Jacob Collier

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left That Podcast.
My guest today is Jacob Collume. Yes, the man who
was nominated for Album of the Year. Jesse Volume three
is the name of the record. Jacob. Good to have
you here, Bob. It's such a pleasure to see you, sir. Okay,
now we must say, most people or many people are

(00:30):
unfamiliar with your music, so I must ask, can you
please describe it? I know me your music is didn't
describe it for but can you please describe it for
the audience? Well, I will try my best. Um. I
suppose I think of my music as joyous music in
a sense. It's a mixture of all sorts of different
musical styles, musical spaces. I've loved music as a whole language,

(00:51):
and so there's orchestral less in it, and there's rock
and roll, and there's some jazz in terms of the
harmonic language, and there's some electronic production too, and there's
lots of acappelle. So I tend to think and work
in layers a lot of the time, and so I
tend to play a lot of instruments myself on on
my albums and also my life performances. I'm I'm talking
to you now from a room filled with many different
things that make different kinds of sound, and I've loved

(01:12):
the process of learing those on top of each other,
for I guess the duration of my life, and so
I guess my music is an expression of all the
things I love, and that's a whole mixture different things.
But it's a sort of tentabulum of of eclectic ingredients.
I suppose that is a mortgage board of descriptions. What
track should someone start with if they want to know

(01:35):
Jacob car your Oh, that's a different question. Um, I
would say start with All I Need. And All I
Need is a song on Jesse Volian three, the album
that you mentioned, which is the third part of a
four part album series that I've been creating from this chair.
And All I Need is is. Yeah, it's a it's
um a testament to a few things I love. I
guess there's there's some harmony in there, and there's some

(01:56):
there's some dance nus in there, and it's a collaboration
with with Mehalia and ty Dolla Sign and I love
both those musicians so much. Okay, let's go back to
the beginning. So you were born in you were raised
essentially by your mother? True? Absolutely, true? Is your father
in the picture at all? My father has not been
in the picture for about fifteen years or so. So

(02:17):
I was very much brought up by by women. I suppose.
I've got two little sisters who brought me up to
So it was me and my sisters and and my
mom in this exact house actually here in in in
North London. Okay. But your mother was in the music field.
What the did and does she do? She is a
violinist in the in the classical world and outside. And

(02:38):
also she's a conductor as so some of my earliest
memories of music making a music consumption, we're sitting in
a big hall called called the Duke's Hall in the
Royal Academy Music in London and watching her conductor room.
And so a lot of my kind of education started there. Okay,
your two sisters are younger than you are, yes, sir, absolutely, okay.
Their ages are let's see, I'm twenty x and then

(03:00):
twenty four and twenty okay. And are they in the
music field. They both play and they both sing, but
they're not professionally musicians. They do other things. But when
whenever we're home together as a four, we make a rule,
and the rule is we always sing in four part harmony.
We sing a part korral, or we'll sing a barbershop
quartet or something like that, just because it's a nice
way to to spend time. That's very interesting. Okay, So

(03:24):
from the moment you have memories, was their music in
your household totally? Absolutely every corner of every room, either
something was playing or something was being spoken about that
was playing. And so I remember Stevie, I remember Sting,
I remember Bobby McFerrin, remember birth when and fire Um,

(03:45):
and then I remember discovering Flying Lotus. That was a
big moment for me when I was about thirteen years
old or so. And then that unlocked j Diller, and
that unlocked d' angelo and then the whole the whole
thing kind of opened up. But I was also very
much brought up on Martok and Stravinsky, and I sang
in some operas composed by Benjamin Britten as a boy.
I say, an opera called The Turn of the Screw.

(04:06):
There's a boy in that. In that Chimbrop recored Miles
and so my musical education was this massive mixture of
on the one hand, like dancing to a to a
group like a Prince group, for example, and on the
other hand, standing on stage in Auviedo, Spain and singing
the harmony of Benjamin Britain, which is completely an early
you know, twelve turns structures and dissonant things and a

(04:26):
really sensitive emotional language that he had going on, and
a real Britishness too, And I saw no reason to
kind of reject any of it. It was all part
of my part, part of my language. I suppose, you know,
casual observation would say that most people in the classical
musical field sneering pop music. So your mother was interested

(04:46):
in playing pop music in the house, I guess you
could say, so, yeah. And I wouldn't say that she
would have thought of it as pop music. I don't
think she would have said, well, you know, his classic
of music, and then and then this is pop, and
then over here this jazz and this is folk, I
think in her eyes, and therefore in my eyes it
was more this is music I love. And there's actually
a lot that class music has in common with with

(05:07):
you know, you could say pop music when you when
you stop and think about it. But I think I
really welcomed that approach, and I'm very grateful for it
because I think it it stopped me as a creative
person thinking too much about sort of boxes and boundaries
and this is appropriate for this, and this is appropriate
for this and more a sense that there was this
massive language that people were learning and discovering within each other,

(05:27):
within the kind of musicians community of the world. And
a lot of my favorite things that I heard, especially
when I was young, were people who were sort of
taking risks of it and and trying things out and
twisting rules that that maybe had existed. Can you give
us a couple of examples of that, I can, so
excuse me. One one construct that I've been made aware
of recently is that you have twelve twelve half steps

