsible. I'm trying in my own way."

No, it's really cool. I think music has the power to start important conversations.

Exactly. And also, in an artistic form, you know what I mean? I think that was the part that I just wanted as well. I wanted it to be something that was equally as much for me as for other people. People who know and people who are interested, they're going to look it up, they're going to tell other people and there's other forms that I'm trying to work with.

As an artist who has a platform, it's your responsibility to speak about things that are important to you and be responsible. I'm trying in my own way.

I love that. That's another thing that I wanted to hear a little bit more about, the JMG Talks you did this year.

It's something I've been wanting to do for a long time. Again, as an academic, how many times have I talked to so many fellow students and friends who are working on a master's or PhD and it can be quite an isolating experience. You don't get to talk about your work a lot to people who aren't nerdy scientists.

I know so many people who are doing such interesting, cool work that I feel like people should know about. There's a really big gap between what's happening in the academic world and what the public knows. Academia is such a dinosaur of a system that someone could be working on something for five years and no one knows about it for another five years. It takes such a long time for things to come into the public knowledge, and a lot of scientific research is also not easily accessible to the greater public.

So it's something that I really wanted to shift. And also just have young people talk about their scientific work. That's, I think, something that is not only just important for young people, but it's relatable. It's really the bridging of that gap between the scientific world and the rest of the world. That's what the talks are about, to talk about these new projects that young people are doing, giving them a platform, but also helping the audience build empathy to the natural world. The more that you know about the natural world, the more that you'll actually care about it. That's the real issue when it comes to the climate crisis, that we're all disconnected to what's happening to our environment. So if we are able to build some kind of connection, it'll help us make better decisions along the way.

For example, we did a talk in May, on wetlands, so swamps, bogs, and using wetlands as a treatment system for polluted water. You pump polluted water through a manmade wetland and it actually cleans the water to be reusable water, essentially. It was so interesting talking to everyone who came because they're like, "Wow. When I walk to work, there is a swamp near my house and now I know what it does. It's actually this amazing filtration system that Mother Nature created." It's been really, really cool to do the talks and see people come and engage and listen. It's been something that I wanted to do and I just did it. We'll see how it continues.

What do you think has been your biggest takeaway from hosting the talks so far?

Gosh, so many takeaways. That science is really accessible. Everyone can understand it and all you have to do is have an open mind and an open heart. And that it's been a real gratifying thing for the scientists as well who are speaking. When you're an academic, like I said earlier, the only time you really get to speak about your project publicly is to other scientists, usually conferences, where you're really being challenged. When you're up there talking about your project to the scientific community, they're grilling you usually. So to give that safe space for scientists to talk about their work in a real chill way allows them to learn about their project in a different light. It gives them so much.

Creating that kind of openness in an environment like that, it's super important when you're learning. It's bridging the gap. It's learning in an open and safe environment and also giving a platform to people who wouldn't necessarily have this kind of audience to reach to.

Okay, this one's kind of hard, but I'm sure you have some good thoughts on it because you're actively thinking about it and talking about it. What do you think is the biggest societal change that needs to happen right now to get things moving in a better direction?

I could go on and on and on. I think it's a combination of things. On one hand, it's our own habits and our own things that we do day to day, like choosing not to use plastic bags or recycling or choosing to walk to work, all the little things that we've been told for years. But I think the biggest thing is it's really about what is offered to us as consumers. I did an interview with this woman, Severn Suzuki, she's a big environmental activist.

I'm a huge fan. But she put it really quite eloquently. She's a mother and here she is with her first kid and she's just like, "I'm trying to use the reusable diapers and not be super wasteful with my first child, but at the same time why is all that work put on me as the mother? It should also be that there should be products that are offered to me that make it easier for me to be an environmentally conscious mother." And that's really the biggest thing, is that there should be options for us to be able to live our comfortable lifestyle in a sustainable way. And the only way to do that is by holding our governments accountable to be giving us those options in terms of using renewable energies. These technologies are already out there, but they should be there for the greater public to use and choose.

It's a combination holding our governments accountable and voting in the people we want to see making change, as well as changing our own personal habits. It's a big social responsibility that everyone has. It's about asking and demanding for more, really.

I also wanted to talk about your DJing. I was watching some of your sets on YouTube; the Dekmantel one, which was really cool that you were there.

