Meet the musician: Jolyon Thomas

Jolyon Thomas has won a Music Producers Guild award for Breakthrough Producer and Song Of The Year, had two Mercurynominated albums, as well as a British and numerous worldwide number one albums. Meet the producer making music from his Ramsgate studio

You have worked with the likes of U2, Royal Blood and Kendrick Lamar. Where did it all start?

I’ve always been in a producer role. Even at school I was the one organising the band, trying new arrangements, or even not in music specifically just always having an overview.

Importantly my dad [Ken Thomas] was a producer and that formed my outlook. I was aware of what a recording studio was, but I still didn’t really know what the word “producer” meant. I just knew that my dad could sculpt sound, and that he was an artist. For most of my teenage years I was in bands, gigging, doing sound, putting on shows. I even had a record label. I did all of this before I really produced a record. So I think I got into it from having a very openminded approach to music, being a jack of all trades, and by putting a lot of time in. I lived music (and I still do).

How would you describe the role of a producer in 2022?

The term is fairly ubiquitous now. A musician can sit in their bedroom and “produce” their own music (and rightly so). Equally someone can walk into a studio without being able to play an instrument and “produce” a track on their laptop. Music technology is a different landscape to what it was even ten years ago or so when I started, but the recording part is the easy bit. The role of the producer is to inspire and help the artist find new and interesting ways to create. You’re a sounding board for their emotions, ideas, lyrics – a facilitator and collaborator. If anything the role is even more useful right now, but the tricky part is connecting the right projects to the right producers, and with dwindling budgets it’s not always easy. Maybe the role is to find those needles in the haystack. George Martin signed the Beatles… Who’s out there in 2022?!

Writer

Andrew Flood

You’ve had several number one albums. What has been the secret to your success?

I hope it’s that I have really trusted my instinct and gone with what I have felt passionate about working on. Once you tune into that deep emotional, human element of a song you have the potential to touch millions of people. It could be just one chord, or the way the voice sounds that does it for me. It’s magic really. Once the record is out there I really have zero control of whether it’s going to be number one or one hundred. I just hope it gets a good shot and that people can hear it, that’s success enough for me.

Your recording techniques are often considered unconventional. Are there any methods you now consider a JT trademark?

I have a philosophy and an approach, but I try to not take myself too seriously. My mindset, initially at least, is to listen. Then really it’s a process of rediscovery; if someone wants to make a record the same way they did last time it’s unlikely they’ll ring me up. I’m often dismantling the picture and putting it back together, but not everyone is ready for that.

I do fly some pretty random samples sometimes. They sound mad on their own but if you dot them around a track they add to the tapestry. You could record a bird singing on your phone and put it through some guitar pedals or whatever, just have it floating around in the background on a rock song and no one will know what the hell it is, most people won’t even notice, but it’s still cool. Can I trademark an atmosphere?

How have you found the last couple of years?

Serendipitously I started my own artist project (duo Larry Pink The Human) just before the first lockdown, so in some ways I had a lot of freedom to get on with that. I can get really busy so having an artistic reset was invaluable.