(05:50):
in an octave, or in UK was a twelve semi
tones and an octave um. And I've heard a couple
of pieces of music that really blew my mind with
people who were thinking outside of that um in the
sense that you know from from bar to bar. Traditionally
you would divide that into the twelve semi tones that
we see on the piano um. But I became very
interested in just intonation systems, by which I mean, um,

(06:13):
tuning to to physics, but essentially the laws of physics,
rather than tuning too and to the more traditional idea
of harmony. And so you know, I heard composers like,
for example, Leghetti exploring this, and I heard that, and
I thought, that's that's interesting to me because I think
it could apply to things beyond what it what it
currently represents. I think that that is tool that could

(06:34):
be used in all sorts of other situations. And so
I've I've sought out things that get my ears excited
or tie my brain and or not, and I've I've
been interested. I supposed to find ways of building bridges
between these different musical worlds and find a way to
get all these ingredients to kind of make some kind
of sense. Okay though, but wouldn't we also say that
the average listener has problems with scales and other types

(06:58):
of music outside that traditional twelve towns. Um. I think
you're right. I think I'd say that people who um,
people who listen to a lot of a particular kind
of music get used to it. And so that, to
me is is interesting. And so, for example, if you
if you listen to the radio, then you hear a
lot of a particular kind of thing, And to be honest,

(07:20):
I'm always so interested to do that. I turned on
the radis and I think, Oh, what's the thing that's
kind of filling people's imaginations at this time, and what
is people's idea of acceptable? And for example, if you
grow up in say Africa, and your music is entirely
based in pentatonic structures, which is sort of far simpler
than then I guess what what Europeans have have creative,

(07:41):
which is is almost like a sort of a chromatic
system of harmony within classical music. Then all of that
chromatic stuff sounds totally bizarre, and at first people were like, oh,
that's strange. I'm not sure I understand that. And then gradually,
as those kinds of rules seep into what feels normal
to people, then people kind of embrace those elements, I think,
And so you know, I would definitely say that there
are things that I hear that take my breath away

(08:03):
and that surprised me, that are pretty abnormal and pretty weird,
and those things always kind of intrigue me to to
dig a bit deeper, because I feel like, in some
ways the thing that needs to bend in that experience
is not necessarily the thing I'm listening to you, but
it's more me as a listener. How can I bend
myself into a shape that where that makes some kind
of sense. Okay, so you're listening to music in the house.

(08:23):
At what point do you pick up an instrument? Oh? Um?
I suppose I was about two or three when I
was handed a violin and that made sense to my
mom as a violinist. It was like, we'll try this
one out for size. And I remember I played for
a couple of years and I gave up when I
was four because I was quite an impatient musician, I think,
and I wanted to be able to hit something and

(08:43):
for it to make a sound that was satisfying. And
the thing what the violin is that you kind of
need to play for five years until it doesn't sound
like that. And so I gravitated more towards the piano
because it was kind of like a layout that I
could digs like. Okay, so they kind of makes some
kind of sense. And I can clearly remember being asked
as clearly of musically interested eight year old you know,
would piano lessons be something that you'd like, And I

(09:05):
can clearly remember saying, no, I don't want that. I
want to kind of do this in my own way.
And luckily for me, my mom's philosophy has always been
too kind of allow that space to happen, and so
I was kind of allowed to be just a free
a free spirit in this space, in this music room
and just sort of go wherever my fancy took me

(09:25):
from from from one day to the next. Was your
mother disappointed that you gave up the violin, not in
the slightest, No, I think I think she was excited
that it was a part of my journey in some way.
You know, it was like, well, okay, cool, so the
violin was that, and now let's go onto something else
and whatever. But my mom is very specially in the
sense that she's never sort of imposed a sense of
this is how I'd like you to be, or unless

(09:46):
you're the way that I want you to be, then
you're going to let me down. You know. It's always
been like your job as a human is to find
out what you are, and here are some materials that
may help you figure that out. But but other than
that it's it's kind of up to you, and I'm
always sort of speaking as her now. I'm always open
to any kind of dialogue and I'll always be be interested,

(10:07):
I guess. Okay, So you start playing at the piano
for years old, totally self taught. Yes, yeah, I was
just exploring on my own, okay, And certainly it's not
like being bad. I'm a violin, but there's a certain
skill to making listenable music on the keys. How did

(10:27):
you figure it out? Um, it's a good question. I'm
still figuring out. I think I started with things that
I knew, um, and I went from there. You know,
I think there's there was a bit of a myth
that I saw in in the musical education world that
what I experienced of it, you know, at school and
things like that, where it was kind of like, you know,
you're you're a beginner, and there's this huge, great, big

(10:48):
mountain need to climb. At the top of the mountain,
you know you will be good enough, but you have
to start in this uncomfortable place and sort of work
and work at the the uncomfortable place until you feel comfortable,
which for me is I can see how it happened,
but it's a little inefficient. You know. There are sounds
that I kind of understood as a as a musician,
as a boy um that I would work out on

(11:09):
the piano. You know, I'd hear I'd hear a song.
I'd say, I'd hear a Stevie song, and I think, so,
what's going on there? It sounds like there's there's this chord.
And then I would just take that chord and I said,
what does this chord do? And I didn't really understand it,
but I followed my ears. It would be like, well,
what's this card like if I try and move it
up one semiter or down, or if I if this
chord leads to this chord, and and then what does