Yeah, the Boiler Room one.

Yeah, so cool! Was it fun? It seemed like it.

Was it fun? [Laughs.] I've never been so terrified. The two most terrifying moments in my life was doing that Dekmantel Boiler Room set and doing my thesis defense. I was super nervous. It's like going into the gladiators. You're really in this 360 degree situation where you're completely surrounded by people.

To be fair, the [Boiler Room] crowd is really great. They're really hyped. They're going to respond and engage with you. I was really lucky in that sense, but it's really nerve-wracking because you're on camera and it's live and then it's up on the internet forever. I was really, really nervous. I think if you watch the first 30 seconds, you see me walking on and doing a big breath. Even though it looks like I'm having the best time, I was really terrified.

I can only imagine. But it sounds great and, like you said, it looked like you were having fun.

Exactly. In the moment I was able to eventually let go and be there with everyone, so I feel very lucky that the audience definitely helped me to do that. It was pretty intense, but I feel very lucky for it because it registered with people. It really helped me to where I am in the end.

I noticed in that set and a few others I watched, is that you usually spin vinyl, correct?

It depends on the gig. When you're playing the big festivals, it's hard to play vinyl, from a technical standpoint. Feedback is a huge issue when you're spinning vinyl, so if the turntables aren't set up in a certain way, it can be quite difficult to play vinyl to a really big crowd where there's five, six, seven thousand people. But I do collect vinyl. I started DJing with vinyl. That was how I learned.

I still collect vinyl. I will definitely be going to go record digging tomorrow because that's the main thing I do when I'm in New York and in the States in general. So for the Boiler Room, yes, I played vinyl for that and it's a thing. I'm into it. It makes me really, really happy.

Does it feel different for you when you play a vinyl set versus using a USB?

Yes, it definitely does. The fun thing about having that physical item, it's like when you were a kid and you had CDs, to have an item that exudes this energy of music, it's special, and you look at the music differently too. It's a very different thing to pick tracks flipping through your record bag versus going on a dial through your USB stick. It's almost like the tracks call to you differently. I don't really plan my DJ sets, so it's really that you're in the moment and it's what calls to you. Playing with turntables is very different, it's more like an instrument. There's a balance to it and I find it very fun. It's just a very fun way to express music, really.

When did you first learn to spin vinyl or to start picking up DJing?

I think I was late to the game. I started in 2012 or so. That's when I bought my first pair of decks, because I'm the scientist, and that was my big goal. Being an internationally touring DJ was never part of the plan. When I learned to DJ, it was really just for myself. I collected records and was like, "Oh, it would just be nice to learn how to DJ just so I can share this." It was very small, humbling beginnings. It was just me playing at a restaurant/bar situation and sharing music that way.

I remember there was this cute Asian-fusion restaurant in Vancouver that every so often they'd have a pair of decks that you could play while people were eating. When I was DJing, it would start slow and then by the end everyone wasn't eating, they were all dancing. It was something that happened very naturally where you start getting booked. I also would throw my own parties in Vancouver and so it just blossomed through that, which I think is pretty common for most DJs. You're just a big music nerd so you just end up wanting to put that forward to a greater audience versus just in your bedroom.

And obviously your musical vibe is pretty funky. What are your top three or five disco/funk tracks? 

I'll pick two because those are just the ones I've been playing. Every summer, I find there's a handful of tracks that I just end up playing for most of my sets because A, they're what I like at that time and B, there's something that resonates during the summer.

One that I've been playing out a lot, it's a classic, is Loleatta Holloway's "Love Sensation." I love playing a combination of the well-known ones with the not-so-well-known ones, because ending with something like Loleatta Holloway's track, that's something that everyone can together on. I love those moments when everyone is singing along and they're with you. That's when I think magic really happens and it becomes something more than just a DJ set. Another one is Bonnie Oliver's "Come Inside My Love." It just has this amazing disco/funk beat that is very deep and satisfying and I love it. You guys will probably hear it at Secret Project.

Do you remember the first CD and or the first vinyl you ever bought?

My dad was a big vinyl collector. He loved collecting music, so I kind of inherited his vinyl collection. I remember one of my first favorites from going through his collection was an old Aretha Franklin album and that's probably one of my favorite albums of hers because it also has my dad's handwriting on it from when he bought it.

