FEATURE: Spotlight: Jennifer Loveless

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Jennifer Loveless

_________

ALTHOUGH she is an artist in her own right…

Jennifer Loveless is better known as a D.J. and producer. I have known about her work for a couple of years now but, last year, I got even more into her music. Her sounds and the way she puts them together is entrancing, intoxicating and utterly fresh! She is someone who is going to be in the sights of many as we head through this year. I have dropped some songs in, but I would advise people to do some deeper diving and check out Jennifer Loveless’ stuff on Spotify and Bandcamp. She is a remarkable! I shall come to a few interviews, leading with one from 2020. First, and to give us some biography, here is what you need to know about Loveless:

“The Toronto-born Australian-resident, and now London-based queer artist is a diverse selector who found her love of club music through its most fundamental element; dance.

In recent years she’s headlined Australia’s biggest festivals including Pitch Music & Arts Festival and Gaytimes Festival. Panorama Bar, Maricas Mxricas, Boiler Room, Body Movements are just a few of the notable gigs she’s already played during her short time in Europe. Jennifer has supported international heavyweights including DJ Sprinkles, Ben UFO, Steffi and Midland. In North America she’s performed alongside artists-to-watch Ambien Baby, D.Tiffany and Korea Town Acid. Her set at iconic festival YinYang took place on the Great Wall of China.

Jennifer’s mixes are notable, featuring on Crack Mag, Daisychain, Trushmix and C-. Her work has been broadcast on Rinse FM, Noods Radio and Balami. On Skylab Radio she hosted her own show 'Weatherall'.

Since 2020 Jennifer has been prolific in her production releases. She’s released on Pure Space, Sex Tags UFO, Planet Euphorique, Body Verse, Butter Sessions and contributed a track to Jayda G’s critically acclaimed DJ Kicks compilation. Her releases have received praise from Laurent Garnier, Bill Brewster, Extrawelt, Bandcamp and RA, whose Music Editor Andrew Ryce described her sophomore EP 'Water' as “the kind of career-making EP that most artists could only hope for their second-ever record to sound like.” She returns this summer 2022 with her latest EP titled ‘Around the World’ out on Butter Sessions, a womping 6-tracker featuring the already classic single as reviewed by Pitchfork, ‘Muzik’.

Jennifer’s live performances are experimental, fluid, and charged with emotion. Her narratives weave a love of the ocean, a love for her community, an ear for details and concern for the climate. She’s performed live in support of Ciel and Hakobune. Alongside these projects, Jennifer also writes for screen for clients including: Nike, Timberland, Posmos and more”.

An influential and hugely impressive artist, D.J. and producer. In her elements behind the decks, I wanted to stray away from more conventional artists to focus on Jennifer Loveless. Here is someone forging a very golden and bright path. Stamp the Wax interviewed her back in 2020. It is unsurprising to learn that she was born to a very musical family. No doubt her talents were spotted pretty early on:

“A core part of Australia’s thriving dance music scene, Jennifer Loveless’ influence and has spread far and wide through her indisputable talents behind the decks, her transmissions on the Skylab radio waves and her work within the community.

Having cemented her position as one of the country’s foremost selectors – with sets for Australia’s Discwoman Showcase Boiler Room and tours across North America and Asia – she’s focusing on her own productions, with her debut outing, the emotive and nostalgic Hard/Soft, coming out on Andy Garvey’s Pure Space imprint.

She describes her Self-Portrait mix as “a bit of Internet ADHD, a bit of introspection and a tinge of commerce”, characteristics she says could apply to herself personally. Alongside the original material mix, we chat to Jenn about her musical background and her production process…

Let’s start with an ice breaker, what’s your earliest musical memory?

Hmm, I think there are a few that come to mind. Playing piano, performing with my brothers, my old purple and silver RCA stereo system, where I would listen to cassettes and stay up to record new tracks from my favourite radio shows.

Did you have a particularly musical upbringing?

Yes, me and my whole family did. We were all classically trained in piano from a young age, but we really lived for doing renditions of pop and r&b songs together. I have to give it up to my father who put in his savings and time, and pushed us to perform at every opportunity. He often mentioned that he wished for us to be a version of the Jackson 5… Definitely a pipe dream but his obsession made for an interesting upbringing.

What led you into music production?

Natural progression I guess, I started writing poetry as a form of expression and therapy from a young age and music provided a similar outlet for me.

Are there any producers or artists who have inspired your production?

It’s hard to put inspiration down to just producers and artists. I think experience is a large source of inspiration, as are stories both fiction and non. The tracks in this mix have been written over a large span of time, so to that, there have been many.