(11:29):
what is adding this particularly what make that chord want
to do? You know? And this this was a kind
of intuitive process that I went through that that was
very little about what was right and wrong, you know.
It was very little about like, well, these this is
how it's done, and it was more what what is
exciting to do? And so, yeah, I I iterated that process.
I suppose, yeah, I iterated that process at the piano

(11:50):
um and I can clearly remember being very thrilled, indeed
on my fourteenth birthday to get this double bass. And
it was a funny thing because I had not a
clue how to play it, but I could. I could
play the bass in my head. I could go good,
you know, because I knew basselines and I could sing them,
but I couldn't play them. And so I think for me,
I kind of assumed that there there must be a
way to extract the basselines from the base, and I

(12:11):
just sort of died. I don't dove into it with
a sense of trust. It was like, well, there must
be where I can get this to feel natural, and
and I guess it's it's a matter of patients. And
and also I think it was a matter of me
setting myself challenges, sometimes outrageous creative challenges, like you know,
you will find a way to figure this outward, let's
try and incorporate this element in this And by solving

(12:32):
those problems, I kind of discovered this sense of synergy
between all the different instruments that I was falling in
love with, to the voice, to the drums. And I
never thought of myself as a as an instrumentalist per se.
I didn't think, well, I'm a I'm a piano player,
or I'm a bass player, whatever. But I always felt,
I guess I thought of myself as exploring music at
large and being a musician as much as I could,

(12:53):
and trying to establish what what the intention might be
with a particular sound and how the how how that
could fit into this the sensibility that I had, you know,
being all the members of my own band, how how
would it feel to be the base, How it feels
to be the drum? How do they interact with each other?
And you know, most of my learning happened by listening.
You know, I sat and listened to everything I could
possibly find, you know, And at that point, the Internet

(13:14):
was quite young and YouTube was being born and growing,
but it was kind of at the right moment where
if I was interested in, you know, who played base
on a Keith Jarrett record, then I could find out
and then I could figure out what that person's story was,
and I could listen to on other records, and and
and so a lot of that kind of process of
filling up my periphery with things that I trusted just

(13:35):
happened through consuming as much music, you know, as much
music as I could from home, things that were in
the house, two things that were online, and to things
recommended by friends and all that stuff. Okay, do you
read music relatively poorly? But I do read it like
I can sing. If you have me a part to sing,
I can sing it. But honestly, I find myself a

(13:57):
little at a loss if you if you put, say,
for example, a human piano sonata in front of me,
I would have a very hard time playing I could honestly,
I could probably hear it in my head more easily
than I could play it with my hands, because I haven't.
I never really opened up those channels of reading and
playing because it just kind of wasn't the way that
I learned. So, but how did you learn to the

(14:17):
rudimentary level you have the skill? I think it was
it was a mixture of things. But my mom would
would sit down and show me things, and it'd be like,
this is how you write this, or you know, with
a with a school assignment. And I remember being asked
to harmonize a bark corral part when I was in school.
This is like one of the activities that you do
as a music student. And I was so I was
so kind of I mean, I was interested to a point,

(14:38):
but also I was quite impatient, and it was like yeah,
bark alright, cool, yeah, but can we like can we
just do something that makes us dance? Like can we
can we have drums to this? Or like can we
have basis? That's why I would do this at my
own time, but at school they were these kind of
established rules. So I bring them home and I would
work it out, and you know, I learned. I learned
how to read music a little bit enough to say, Okay,
that's an airport, that's an a natural or whatever. But um,
I think what I found exciting was sort of extrapped

(15:00):
sing parts of that that I did like, and then
just sort of assimilating them a bit like osmosis, and
then and then just playing with them, like messing around
and seeing how far I could stretch these things in
the creative space. Uh, and how much I could I
could learn from that? Okay, you talk about music school.
Traditionally one goes to school at age five or six.
Did you go to a regular school and then transfer

(15:21):
was a musical school From day one. I was in
a very regular schooling environment until I was I think
about sixteen years old. I went to like a box
standard primary school quite in my house. And I went
to a box standard secondary school filled with every different
kind of person you can imagine, which was actually, I
think brilliant. I really enjoyed it. A sense of normalcy,
I suppose. And then okay, but well, let's slow down

(15:42):
there for a second. Good student, bad student? In general,
I was a pretty good student, and I had the
kind of mind that if I was interested in something,
I would just go as deep as you could possibly
go in a flash. And I was fast and I
could pick things up quickly. Um. And if I wasn't interested,
and I just wouldn't engage very much, you know. So
I guess I had this sense of either falling in

(16:04):
love with the concept or kind of disregarding it a
little bit. But I was attentive, and I was interested
in education in general, and I liked to bend whatever
rules I could find, but never in a particularly disrespectful way. Okay,
and were you a popular kid, were you a loner?
What kind of kid were you? I suppose I was
somewhere between the two. I wouldn't I wouldn't say I

(16:25):
was embraced by the by the popular kids as such,
I'm sure I don't speak alone there. I think a
lot of people and musicians I've spoken to too, has
had trouble fitting in in that kind of a way.
And I think I had such a vivid in a
world and that was kind of like my priority in
some ways, and I would spend a lot of time
kind of designing things in my mind and building things
and thinking about language and words. I would make little