I love those little moments, same with when you're digging, when you see someone else's hand notes on the record. The album is called Hey Now Hey, it came out in 1973.

What about when you were a kid, were you into CDs?

Oh my gosh, yes. Well, I grew up in a really small town of 4,000 people and the closest music store was a two and a half hour drive away. So it was a big thing. There was obviously the added moment of you as a kid saving up your pennies to buy a CD, but it was also waiting to when your parents would go to the next town. We would go every maybe four months or so and that was my big moment where I buy all the music that I wanted. I have these memories of sitting with my dad and going through these mail-order catalogs for music and my dad making notes and ordering them.

Who are your biggest inspirations?

I have so many. Musically, I really do look up to a lot of the old-school DJs who were really big in the '90s, like the Masters At Work guys or Larry Heard, people who were really big in specific scenes. Larry Heard for Chicago and Masters At Work for New York, those are really specific sounds that I draw from for my own personal music tastes as a DJ and as a music producer.

I'm trying to think of people I look up to in terms of on the environmental side. I don't have anyone really specific other than my scientific community of friends that I've made over the 10 years in academia that are really out there doing good work. Those are the people I really look up to as well. I'm really blessed with a wonderful community of people who care. They care about the world, they care about people. And same with my family, it's something that is very important in my family, to give back somehow. Kind of a big catchall kind of answer but yeah, my community and family and Masters At Work. [Laughs.]

I love it. I think it is really cool when your biggest inspirations are the people around you. That's next level.

I think that's really, really something important, as a person living this thing called life that's so strange and weird and amazing, that you surround yourself with people who you believe in and who inspire you, that lift you up in different ways and shapes and forms in the many facets of your life. So I think it's really important to build a community of those kind of people because it's going to carry you through life.

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Grimes

Grimes

Photo: Mac Boucher & Neil Hansen

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Grimes' Non-Violent Utopia

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Seven months after releasing the far-reaching 'Miss Anthropocene,' the pop experimentalist talks to GRAMMY.com about how her 2020 is going, the frustrating paradoxes of pregnancy and motherhood, humane technology and more
Ana Monroy Yglesias
GRAMMYs
Sep 29, 2020 - 9:07 am

There is no current artist quite like Grimes. From making a science fiction-inspired album (2010's Geidi Primes) in her Montreal bedroom to becoming an alt-pop favorite with 2012's Visions (also made in said sleeping quarters) to becoming celeb gossip fodder because of her famous CEO boyfriend, she has always remained 100 percent herself. On each of her five albums, she's stayed true to her D.I.Y. and experimental ethos—writing, singing, producing and engineering all the music herself and pushing creative boundaries every time, bringing us further into her enticing, otherworldly dimension. She also created each trippy album cover and directed every wild music video, collaborating with her brother Mac Boucher on the more recent visuals.

Back on Feb. 21, before COVID-19 shut the world down, before the killing of George Floyd by police sparked Black Lives Matter protests across the globe, Grimes (a.k.a. Claire Boucher, a.k.a. just "c") released the follow-up to 2015's Art Angels, the fittingly futurist, dystopian Miss Anthropocene. Recently, we caught up with the "IDORU" singer to talk about the album, the chaos of 2020 and motherhood. She also gets real about her best friend and frequent collaborator HANA, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion's "WAP" and her interest in more humane technology.

So how have you been doing during quarantine, especially as a new parent?

It started really shitty because one of my best friends actually passed away on the first day of quarantine. And then I had to go right into having a baby. She passed away in a pregnancy-related issue so it was four months of not good, the least productive I've ever been. It was basically terrible until about a month ago. But yeah, I feel like a lot of people are on this path. I mean, granted, the whole is a shitshow and terrible and I'm really worried about everybody. And that's the other thing: I feel like it's getting worse and worse on the outside, so I don't know. Wait, maybe I'm getting too dark. Positive. Anyway.

No, you're fine. You can be real.

I have PTSD from being terrible in interviews. So please excuse me for constantly second-guessing myself. But yeah, I'm not really sure what to do, especially with being Canadian, because I feel I should have a vote in your election and I can't even say much about it. I didn't realize I'm not even allowed to donate to candidates and stuff. So it's a whole thing where I feel weirdly helpless about it. I feel American in my vibe and energy, and all my friends and family are American. But yeah, it's a weird situation. There is actually a lot of stuff to do, it's just not directly political stuff.