Are there any particular rituals you go through before you head into the studio?

The studio is my bedroom, so I wake up here and I fall asleep here. I am often anxious about time and there not being a lot of it. When I’m in that head space I can’t seem to write anything – I need to feel like time is infinite. To remedy that, I try to set aside whole days where I can be in my room without being disturbed or scheduled for anything.

Do you come in with a destination in mind before starting a jam?

Not at all.

Are you the type of producer to work on a track until it’s perfect, or are you more of an impulsive creator, happy with first takes and sketches?

A bit of both. I like to only do one take of whatever I’m recording in analog into my DAW, and from there I rearrange, warp, and mix. Only recently have I started going back and re-recording drum tracks in separately because my girlfriend wouldn’t leave it alone, and she has a point”.

There are a couple of other interviews I want to get to before finishing. Mixdown Mag spoke with her in April last year. As a D.J. and Electronic Dance producer, there is no doubting that she is a fast-rising star with a big future. I think that 2023 may be the biggest year yet. It is exciting to see what is going to come next from the incomparable Jennifer Loveless:

“Raised in Toronto, Jennifer came from a musical family. At the age of three she started to learn piano and by the age of 15 had completed her eighth grading, which despite her protestations to the contrary, is an incredible achievement at any age, let alone a teenager! During childhood, there was a lot of familial pressure to perform together with her siblings at school and community events. Jennifer jokes that they were being raised to be the next Jackson Five by her father. The constant pressure to practise and perform took its toll and Jennifer decided to give up on piano altogether later in adolescence.

Some years later, in an effort to connect with her Chinese heritage, Jennifer left Toronto to explore her family’s home in Guangzhou. It was there she discovered Ableton Live and started to learn music production. As an artist, now, she is grateful for the time she spent with music as a child which provided her a strong foundation as a producer and DJ. “It’s amazing to have all that knowledge in my back pocket. It’s in my body so much that it becomes intuitive,” she says.

PHOTO CREDIT: Alan Weedon

Her diverse cultural background manifests in her music as it morphs effortlessly through mood and timbre. That said, her sound is unashamedly dance-focused and devoid of world music tropes. Rather, it blends huge beats, derived from acoustic samples, with a dense tapestry of synth-driven basslines, chords, and melodies to realise textures simultaneously organic and electronic.

Her most recent release, Water, was inspired by David Attenborough’s Blue Planet documentary series. She explains, “I became obsessed with underwater life and the cultures and behaviours of the different fish and marine life”. In terms of terrestrial influences, she cites DJ Koze, Moodymann, Matthew Herbert, and K-Hand.

When producing, Jennifer employs a unique workflow. Her DAW of choice is Ableton and interestingly, she combines old school MPC beatboxes with hardware synths, preferring to capture performances as audio, rather than sequencing in MIDI. Personal hardware favourites include the legendary Teenage Engineering OP-1, Yamaha TX81z, and the Akai MPC 1000. This preference to work with hardware sequencers like the MPCs, rather than sequencing MIDI directly in Ableton, sees Jennifer writing beats on the MPCs then recording them into a beat-matched Ableton Live session as audio. Once these beats are recorded, Loveless spends time writing basslines, chords, and melodies on her hardware synths, before committing these sounds and performances directly to disk.

For her, the endless options presented by software synths and plugins, impedes the creative process. Rather than searching through endless software instruments and presets for “that sound” in her head, Jennifer looks to hardware synths to create sounds and as soon as she hits on something workable, hits record to ensure the inspiration keeps flowing. “Even it wasn’t exactly the sound I was thinking of, as long as it’s close enough, I’m like, ‘oh! This is the character now. I can’t go back and change it.’ Otherwise, I end up in this self-hating mode, pathetically looking for this “thing” and after a while I can barely recall what I was looking for.

“Then, if I do another take it will be missing this little swing or something that I did the first time. So, unless I’ve recorded it too hot, I’ll use EQ to make the sound work and use Ableton’s warp to bring a few stray notes into time and make the take work. For me, that’s the nicest on my brain. So, it’s largely hardware sound design with sample packs for the beats via the MPCs. I want to work quickly.”

On her latest release, the first track is driven by an infectious bassline coupled with a huge beat. The bottom end is seriously impressive. When asked about the genesis and development of the track, Jennifer offered the following: “On my latest release, the first track ‘Out/Under’ was mostly just me, building up a beat without a computer, on the MPC. From there I jammed along with a bassline and once I was happy with it, I started up Ableton, record-enabled all the tracks and went for it.”