(16:47):
diagrams and I would draw a little pictures and things
like that. But I think in a certain kind of
way I was I was fairly content to not be
fully understood, and I kind of got got used to
the thing of, you know what, Jacobs off doing his
own thing and he's in his own world. But but
that's okay. And I think at home, my environment was
very conducive with that, you know, and obviously that there
is always a bit of dissonance when you've been given
a lot of freedom in your own space and time

(17:09):
and then step into an institution where the expectations you
will absolutely conform. You know, you will do it the
way that we want you to do it, and if
you don't do it like that, then you know you're
you're not going to make the cart you know, you
won't get the grades. And and so there was this
this funny dance that I kind of began to do,
which honestly, I think that was quite good training for
for the music industry in a certain respect and building
a career, um because I think there's there's a certain

(17:32):
amount of of kind of listening that you need to
do when you're learning something, learning how something is done,
and and a certain amount of I suppose I could say,
conforming to what that means and what's right and wrong.
And then there's also a certain amount of of adventuring
and kind of willingness to to to be to be
wrong or willingness to be unaccepted, which is which is

(17:53):
thrilling as a child, and I think crucial as a musician. Um.
And so I think that I try to strike a
balance at school between the kind of yeah, I can
talk to the popular kids and also like, I'm very
comfortable to be on my own, and I think I was.
I would I would say I was. I was more
towards the kind of loaner side, if there's a spectrum
of that, I was. I was more the person who

(18:13):
was on his own or had a few key friends
of few key people. Um, and I think when I
left school, and I really when I left education in general,
that was the first time where I could really kind
of ride the right this this ship that I was building,
this cathedral or whatever you want to call it, that
I was making musically, and that kind of unlocked a
lot of my energy and a lot of my kind
of social confidence. I would say too, because it was

(18:34):
like I could speak my own language. I didn't have
to access people by trying to speak theres so much.
And so that the time I spent with my own
space and in my own time and started to tour,
started to travel meeting incredible inspiring people and started to
collaborate to like that whole process for me was almost
like my my mind was given permission to just kind
of be itself. And that was a major relief to me. Okay,

(18:57):
so when you're going to school before musicals school, the
music school, excuse me, before you come home from school
you immediately get into music or did you have a
life with sports and television and friends came over? Um, well,
I guess it was a mixture, Like like every child,
I had a few different things, you know, there was

(19:17):
a while where I loved playing video games, and there
was a while where I was super super into football
or as USA soccer um. And I guess my favorite
thing would be when interests converged, you know. So I
remember I started a band in school and it was
called the Improvisation Group, and you'd come in and you
would improvise, and it was really cool when it was
something I look forward to every weekend and I would
bring those guys over and we jam in this room
and we'd hang out and we'd you know, at that time,

(19:39):
I was experimenting with with recording, and when I was
seven years old, I got cubas and four years later
I was given logic for my eleventh birthday, and man,
that was exciting, and that really dominated my imagination and
a lot of my after school time between the ages
of about eleven to sixteen. I was obviously beyond that,
but you know, it was such a such a canvas,

(20:00):
such a wicked canvas. It was like, okay, so you know,
I go to school, That's fine, I'll do the stuff,
jump through the hoops in in whatever way it makes sense. Um.
But then I would listen to this music and I
would try and put the things together on my own
and and I guess I almost saw myself as as
much a producer as a musician. I didn't think about
the difference between tho two things at that point. I
didn't realize there really was one. It was like, well,
I'm musick ing, you know, I'm creating music, and I'm

(20:22):
doing it in the way that makes sense with the
materials I had around me. And I didn't have a
great deal honestly. I had a one SM fifty eight microphone,
and I had logic, and I have a little to
input audio interface and and a computer and that was
it basically until I was about nineteen, and so I
wanted to find a way to to bring things to
life that I was hearing in my mind. I wanted

(20:42):
to play, and so what that kind of home studio
canvas gave me was an opportunity to do just that. Okay,
the improv group was in primary school, high school or
was that once you were in music school? That that
is I suppose you would say middle school, but we
would say like ninth grades of year nine, year ten s. Okay,

(21:04):
but you do have this public life where you're in
the opera and there are a couple of other things.
How does that happen? And what is that like? It
was really interesting, honestly, because I would go to these
auditions for things. And I guess it all started because
I sang in a in a local choir when I
was about eight years old. I sang um in a choir,
which I loved. I just loved the feeling. It was like, man,
this feels at home, surrounded by voices, you know, gorgeous

(21:27):
harmonies like this is great. It's like a bit of
a social it's it was cool. And so I think
that in those kinds of camps, especially at that age,
there there are people on the lookout for people who
maybe like have have a special something that would apply
to film and musicals and operas and things like that.
And so there are a few different things that I
was I was asked to do. And one thing I

(21:47):
did I played the roll of tiny team in a
in a musical film production of Christmas Carol with Kelsey Grammer.
And it was super fun and I lived in Budapest
for six months or so and it was great fun.
I had had a crutch and I got to play
the part. And I missed about a year of school
and had a two term and that that was interesting.
And what was What was I guess interesting looking back
now is that it's sort of normalized the idea to

(22:08):
me that I had this other world that was almost
like my world that was different from the world that
I was in when I was at school, and I
was interesting with the others, and and that kind of duality.
I mean, now now I think about it, that duality,
I guess became quite important to me. But I never
really felt like I really fitted into that world either,
to be completely honest with you, like I I wasn't
a theater kid, I wasn't a film kid. I found

(22:29):
a lot of the kind of mentalities of that very
very jarring. Indeed, you know, like, Wow, we're going to
make you a star, and oh, you're gonna be so famous,
and know it's lots of money and all, you know,
and that stuff just wasn't That wasn't it for me.
It wasn't exciting at all. I wanted to do stuff
that I that I was engaged by. You were basically
the first generation where these tools are natural. Okay, many

(22:50):
people the music business they were doing analog recording. Maybe
they had a digital recorder, but moving to pro tools,
moving to logic was a big up and they took
the mentality that they had from the analog imported it
to digital. Whereas this is natural, a great percentage of
this audience has never been in a recording studio, which
at this point, into a great degree is at home.