It's an interesting point you made, that things seem like they keep getting worse. I think it gets to place where we have to focus in on ourselves because at the end of the day, some shit's always going to be crazy. When we're able to be like, "Well, what can I do to take care of myself?" or, "What can I do to deal with what's feeling crazy for me?" it makes it seem more manageable. I'm sure that having another human to take care of adds a different layer to that.

Another human kind of helps. Although I disagree that it's unfixable or whatever. But when I look at it, another human is nice because it's very hard to go on social media when there's a baby. It's just hard. When are you going to do it? And then when you're not dealing with the baby, you're like, "Okay, I've got to do something actually useful." The baby caused me to not be on social media and I am very grateful for that.

Regarding society though, which I feel like the craziness of the moment is that the internet is forcing us to become a single unit. I was reading this thing about how the internet forcing us to become a single unit is basically forcing everyone to acknowledge everyone else's suffering at the same time. And even though it sucks so much, I feel like this is the only way to actually fix human suffering. And I also feel like we're at this weird junction in society where we're getting to a place where we can technologically have the ability to destroy civilization and destroy humanity—crazy. But we also have the ability to, theoretically, fix humanity. Not 100 percent solve suffering, and I don't know if we even want that. But I do think it's probably possible to an extent to end violence and extreme inequality.

And so, I feel like it just f***ing hurts, because we're in this moment where it's no longer possible to ignore those things. If you want to engage with society, you have to engage with suffering. And so, obviously, I feel like in the short term, this is super shitty. And especially anyone who has mental illness or depression or is predisposed to that at all, is having an extra hard time. This is existentially painful.

But at the same time, [maybe we need that] in order to get into, I don't want to say a utopian, but a future where we can just achieve and not be fixing. Right now, because of our own f***-ups, we're still just having to Band-Aid instead of solving physics and colonizing space and solving medical stuff. Instead, we're just still fixing the broken things.

Anyway, I feel like the thing that sucks is that we're becoming a single psychological entity. But that is possibly the thing that can save us, because if we're one thing, people are selfish and people want to fix themselves. And I am seeing people want to fix the world more than I've ever seen. It's what everyone's talking about and what everyone's focused on. So maybe that's a good thing? Sorry that was so long.

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I feel that. The fact that people have to pay attention is big. Also, people need to feel like there's something that they can do. Obviously, not everyone that lives here can vote, but it is something that people are mobilizing around. I haven't seen people this excited for an election other than for Obama in 2008. So that's definitely something.

The other thing I keep seeing helplessness. But it's like, man, we're talking through the internet through space and time. And if we wanted to, we could video chat. We can kind of accomplish whatever we want. It seems normal, because we're stuck in this world. But that's all really new shit. And that's like magic. I feel like we can frigging solve things.

The themes and aesthetic of Miss Anthropocene feel so reflective of the chaos of 2020, it's wild that you released it in February. Do you feel like the album and its themes offer any messages of how we can prevent the demise of humanity?

I was trying to be provocative at the time I made the album. Because I made it a lot more in 2018, 2019. When I started making it, I was still like, "Why don't we care about the environment?" And in time since I made it and released it, the world totally changed. And even though I'm really proud of it and I think it's great, I feel like it is not the time to be provocative and trollish. That ended kind of almost before the album came out. It feels insensitive now.

I still actually like it. When I think about the anthropomorphic goddess of climate change and the anthropomorphic goddess of addiction, those things are compelling to me. I even kind of get anxiety talking about it. To myself, I feel like I made something effective, but I get why people found it to be kind of cruel now. But that's art. It goes back and forth.

Sauron sucks and gives me anxiety too, but I don't think Lord of the Rings was problematic, but some people might say it is. I don't know. I'm talking in circles again. Maybe that's the point. [Laughs.] They should not let me do interviews. I'm really bad at interviews.

Sometimes I feel like the most awkward interviewer. I'll ask a question and I'll giggle.

The giggling is good. When people are monotone and so bored with you, you're just like, "Oh, god. I'm sorry I'm keeping you from going home."

Also if it's more of a normal interviewer thing, you're kind of repeating the same thing. You feel like kind of like a phony. I'm always like, "Uh-oh. This question again." And then I'm like, "Oh, no. If any fans see this, they're going to know I answered this the exact same way. I'm such a fraud." You want to give a genuine answer, but it becomes disingenuous just by being forced to answer the same question again and again. It's a trap no matter what.