As an artist these days, the number of hats to be worn can be dizzying. Songwriter, performer, producer, mixer, mastering engineer, the list goes on. Jennifer is comfortable drawing on collaborators to assist as required so she can focus on the writing and production. The mix for ‘Out/Under’ is fantastic and the balance between the huge kicks and bassline, perfectly executed”.

That previous interview was from an Australian publication. MixMag Asia spoke with Jennifer Loveless in September, around the release of her E.P., Around the World. Even though she is based in London, as she says near the end of the interview, she is very proud of the neighbourhoods and sounds of Melbourne. It is clearly somewhere very dear to her heart. An important part of her life:

“Fluid, hypnotic and sun-soaked atmospherics would be a quick way to introduce the sonic repertoire of Jennifer Loveless.

A follow up to her globally acclaimed 'Water' EP, her latest output titled 'Around The World' dropped last week on Butter Sessions, and it comes loaded with the intention of keeping a Summer anthem-fuelled dance floor gyrating into Autumn. It’s not a seasonal album per se, but it’s loaded with all the ripe ingredients. Mildly put, it’s a full of beans before breakfast-kind-of affair and that’s just how we like to be in the wee hours.

We speak to the sapphic heiress about her movements from Toronto to Melbourne, and how she's now settled in London, whilst diving into her 'Around The World' EP.

Hi Jennifer, thank you for taking the time to speak to Mixmag Asia in your busy schedule.

You were born in Toronto, but your musical roots are heavily weighted in Melbourne, and now you’re in London. How did these shifts around the world happen?

I moved to Melbourne (Naarm) in 2012 for what was only supposed to be a short stint. I was going on exchange and I chose Melbourne because I had heard about its amazing music scene and chose Australia in general due to its proximity to the ocean. I stayed for 10 years after that because of the music scene and the people and the place. I think it’s pretty common knowledge now that there is a thriving electronic scene in Australia, I mean Roza Terenzi, Sleep D, Tornado Wallace to name a few who have been doing it for a while and have crossed over. And it’s only getting more abundant! Moving overseas was something my partner and me started talking about seriously during lockdown. I wanted to grow as an artist and of course that involves being in the largest electronic music hub EU/UK.

Jayda G was actually a bit integral to the choice of London; she’s been living there for a minute, and during a conversation one evening in the depths of lockdown she convinced me it was time to start putting the plans in place and here we are. I’ve not said goodbye to Australia at all, just having a bit of a poke around for a bit elsewhere. After two years of lockdown it’s nice to be plunged into a completely different environment.

A reigning theme across your releases would quite easily be ‘dance’. Tell us your story from the floor to the booth.

Yes, Toronto and Markham were pivotal to my relationship with dance. From elementary school days, me and my friends were always learning the latest dance routines from r'n'b and hip hop music videos. We’d also throw soca and dancehall parties in my basement and sneak off to community centre dances. Our lives were so rich in this way, we had so many cultures around us and that was absolutely essential to my taste and relationship to dance.

Later in life, around the age I went to uni, me and my parents moved to a one bedroom apartment in Toronto and I was exposed to the electronic music (it was first dubstep), the after hours culture in Toronto, and the DJs there. Deep house, soul, disco, boogie, minimal, acid house, tech house were what reigned supreme at the time, at least in the circles I was running in.

What’s the first gig you ever played?

My first gig outside of my bedroom was in Melbourne at this bar called GoG Bar. I brought and used my Vestax controller for the first few months before switching over to burning CDs and playing on the CDJs there.

Your sophomore EP ‘Water’ accelerated the awareness of the Jennifer Loveless brand — how did it feel to get a warm reception early in your production career?

I felt good about the EP and I still do. I by no means think it’s perfect, but it was true to me then and it holds now. The warm reception was I guess a cherry on top. It’s really nice to shout into the abyss and have something come back.

What would you say has changed about your production techniques from ‘Water’ to ‘Around The World’?

I’d like to think I’ve gotten better at mixing. Finding the line between too many elements and just enough to get the sound I want across. I’m still a bit stubborn about things and probably will continue to try to jam too many elements into one”.

A brilliant creative force who I am sure will be taking her music and D.J. brilliance around the world this year, I hope there are some U.K. dates and appearances. Having released the remarkable Around the World in September, I am sure we will get another E.P. or album later this year. Keep your eyes peeled for someone who is among the most remarkable D.J.s and producers there is. I think that 2023 is going to be the year where things really take it off. Having released so much amazing music, it is…