(23:13):
Can you explain a little bit to them how logic
works and what that enabled you to do? Definitely, that's
a great question. Um logic is a canvas for sounds,
and it's a two D environment where you can place
elements onto a canvas where one access is time and
the other access is is your list of ingredients. And

(23:33):
so say, for example, I have a logic session with
ten tracks in it. And when I say a track,
it's like a vertical row of sound or something that
represents sounds. So I might have one track which is
based guitar, and another track which is electric guitar, and
another track which is um, you know, snare, and a
track which is kicked, and maybe two tracks which are
my my left and right overhead mike friends for the drums,

(23:54):
and then maybe I'll have say five or six tracks
of vocals where ones a lead vocal track, and then
the others there are anyones are backing vocal tracks or
other things, and I might have like a sort of
SFX track, like a for you know, when all these
kinds of sounds or whatever whatever, you know, kind of
comes into my head. And so I guess in that respect,
it's quite similar to what you could say is like
an analog approach to building things up, you know, step

(24:16):
by step by step. But what logic does, which I
guess that doesn't do, is, first of all, it works
at great speed. Well, it works at add as fast.
It works as fast as as as you can go
as a person, pretty much always fast as your your
CPU allowed. Um. And so you know, if I imagine,
for example, right now, I think, oh, I can hear
in my mind, or if I'm working on a song,
might I think, you know what I want to I
want to hear like a gospel choir. It's like, okay,

(24:37):
well then I'll make it sixty tracks and I'll seeing
all the voices of the gospel choir. And at the
first time I tried that, it sounded horrendous, and then
I figured out, okay, so I need to turn the
game down a bit because it's distorting, or need to
put a compressor on it so that it doesn't feel
over the top, and I can control it. And so
with logic you can do things like put a number
of tracks inside a group of tracks, and and so

(24:58):
almost like make it into a folder like a a subgroup,
and then you can apply to that subgroup all sorts
of audio effects. So, for example, you can edit the
EQ of the track. And when I say EQ, I
sort of mean like a frequency graph where the high
frequencies are on the right and the low frequencies are
on the left. And so say I'm recording a vocal,
but I wanted to sound really like sparkly, you know,

(25:18):
like like an area on a grande lead, Then I
would crank right up the high end of that vocal
and it would sound really sparkly. Or if I wanted
it to be like have how much of low and
I would turn up the lowan And so you know,
a lot of the time, when I was a teenager,
I was touching this stuff. At the first time, I
didn't have a clue what compressed was. It never clue
what a limited was, or what knee or threshold or ratio.
All this stuff but I was messing around with them
and just kind of tangibly finding my way through. And

(25:41):
you learn what what reverb does, and then you learn
what delay does and the differentiation between those two, and
then you learn about sending a track to a bus,
and then the bus can, say, for example, be a
set of plug ins. And and so I guess it
almost encouraged me to think in a in a musical sense,
it encouraged me to think in layers, encouraged me to
to visualize my music in this kind of as a

(26:02):
as these these vertical structures of sound with no limits.
And then another amazing thing about logic is that it's
got a bunch of stock sounds which are actually pretty
pretty killing. You know. So if I if I want
to hear like a timpany, if it's like did you
and I think like, oh, timpany, probably cool. You know.
I listened to pet sounds and I think, oh, slave bells,
what what let's pull, you know, pull pull the material

(26:23):
from my imagination. There will be a timpany. There will
be a slave in logic. That might sound a little
bit middy, but it would it will probably sound pretty realistic.
And what it gave me as a teenager, and what
it still gives me today is the opportunity to deeply
explore what's possible, completely regardless of what's normal. And so
I would be combining all sorts of unusual sounds, you know,

(26:44):
like banjo, but I'll put boundo through a guitar amp
or kick drum, but I had an infinite reverb to it,
and then I side chain that to us you know,
all these other things. And I didn't think it was
particularly odd at the time. I thought, well, this is
what I've got, and I'm going to start playing with it,
in the same way that if you give a child
lean or a piano, they go, okay, what does this
thing do? Bing bing bing? Okay, I kind of understand
the materials. I'm bored or I'm not bored, you know.