"Violence" is your only song you didn't produce yourself.  What was it like working with i_o on it, and what did it feel like to let go of that specific element of creative control?

I mean, frankly, people need to realize sometimes collaborating is really hard. But when it's easy, it is incredible. There are no drugs that are like sitting in a room with someone when you're on the same page creatively. And it's your art. I've always been like, "Oh, the art high, the art high." When you make something good and the night after, you close the computer and you're like, "I made a good thing," it's literally the best feeling in the world. And when you're working with someone else, it feels like it's double.

I'm very conflicted right now, because for political reasons and reasons of self-worth, I want to make stuff on my own. But I'm really vibing creating with other people now. With i_o, he sent me stuff and I just wrote a vocal over it. By the way, "Violence" only took about an hour to make. I was like, "Oh my god. Why am I spending tons of hours making songs when it should really just take an hour?"

"Violence" sort of broke the barrier, because I had done so little collaboration before that. Well, "We Appreciate Power" was actually very fun. It was with my best friend [HANA], so it was much easier. It was almost like having a sleepover and writing it. It was not like a work situation.

That's super cool. I'm always really interested in collaboration and the process of it because, like you said, sometimes it's easier than others.

I feel like I'm starting again, because I've always made music by myself and I feel like 19 again. It feels like the first time I first started making music all over again. The human brain is a very amazing thing. And when you can find a brain that works with yours, it's better than any tool. It's also very hard to find. Maybe that's some argument for humans getting along.

When "We Appreciate Power" came out [in November 2018], I had it on repeat an embarrassing amount. When I learned what it was about, I'm like, "Oh, wow. This AI propaganda totally would work."

Here's the funny thing. It is now this so less-controversial "WAP," which I find so funny. When we made "We Appreciate Power," I was like "WAP" is such a random title. No one will ever make a song title like this. And this will definitely own this title forever. And then Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion came out with their "WAP" And I'm like, "Damn, they actually defeated us with making the more controversial song with this absurd title." Our "WAP" has been owned.

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What did you think about the backlash that Cardi and Megan got for literally singing about their p*ssies, when other people sing about p*ssies all the time?

I actually didn't notice the backlash for about a week because, as I said, I haven't been online. So, I didn't watch the music video and I didn't even know the title. I thought it was "Wet and Gushy," or whatever. I had no idea what was going on. And then, my manager said something later and I was like, "What? Cardi B's in trouble for the song?" And [when I learned about it], I was like, "Oh, wow. This is kind of crazy." I'm still surprised it was so controversial, but then that just proves that I'm in sort of in a bubble, I guess.

I've been thinking about this in general, going through being pregnant, no one understands what's going on at all. And you're super unprepared for it. Sex ed is not comprehensive enough at all. And our society does really need to work on—I feel like everyone's way overusing the word "normalized"—normalizing [laughs] women's bodies because it's a huge problem.

"I'm a producer. My war zone is mostly a men's war zone. I get in the ring with the boys. And that seems easy compared to having a baby. I was shocked by how hard it was. I thought I was so tough."

It's so true. I feel like that is such like a valid parallel to the fact that women singing about their body parts is still found offensive. And I haven't had a child or been pregnant, but I've heard conversations around women feeling like they can't talk about the difficulties of being a mother or being pregnant. It's supposed to be like, "Pregnancy is beautiful!" I'm sure it's both, but I wish there more spaces for these conversations.

Yeah. I'll say this. I'm a producer. My war zone is mostly a men's war zone. I get in the ring with the boys. And that seems easy compared to having a baby. I was shocked by how hard it was. I thought I was so tough. It's almost the indignity of it and all the things that go along with it and just being so volatile. There were numerous meetings where I would puke. I was puking all the time. It was really humiliating.

And people are like, "Oh, yeah, morning sickness, well it's like 12 weeks, three months." If you were vomiting constantly for three months in any other kind of illness, it would be really serious. But it's not even considered. It's like, "Oh, yeah. Whatever. It's only a couple of months of puking many times a day." It's like, whoa. That's not even the hard part. That's the beginning. And then you kind of feel like a teenager. Teenagers are grumpy and crazy because of their hormones. Pregnant women are literally going through the same thing but they're supposed to act normal and stuff.

