Resonate Artist Of The Week: Luke Jay
Another week and time to highlight another one of Scotland’s fine talents - Luke Jay.
‘Nothing to Lose’ is a high energy collaboration with fellow Glaswegian Russell Stewart - piercing horns and a headstrong vocal weave through frenetic sampling and heady beats. The track deals with falling into a cycle of guilt and denial from struggling to keep your life afloat while wrestling with the desire to drown your sorrows. We caught up with Luke to find out more about this piping hot release;
Tell us about your artist project Luke Jay
My artist project Luke Jay is there to serve as an outlet for all of the weird and wonderful ideas that come out when I am exploring and developing my productions! The general theme is electronic production with a pop-song structure; but other than that the scope of vibe covered is pretty wide! I work best when I am free to follow an idea wherever it leads, so my unreleased catalogue of music is almost a different genre for every track. It makes it hard to really easily sell and explain yourself, but I'm not to concerned on definitions. I’d sooner have a catalogue of songs that are each very fun and different than one that is cohesive but bland!You’re debut solo single ‘Nothing To Lose’ features the sultry sounds of Russell Stewart, how did this collaboration come about?
You’re debut solo single ‘Nothing To Lose’ features the sultry sounds of Russell Stewart, how did this collaboration come about?
So I have been a really big fan of what Russell does for ages, his vocals and melodies are sublime and I knew that he was someone I’d love to work with! I had the beat for Nothing to Lose made, but I had no idea if there was even much space for a topline - I wasn’t sure I could hear one myself! I just got in touch to see if he liked it and if he could hear anything for it and he got back pretty soon after with a demo that had all the main elements there - I was so shocked that he had managed to do so much with it! We had to refine a few sections of the instrumental to get the flow of the song right and then we retracked the vocals in my flat once we knew exactly what needed to happen!
Who are some of the artists you’ve worked with, including co-writing, production and collaborations
I’ve been very fortunate to have been working on lots of different stuff in the last 12 months! The biggest project to date is Grayling’s Debut EP that I’m SO excited to see out in the world. She is a writer of just beautiful songs and she put a lot of faith in me to do those songs justice given how far out of my usual remit her sound is! I’ve done a lot more co-writes too with some fantastic and exciting up-coming artists like Sophie Wood, C4SUAL, Matt Hall, Ferester, Citizen Papes and also Stephanie of the band Apache Darling who is writing some amazing pop music for a new project of hers! Aside from that, a dear friend of mine and I have been writing a lot over the last 12 months - we are going to be a leftfield pop duo. It’s my favourite stuff I’ve ever written and that’s what I am most excited for! It’s been a busy time and I’m excited to see all the stuff I’ve worked on come out!
You’ve got an incredible new music video for ‘Nothing To Lose’ - what was the story behind this?
The video for nothing to lose is entirely down to my friend Jack Willison. He is an incredible filmmaker and is always up for doing stuff with me for my projects! Me, him and Russell brainstormed ideas and Russell had the idea him being a narrator of me drowning my sorrows and getting home drunk. The film is a one shot, which took an enormous amount of prep and rehearsal. We spent several days figuring out how we could light it and move around my flat and choreograph the whole thing and rehearsing every small detail and movement. There were two big things that made it even harder, firstly we wanted the video to have a slow-motion look, so that required plying the song and moving/dancing/lip-syncing to the song at double speed. It sounded cartoonish and hilarious and we all had to move so quickly to get everything done in time! I have no idea how Russell could mouth so fast but he somehow nailed it from the get go. The second was that the final scene I get very wet which meant we couldn’t just “go again” so it really is a “one take” we couldn’t watch it back and then notice a mistake and go again. What this meant was we all had the power to yell “cut” right up until near the end of the video, once we got passed that point there would be no going back!! I can’t tell you how tense it was when we watched it back for the first time knowing we couldn’t fix anything later!!
3 artists you think our readers need to know about
Monica Martin, Clara Mann and Gemi are three artists I think are doing amazing things right now!
Favourite biscuit?
Perhaps a controversial opinion?? But I love a Party Ring.
NOTHING TO LOSE OUT NOW!