My first music video for "CLOSURE"
J(by Lloyd Gebe)
It's a long way from Walvis Bay, and the journey via Cape Town to Johannesburg has been an onerous one for J, he is still settling into his new home of Johannesburg, but if his debut album 'Closure' is anything to go by it's onwards and upwards for this young musician. He's only been in South Africa a year and he has already signed record, publishing and management deals, written a bunch of honest autobiographical songs and then convinced respected international producer Anders Kallmark to fly out to South Africa and record his debut album for next to nothing. "I haven't really thought about all that we have achieved this year," says J shaking his head, "if I do I might write the next album!" J is a prolific songwriter penning songs for himself and for his peers in the industry.
Not only did he write all the songs on his debut album, but he played nearly all of the instruments on it and arranged the strings too. He waxes lyrical about the fun he had jamming on the Hammond organ and playing the fuzz bass under the watchful eye of Kallmark. For him it's all about the nostalgia of the golden age of pop. Growing up in Walvis Bay the youngest in a family of five siblings, J was drawn to music at an early age. He credits his folks, who filled the house with the likes of The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Monkees, The Hollies and the Bee Gees. But his first love was Abba. "I used to go across the road to my friend's house and I would sit in front of his dad's Hi-Fi and listen to his Abba record for the entire five hours I was there," says J. They made me want to be a musician. He says he started playing piano when he was four and guitar by the age of five. In High School he was recording his own songs on a double tape deck and then uploaded them onto his website.
The "dodgy little website" as J now calls it came to the attention of a UK management company who invited J to travel to London to write songs for them. "I went to London and I wrote songs for eleven months," says J. His experience of writing for "boy bands" and management's attempts to push J into a boy band direction meant that he returned to Walvis Bay. "That experience really put me off music for a while, everything was so fake," says J. "I got to see the bad side of the industry and it made me aware, I'm quite lucky in that sense." Back in South Africa, J was asked who in an ideal world he would like to produce his debut album? His reply was, "the guy who did Natalie Imbruglia's stuff." His manager was directed to a producer Anders Kallmark via colleagues that had heard J's demo. Anders was so impressed he offered to come out and record the album in South Africa. "Anders was an incredible guide, he read me like a book. We made a great team," says J. "Then I found out he was the guy who mixed Natalie Imbruglia's stuff." Anders has also worked with the likes of Kylie Minogue, Hayley Westerna, Liberty X and Holly Vallance. "The songs are really pop, but they are presented with an indie sensibility," says J about his album. Although Pop is definitely the genre that J is operating in his amazing talent for arranging a simple acoustic number into a grand layered collage of sound is what separates him from his peers.
J may have learnt his craft from the top of the pops, but his new love is the darlings of the indie world, Muse, Coldplay, Death Cab for Cutie, Keane and the Kooks. He is happy to write honest pop songs and then turn them into sprawling Indie masterpieces."Most of the songs were written about a very big infatuation I had with someone, I guess you could call it a crush," says J. "It really messed me up because the feeling wasn't mutual."
J ended up running away from Walvis Bay to Cape Town and the result produced songs like the title track 'Closure', 'Tempted', 'Consider Me' and 'Nervous'. But with the period of self-reflection in Cape Town came a new mature attitude from this bright young star, which can be heard on the track 'No'. J says it is about the point where you are so mentally exhausted that you want to run away from your problems. "The song is about making that decision to rather stick around and fix things," says J. The album is his way of dealing with all the issues he has faced in the last year. "Closure is 100honest, and the only way it could have been done, I poured everything I've got into it, with no compromise. I hope people see that," says J. He says he will never allow himself to be just another "safe pop act" and would rather have a small dedicated following than an enormous fan base that like him just because he fits the mould. "I am very proud of Closure," says J. And so he should be.