And then f***ing having the actual baby—if I didn't have nannies, babies are literally 24 hours. Being a stay-at-home mom with no help, or especially a single mom, is significantly harder. It's extreme sleep deprivation. As a society, it's possibly the hardest job, and it's not even a paid job. We devalue it and we expect it to be free labor. And the fact that we expect to be free labor gets women into situations where they have no financial freedom and if it's abusive or something they're just stuck.

I mean, other countries at least offer several months of paid maternity leave, and in Sweden [and many other countries] both parents get leave. The U.S. is the only—I hate this word—"developed" country that doesn't have mandatory maternity leave. It totally is devaluing, like you said, the actual labor and time that goes into it.

Yeah. I mean, I guess that's a very capitalistic viewpoint. So people could take issue with that. But I just feel like it's very weird that the hardest job I'm doing is free labor. Before I had my baby, I was always like, "Oh, I don't want to be a stay-at-home mom." And I was sort of rolling my eyes. And I had this bad vibe for stay-at-home moms. I was definitely internalizing misogyny. And now I'm like, "Man, I was such a f*** up. I can't believe no one ever corrected me on that f***ing shitty line of thinking." Being a stay-at-home mom is quite hard, I would say. Maybe it gets easier when they get older.

Long story short, "WAP" is productive towards society. Let's get more used to addressing anatomy.

How would you describe your creative relationship and friendship with HANA?

Oh, she'll be so mad you called her "Hannah." [Laughs.] It's the bane of her existence. I just feel so bad that she's trapped in this nightmare where everyone calls her Hannah and her real name is HANA. I thought an A that's ah is an imperial A, and I was telling people that for years. It turns out that was from a dream and that's not a real terminology. But it sounds real. So, it's HANA with an imperial A. And I'm coining that term, because it sounds right.

Anyway, she's great. I feel like HANA taught me about feminine energy or something. I did not have a lot of girlfriends previous to her. And going on tour with someone is kind of like being married to them. We toured for like three years or something.

HANA's underrated. Check out her latest release, HANADRIEL. It's great, and she produced on Twitch, which I thought was a really cool idea. She livestreamed her album creation on Twitch, which I would not be able to do that. And I think people were able to comment as well and stuff.

What's it like working with your brother Mac? Because you've worked together on pretty much all of your music videos, correct?

To an extent, more or less. The early stuff I did more on my own. I feel like I started working with him because he's probably the best working partner I've ever had. The one thing I think we would say is, don't judge the Miss Anthropocene music videos, because I was pregnant during them. The reason they're less crazy is because I couldn't be throwing my body around for 16 hours straight when I was super pregnant. So we feel slightly self-conscious. Please do not judge either of us.

I'm not talking shit, but it's just they're obviously single scene. They're just very, very simple comparatively to what we normally do. And that's just because what we normally do is not good for your body. Also, it's been Mac and I this whole time and it's just not big budget. So usually, we literally take the whole workload on ourselves. We color. We edit. We do post-production. Literally, when it's animation or something, it's like me and Mac literally doing it ourselves. I mean, we're excited to get to the next phase too though, because ideally, we can access bigger budgets in the future. And Mac's also been learning how to do CGI literally on his own. He probably never talks about this though. He's kind of like a private dude and doesn't want to be too discussed.

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I really like the "Violence" music video. It feels sort of like the opening credits from a movie where you're getting the vibe of it and wondering who the characters are. It definitely drew me in.

I feel like even though that video is simple, it's like one of the best performances I've ever done in a weird way. I mean, the thing with "Violence" is we were like, "F*** hiring random people. We're just going to hire our friends." The stylists and dancers were friends. My brother's girlfriend is one of the dancers. HANA's there [as the "nude corpse"]. Another friend of mine was helping with the styling and ideas. I'd rather sacrifice some physical proficiencies for an incredibly good vibe on set, because performance-wise it's like you're in front of a bunch of random people you don't know who are bored, versus being with all your friends, cheering and doing stuff. It makes a huge difference. Our roommate did the hair. And we wore masks, which seemed weird that was before the pandemic.

