Interview: JXN releases debut EP ‘NeverASadAdventure’
JXN (Jackson Brazier) unveils his debut EP ‘NeverASadAdventure’. The six-track EP is an RnB textured offering, stitching moments of triumph and confidence with moments of uncertainty and deep sentiment. JXN talks to us about the adventure this EP took him on, and the art of versatility.
How are you feeling [before the EP release]?
I’m feeling good. I’m very excited to get it out. I feel like every single release can’t come quick enough for me, to be honest. You have to do the waiting game.
Is the waiting harder because of the build-up of nerves, or because you can’t wait for people to hear it?
Definitely a bit of both. You work on these songs for quite a while. The process takes a long time to get them delivered, fully finished and mastered ready for release. By the time that actually happens, I’m already kind of ready to move on. I’m very eager to hear opinions from everyone and [I want to know] what people that listen to my music think about this because it’s quite different to what I’ve put out before. It’s definitely a bunch of things.
The first thing that strikes me when I listen to your music is how heavily emotive your lyrics and articulation are.
It’s special because whether you do it consciously or not, you help challenge toxic masculinity and break the stereotype of stoicism in males.
Thank you for that. I don’t really consciously try to do it. I think it comes out through my personality. I’m quite an emotional person. I’ve been told that’s because I’m a cancer apparently. When I listen to music that we’re making from scratch, the beat and vibe always bring me somewhere emotionally and I always try and channel that into song writing. I want to send a message with every song, not just have meaningless songs. I want people to be able to connect, whether it’s happy, sad or angry.
What writing strategy and process helps you unlock the most emotion?My writing process is quite similar every single time, where I’m in the studio with someone like a producer or writer and we will have essentially nothing, and then because lately I’ve been pushing to have guitar based songs, we start with the guitar or piano and build a beat around what we’re talking about, or my emotions that day, or what energy I want to [capture]… I freestyle melodies into it, and half the time with the melody, I’ll say words that I want to keep in the song and base the song around that. After feeling like you kind of have a song, I think to myself, ‘how does this make me feel?’
‘STELLAR’ is a reassuring sonic display of rising above naysayers to spearhead your own success.
Can you talk about the making of that song?
I think that and three other songs on the EP, we did the base of them in a day. We went through a lot of the stuff we’d been making beats wise and the sound was really fresh to me… I obviously didn’t know about the CO-VID situation, but that’s where I was in my life. I was unsure if I was doing the right thing and I wanted to reassure myself in that song. That’s translated in other people listening to it, and how I want them to feel listening to it. I really appreciate that it made you feel that way too.
Do you think being unsure of where you’re at is more of a personal, or a musical apprehension?
It’s one of those things where you’re never really sure. Obviously, I know music is what I want to do, but you have moments where you doubt yourself in the situation. I felt like I wanted to express that and also say, ‘we’re going to be alright, and everything will be alright’.
How do producers help you understand that you are on the right track, and give you the comfort in knowing you’re making the right move?
I just look at their faces! After I say something or sing something, sometimes they say, ‘that’s sick and it’s great’, and other times they say, ‘we could say this instead’. A lot of the time when I am writing, I’m just throwing ideas that have just come to me at the top of my head. A lot of the time it does need to be sorted out a bit more, and it’s really great to be able to have someone to tell me that we should rethink. It definitely helps me to have someone else.
Have you found the collaboration less daunting since your first single ‘Solitude’?
Yes, of course. The more sessions I’ve been in over the past few years, the more comfortable I’ve found myself. Solitude gave me a big amount of confidence to write a song. Before Solitude, I didn’t really know if I was a good song writer, or that I could even write a song that people want. Solitude came out and gave me a boost of confidence.
Johan Gustafson, who was the producer, let me go [down my own path] and trusted me before he actually had a reason to trust me with stuff like that. That was very important. I’ve found people in a really small team that get me to where I want to go. I am always open to new collaborative partners, but there’s always a base group of people that I know I can make something special with every time.
Are they the ones that you stuck with for the EP?
Most of the EP comes from a guy called Joe Mason in Sydney. That was interesting because we met, and we just had a vibe straight away where we got along. He was brutally honest, and I needed it. We just played around [with sound] … I think [we] found a niche in this EP, and it’s very forward thinking. I’m excited for it to come out…
It’s definitely more in sound, but lyrically, it matches where I am in my life right now. It’s about things that have been happening in the last three to four months and how I feel emotionally. The lyrics are always going to be current for me. The sound and the way my voice is manipulated in some of the songs is fresh to the ears. I was saying that with NASA being the EP name, and space [being a theme], this is what you put on if we all had a field trip to the moon.
I think this is going to be the anthem for a lot of people’s freedom at the moment.
I do hope that people can gravitate towards it and it fills their boredom a bit. This is my first body of work ever, so I’m quite excited. I’m happy to be putting out a bunch of stuff at once, because every single time it happens, people say that they want more… I want the listeners to have their own favourites. The songs are so different, from Proud to Outta Space. It’s okay if they like one, and don’t like the other. I’m very keen to see which songs people connect to. I’m excitedly anxious to have this out.
Do you think the track list and order tells a story, or was that not something you placed weight on?
I didn’t go into each of these songs thinking that they would fit together. I wrote a bunch of songs over the past three months, like around 30, and I grouped the ones that fit sonically together and sound cool together. It works well that they fit and do tell a story of what’s going on in my life. People can expect a bit of truth from that.