(27:06):
And so what logic was was good for for me
was thinking it was it was so infinite and so
encouraging to me in the sense that pretty much, if
I imagine something in my mind and whatever, you know,
in whatever degree of resolution I was familiar with at
that point, you know how how much resolution my understanding had,
you know, how much depth it had or whatever, I

(27:28):
could pretty much bring it to life. You know, I
want to be in a big space, want to be
in a small space. That's reither. I want to hit
really hard on the on the stub, that's EQ. Or
I want to sparkle, that's eq or you know, add
a decoration or make it sound weird or distort it
or whatever. And these words were kind of completely unfamiliar
at first. But through playing, just playing with logic with
no expectations, no guidance, no particular assignments, it was just

(27:51):
a sense of learning how exciting it was to just
to create, just for the sake of purely creation. One
of the great things about these computer platforms is editing
in loops are so much easier than on analog. You
don't have to literally slice the tape and figure out
where on the tape. To what degree did you take
advantage of that process? Um a lot. I would say

(28:15):
looping was a particular thing that existed that I saw online.
People would do live looping gigs, you know, and it
would be like, oh, you know, play four bars on
the guitar and now I'm can add drums or whatever.
That always that to me always felt slightly limited. But
but I love to be able to copy and paste
and cut. You know. It's like you think about Microsoft
Word and you think, Okay, I'll sketch out an idea
here for a paragraph and move on to the next paragraph,
and then I'll realize that I need a bit of

(28:36):
the first idea for the second and you go, you know,
you you cut and paste, and oh it's just brilliant.
I loved it. I loved the ease of it. Okay. Now,
first the standard was pro Tools, then Apple purchase Logic.
What is really the difference, and why would you prefer
one or the other. That's a good question. Um, Well,

(28:57):
pro Tools is slight. I would probably say pro Tools
is slightly more powerful if you're editing purely audio, but
Logic is powerful for most other things. So Logic is
much more customizable. For example, So one thing I love
about Logic is that you can change the keyboard shortcuts
to do whatever you want. And so I, for example,
have along the numbers all of the tools that I
use most often, so cart and fade and splice and whatever,

(29:18):
and I like I like being able to to to
customize that. I think that's a fantastic feature. Um. Logic
is also pretty good for MIDI. And when I say middy,
I mean you know I mentioned the timpani and the
and the sleigh bells and these instruments that aren't real
I can play those things in into logic in a
way that's I think far easier than my experience with
pro tools has been. You can do it in pro Tools,
but essentially they're they're pretty similar. You know, there are

(29:40):
two different outlets of the same idea, which is, how
do you give someone a set of tools to record
and sculpt audio in a digital environment? So how do
you end up going to music school? Huh? Um? I was.
I was a little doubtful about going to musicool at all.

(30:02):
I mean I was. I got to the age of
fifteen and I did my g c s c s,
which are the major high school exams in in in Britain,
and I was a bit tall, and I didn't know
whether to stay at that school or to move away,
and part of me kind of felt, I think it's
actually time to move away, um, And so there were
a few different options and I went. I ended up
going to the school called the Purcell School, which is

(30:23):
a school basically for classical musicians. And I really had
my hesitations because I wasn't classical musician. I wasn't really
thinking I would particularly fit in, but there was a
lot of appeal, particularly around like what was acceptable to
spend time doing and you know when when you were
sick for more. In Britain you have free periods and
you have time off and whatever. And at the Perseel
School there were rooms filled with computers with logic on them,

(30:45):
can you imagine? So I could go right straight from
you know, straight from my English literature class, straight onto
logic and skept something out. And the other thing that
was cool by that school, whether there were a few things,
but one was that there were always musicians around to
to try stuff out. So if I wanted to try
my hand at right in a piece for violin and
piano or I could do that. Or if I wanted
to write pro right piece for choir, which is really
like the thing I was most interested in was writing

(31:06):
for voices, I could give it a shot and there
it was all. There would always be a choir there
to be like, yeah, we'll give it a go, like
we haven't got anything else to do. And so I
enjoyed the ease of that. I found the kind of that.
I found the lack of focus on academia difficult to
make the transition to because I loved using my mind, um,
you know, with languages especially. I loved I studied German.

(31:27):
I loved that so much. I loved English, and I
love stretching my understanding and analyzing things and talking about things,
and and so I found that the psychology at the
Personal School was was far removed from that. It wasn't
an academic place, and so that the sort of intellectual
speed of my mind found it a little bit kind
of just a little dry. But I loved just the
space and time that I was gifted just to explore,

(31:49):
you know. It was like more space to explore, more
time to explore, more outlets to explore. And that was
also the moment that I first kind of became interested
in jazz. And I heard jazz before, but but I
at that point I was crushing on harmony, like big time,
like musical harmony, like chords, and what cause could do?
I just I was losing my mind over acapella groups
like Take six and Singers Unlimited and all these amazing

(32:11):
you know, high lows and and all that stuff. And
I was thinking man, this is this is amazing. And
I listened to groups like you know, Steely Dan and
and and people like that, you know, using these vocal
stacks and stuff, and it was acceptable to me. I thought, okay,
so that must be acceptable to write pop songs, to
write you know, groovy song like the songwriting including this language.