But I thought really, what would modern gods look like? All religion is referencing pre-technological existence. And if you just go by logic, if intelligent design is real, which is not out of the question, if we're either in a simulation or if there are gods in any capacity, they have technology. You know what I mean? There's a law [from scientist/science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke] that says, "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." And my inverse law is any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology. Let's say, we're in a Matrix situation, it's possible that everything condescends this extremely advanced technology. I mean, it kind of is biological technology if you just go on baseline level that life spontaneously occurred and the Big Bang happened.

But man, I just love the idea of there being teenage gods with cell phones who are bitchy. And this gods isplastic and she just looks amazing and she's got this crazy style and she's got this CGI all around her. Just why isn't there more kind of pursuance of this sort of idea?

Can you talk a little bit about your well, now, virtual art exhibit that you were planning with Michele Maccarone?

Most of the art exhibit has to be real. The thing that's online is just kind of my random art. I don't want to downplay it, it's stuff we've been making. But we have the whole installation and everything that took a really long time. We created these AI meditations where we send a bunch of meditative texts to this generative AI. If you feed an AI stuff, it starts making things, so it was making these meditations for us. Then we started making crazy meditations. We started feeding it dialogues from video games, for video game addiction meditations. And we fed it Kim Kardashian's Instagram feed, and it was making this weird kind of corporate poetry that was amazing. That kind of has to be experienced in real life. So the art installation is kind of in limbo until COVID is over, I suppose. But it's these AI meditations. I'm really interested in spiritual technology.

Okay, yeah, one thing I really want to talk about, coming back to the state of society and civilization and mental health right now. I'm really getting into pursuing humane technology. Why is technology so inhumane? Technology has not factored in human conditions, like human emotions, like the way our biology works, our cortisol, adrenaline and all this stuff. It's almost like a drug. It's sort of abusing our system to just make us addicted.

You should look up the Center for Humane Technology [who recently released the film Social Dilemma on Netflix]. There's all these charities and philosophies and stuff that are starting to pop up around making technology safer for the human brain, and trying to find ways to make it better for us, or whatever. The AI meditations sort of led me into that realm of philosophy. The meditations are kind of scary. They're not meditative, which is part of what's so interesting about them. We need to stop and consider how it's writing all this content that is beautiful and amazing but also scary and aggressive. Even though it's been fed all this information about meditation, it's unable to internalize what meditation is.

As a culture, we need to start getting more used to and more aware of technology safety. And by safety, I don't just mean, are you going to overdose and die? But are you giving yourself a serious mental condition? Are you getting infused with Nazi ideas? Are you growing to hate your neighbor? How do we stop those tendencies? I mean, fight-or-flight response is a powerful response. And most technology right now is giving us heroin and pulling us into darkness.

"I feel like we're at a crossroads right now where at least it might be possible to eliminate physical violence from our species. That's what enlightenment kind of entails."

What does a Grimes utopia look like?

Do know the writer Iain Banks? He's this obscure writer, for some reason. His books are kind of hard to read I guess, maybe they're just too dense. He wrote these books called the "Culture" series. And there's this book specifically, Surface Detail. I would argue that it's not a utopia, but it's edging towards a utopia. AI is this God, and saying conscious beings are existing with technology in a way that seems like there's mega structures in space for when there are no planets. It's like consciousness has been preserved and it is not in a dark and evil way.

When you look in the universe, there might not be any other consciousness, we might be the only thinking creatures. And right now, consciousness is under threat, obviously. Civilization is under threat. I mean, the ideal goal, I think about 10,000 years from now, [is that] consciousness is preserved and existence for those beings is happy. And it's not painless, because that seems like it could lead us through just nothingness. But overall, there's not massive suffering happening.

I feel like that involves a massive sort of philosophical and cultural overhaul. I'm not sure what that looks like. But obviously, reducing unnecessary violence. Physical violence should be unnecessary. I feel like we're at a crossroads right now where at least it might be possible to eliminate physical violence from our species. That's what enlightenment kind of entails. We get to a position where every child is educated in such a way where if they have violent tendencies, there's the ability to overcome those things and there's support systems get to a place where we can reduce that as much as possible.

And that's kind of the discussion of this moment in some ways right now. I feel like physical violence also includes not having enough food or not having adequate shelter and stuff. If we can get to a place where maybe there's still competition in a mental way—I haven't thought this through enough. But I feel like—I hope—utopia is achievable. I think a non-violent society is possibly achievable.

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