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Friday, March 7, 2014
Piano teacher turned R&B artist comes to festival By David Sackllah @dsackllah
Coming from Hamilton, Canada, Jessy Lanza is an electronic artist who creates intricate R&B. The piano teacher worked with Jeremy Greenspan of Junior Boys to craft her debut album, Pull My Hair Back, which came out last fall on Hyperdub. She is working on her followup and is going to make her SXSW debut this week.
Photo courtesy of The Windish Agency
James Hinton performs his electronic music under the name The Range and will play eight shows at this year’s SXSW.
The Range makes Texas debut at SXSW By David Sackllah @dsackllah
Producer James Hinton has been making mid-tempo electronic music as The Range and playing shows since 2008, but last year his life changed completely. His newest album, Nonfiction, was released last fall and received acclaim from music websites such as Pitchfork. Hinton’s newfound success has allowed him to go on European tours, to quit his day job and focus on making music full time. “A lot more people are in my life and I’ve started to branch out and work with more people,” Hinton said. “It’s definitely a lot of added complexity to life since Nonfiction came out.” Hinton makes his songs by blending elements of am-
bient or downtempo electronic sounds with raps or hip-hop style beats. He often uses loops and repetition, but subtly changes elements in the music to keep it fluid. Nonfiction is filled with hypnotic electronic tracks, often built around obscure a capella hip-hop samples that Hinton found online. In some songs, such as “Jamie,” Hinton built the music around the sample he found. Hinton always begins his compositions with a single element. “I know a lot of people compose where they have the whole song in their head that they like to get out,” Hinton said. “For me, it’s always a small kernel of a thing that I try to expand upon.” Hinton, who is playing in Texas for the first time at
SXSW, crafts songs that fit well in a variety of settings — from studying in a library to dancing in a club. He makes an effort to find a midpoint between dance and ambient electronic music. “My music will never get too clubby, like a ‘Harlem Shake’ type situation, but it will also never be a 30 minute meditation or yoga music either,” Hinton said. Hinton is a fan of underground rappers, citing King Louie, Lil Durk and Young Thug as some of his favorites. While Hinton explained that he would never try to make beats, the ideas and attitudes behind recent hip-hop trends serve as an inspiration for his work. “It’s always a huge way of how I think about music,” Hinton said. “It’s definitely
important to me as a touchstone for everything. It’s this idea and mentality that I’m very conscious of.” Now Hinton is preparing for the release of Panasonic, an EP due out at the end of the month that serves as an addendum to last year’s record. Hinton describes Panasonic as having a sparse, compositional style, containing ’90s hip-hop tempos, unlike the jungle and footwork influences present on Nonfiction. Hinton said he wants to get back and start working on another LP that should be out by next year. But, for now, he’s focusing on taking advantage of the attention he’s received for Nonfiction. “I feel like I have a lot to say right now and want to get as much music out as I can,” Hinton said.
The Daily Texan: What type of equipment and setup do you use for your live performances? Jessy Lanza: I have a couple synthesizers. I have a Juno 106 and an Alpha Juno and then I run all the drums through Ableton, so I have a laptop as well. Then I have a delay pedal for my vocals and that’s it really. It’s a pretty simple setup. DT: Did you have a lot of experience playing live before you began this new project? JL: No, not really at all. DT: What, if any, was challenging about translating your songs to a live setting? JL: I think with electronic music a lot of times you can get into the feedback loops or hums and buzzes, especially if you’re using older analog equipment. You can run into a lot more frequency noises or have the frequencies be off so you have everything sound not so great. Those are some of the risks with electronic stuff. DT: You got a degree in jazz but you make electronic and R&B music. Do you find that there are any jazz influences in the music you make? JL: Yeah, for sure. I think a
lot of the people who produce R&B records are well versed in jazz music. The chord progressions for a lot of them are the same. They use the same kind of chords. Not chord for chord or anything, but I definitely think there’s a lineage there for sure. DT: I know that you collaborated with Jeremy Greenspan on the LP in terms of writing and production. Do you plan to work with him on future projects? JL: Yeah, we’re working on a second album right now actually. DT: How far along are you on it? JL: I don’t know. I don’t want to say too far because you never know what might end up being scrapped. Songs have a tendency to sound really awesome one week and really shitty the next. It’s coming along. Hopefully, it will be done for the fall. DT: Now that you’ve been doing this for a long time does the process take less time or get more fluid as you keep writing songs? JL: Yeah, I have a really clear direction or vision of what I want to sound like. When I first started doing this four years ago that direction wasn’t as clear as it is now, so that makes it easier. DT: What made you want to play SXSW? JL: I got booked for the Resident Advisor showcase, which seemed like a really good opportunity. I’ve been in Austin once before, and it’s a fun city. It’s going to be so warm there. It’s like minus 20 here. I’m pretty excited to go somewhere where it’s not fucking freezing.