(32:31):
But I I was drawn into into the excuse me,
into the jazz world through my kind of thirst to
learn more about musical harmony and what I learned about
about jazz coming into it really from from cold, like
I didn't know any tunes. I had no technique on
the piano at all. When you when you play the piano,
it turns out it's actually helpful too. So when you're
when you're playing a scale, to move your thumb underneath
your fingers instead of just hopping up and down with

(32:53):
your hand. You actually it's a fluid motion. I've never
been shown that because I've never went to went to school,
I never learned. So there a few a few kind
of key moments for me, some some lessons, like one
off lessons I had with piano players who said like, hey, Jacob,
you know it's possible to do this, don't you or like,
have you ever considered this particular thing? And I was
so thirsty, I was so excited, and so jazz was
a place that was very mysterious to me. But the

(33:15):
cool thing about it was that people were improvising, which
I loved the idea of people were playing chords, which
I love the idea, but they were playing the chords
in a in a melodic way. So it wasn't like
cord cord chord. It was you know, a better better
if they haven't never did, and that's the chord. But
you have to understand that in a kind of vertical

(33:36):
way rather than a horizontal way. And so you had
these musicians who were improvising chords over time and space.
And then obviously I realized that this language has been
is about a hundred years old, and people have been
you know, exploring and expanding this for yeah, for literally
a hundred years, you know, from sort of Scott job
playing all the way up to miles and the way
up to you know, to to to the present day.

(33:56):
And that there's so many kind of eras and so
many magical spaces that that language has has operated. And
I was I was kind of hooked for a couple
of years. So when I joined the Personal School, I'm
trying to think. I think it was the first study composer,
which which I really felt out of place because everyone
was talking about counterpoint and bark and notation and I
was talking about logic and mixing and songwriting. And then

(34:18):
I was the second study jazz piano player, and again
it was like, I don't know if I'm really a
jazz piano player. I sure like the idea of playing
the piano in a cool way, and I thought I
was the third study singer and a fourth study double
bass player. And so I had this great, big tiered
system where I would go to these lessons and some
of them I I just didn't get at all, and
I was very bored, and some of them were really
changed my life. And I was just given a chance

(34:40):
to to kind of explore. And what it felt like
to me was that I was already chasing stuff. I
was already fascinated by a language. So what that space
named me to do was just to extract the things
that I liked. It was like, Okay, I get that
I'm in school. I get that there are certain box
have to take, but aside from that, in Jacob Land.
I think I'll use this chord and this called inn,

(35:00):
this agorithm, and I like the idea of polarizing of
whatever here, and I like this piece of and I
was just I just collected, you know, I collected it
in in a conscious way, things that I was enjoying. Okay,
people would say, and many do, the jazz is dead.
They say rock is dead. To someone who is a
relatively young consumer under the age of thirty, how do

(35:22):
you sell jazz to them? I'm talking about Jacob, I'm
not talking about literally in the store. How do you
get them excited about this sound? I've got two answers
to that question. I guess the first would be that
in jazz more is possible than in any other genre
you could say genre, because I think that what jazz
celebrates is a sense of freedom. It celebrates freedom thematically,

(35:45):
it celebrates freedom musically, that celebrates music. It's freedom cerebrally,
celebrates freedom spiritually if you really listen to the music
and listen to the stories behind it. Um And I
think that for anyone who's wanting to learn what music
is about, out and understand a little bit more about
the kind of the art of of what these forces

(36:05):
can do. I think you start with jazz, and my
dear friend Quincy Jones often says jazz is the classical
music of pop, which I like, and I often use
that because I think that in a certain kind of way.
You know, if you learn class music, you grow up
in classical music. It kind of ends in class of music.
But if you learn, if you learn about pop music
and you want to go deep, you want to go thorough,
jazz is the place to be because that's the umbrella

(36:26):
underwe all of those forces make sense. In jazz. You
learn about pocket, you learn about groove, you learn about time,
you learn about improvisation and stretching things, you learn about
chords and melody, you learn about integrity and taste and
and patients and all all this all the tools that
you need to be a to be a musician kind
of in many different respects. You can take that training
out that's on the playing side. On the listening side,

(36:48):
many people will say this is discord and I don't
understand it. How does a listener gain knowledge and find
this music appealing? Well, I think perhaps it's about letting
go of the idea that you need to understand it
to enjoy it. Um. I think if if people are
used to understanding music on face value, which would make sense.

(37:09):
You know, you listen to the radio and it's like
someone will be singing about something that you can probably
relate to and and doing it in a way musically
that where there are kind of primary colors or I
think things are clear. That's one of the reasons I
love pot music so much because it's so clear, and
jazz is almost like the opposite of that. But I
think that there's a real liberation in letting go of
needing to follow it and just kind of feeling it,

(37:31):
which is important. And I think that there's a lot
of catharsis that exists within the world of jazz um
you know, from from really kind of completely free jazz
with no time two quite quite organized structure jazz within
you know, ultimately defined spaces, which is which is glorious
and I think which can teach you more about humanity

(37:52):
and the human condition and what it really means to
be a person than than listening to a kind of
manufactured storytelling style, even though that's also importan and I
just think it's a it's an important part of the
of the musical world to understand, and I think it's
wonderful when you kind of let go of it a bit. Okay,
So how long do you go to school? How does
school end? Well? I was at the Post School for
two years um and the sort of natural progression of

(38:14):
events from there was I went to the Royal Academy Music,
which is where my mom did that conducting when I
was two years old. And actually her father, Derek Colin,
my my grandfather, he taught there too. He was the
youngest ever professor at the Academy. So I was super
excited to go there. It's like, wow, this feels like
I'm continuing a lineage or a legacy of sorts. And
I went there as a as a jazz piano student,

(38:34):
and I had again, I had a dicostomy. Do I
want to study composition or do I want to study jazz?
And composition felt kind of quite high high, kind of
highbrow and not very tangible, but it was interesting to me.
But jazz felt like I was going to do something physical,
like I'm gonna play, I'm gonna learn, I'm gonna meet,
I'm gonna jam. So jazz was what I decided to do.

(38:55):
And it was a four year degree. It's a tiny
course there was I mean, there were eight people in
my year and that was a big gear. So I
was the only piano player in the whole year. And
we learned standards, and we learned about improvising. We learned
a little bit about arranging, and we learned about rhythm
and stuff. And at this point, I was, I was
so engaged in my own world that I was. I

(39:17):
guess I was caught between these two different psychologies because
on the one hand, I was so thirsty and ready
to learn. But I found a lot of the harmony
that I was being taught to be not particularly inspiring.
And I found a lot of the structures that existed,
like the jazz structures, Like we learned the two and
then we improvised, then we come back. I thought, like,
why does this language need to apply to only jazz?
You know, why can't I take a chord, like a
spicy chord and apply that to something else? And that

(39:39):
my mind has always worked like that. But I was,
I was interested in it, and it was it was
cool to meet people and to play with people, and
you know, it was just a fascinating time in my life.
And halfway through that degree, things got kind of much
crazier with with the videos I was up learned to YouTube,
and kind of throughout the last I suppose three years

(40:00):
of the story where we've got to in the story,
I was I was uploading, you know, YouTube videos from home. Things,
I was making, things I was interested in I would like,
I want. What I love to do most was to
was to take someone's song that I liked to just
twist it and reinvent it and and and you know,
arrange it, really cover it. And so I did that
with a few different songs, and one of those was
Stevie Wonders Don't You Worry About a Thing, which I

(40:21):
love that tune, and I did this this you know
Jacobean twist on it and and the chords were all
all funny and twisted and complex and deepen and an
unusual and then I played a few different instruments too,
and and things, and it was it was a real
challenge for me because I've never done anything remotely like
that before. But I thought, this is gonna be fun.
I'm gonna learn something from doing this. And I filmed

(40:42):
it too, and this that was another thing I was
just starting to do, was I put film each instrument.
I filmed the base, and I filmed the guitar and
the percussion, all the different Jacob voice faces, and I
put them in this mosaic and and then I pressed upload.
The day after I uploaded, don't worry about a thing.
Was just it's just crazy because I woke up and
it was like a hundred thousand people have senior video Jacob,

(41:02):
and you know, I went into Gmail and it was
like Quincy Jones, you know, an email from Quincy Jones.
I thought, God, that's just is that even real? You know?
Is someone is someone messing with me deeply? Or is
this actually Quincy Jones? And I wrote back and it
was Quincy Jones and we got on Skype and we
hung out a little bit, which is which is super cool.
And I got an email from Herbie Hancock and email

(41:24):
from from Tick six. So I mentioned and a few
a few people that were just very important figures for me,
especially with it that jazz moment of my life. But
someone like Quincy had defined, you know, basically at that
point up to up to two decades of musical education
from his work with arranging for Frank Sinatra to you know,
producing m J. And I mean, it's just so many
different things that that he had had his hand him

(41:46):
and so it was amazing to meet Quincy. And that
was all happening in my second year at the Academy.
And so at the end of my second year at
the Academy, I had this kind of decision to make
because this career of mine was kind of taking off
and I hadn't planned the career. I hadn't planned to
have a big career anything. I just thought I was
making stuff I liked and and suddenly it was like
there was this great, big adventure to be had, and
it was like come over to La because there's this
thing that we like you to do, or come over here.

(42:07):
I'd like took you to work with me. And so
at the end of my second year, I bowed out
of the Academy and I started to full time tackle
this this thing. And from that moment on, man, it's
it's been pretty pretty NonStop. Okay, when you did this,
when you shot the initial video for Don't You Worry
About a Thing, did you literally was at a one

(42:28):
man b and you both shot it and played it
or do you have anybody else helping you? It was me, okay,
it was you know, you're of the generation prior to
uploading that. Were you uploading in your life other videos?
Were you a social media guy? Not at all. No,
I really didn't like social media at all. Um, And yeah,

(42:51):
the whole thing was was was funny because on the
one hand, like I've never really I've had a little
bit of of a of an a version of sorts
to people who just try and sell themselves all the time.
It's just like, ah, I don't know, I don't know
if I really like that. And I felt that when
I was eight years old going to audition for these
films and operas and it would be like these these
kids with their mothers and they'll be like, oh my
son's this and that, and oh we is big and important.

(43:13):
I you just done this. It's just like, wow, I
don't care, Like I don't want to know. I don't
that's not my currency at all. Like it's great, but
but like what is it? What's the thing? Like the
thing is what I'm interested in. And so social media
for me was odd because on the one hand, I've
always loved connecting with people and it's something that brings
me a great amount of joy and a great amount
of purpose. But I never really liked the sense of

(43:33):
kind of like YouTubers, you know, the currency of YouTube.
It's like, hey, you know, I'm me and I'm living
my life and you're a part of it. And so
I kind of kept a lot of my world completely
private from social media. And it was more just kind
of like, here's the thing I made, and here's another
thing I made, and there's another thing I made. And
I didn't really I didn't feel the need to unpack
it or talk about it or sell it. I mean,
I posted these things once on Facebook and that was it,

(43:55):
you know, and between I know that, between don't you
know about a thing? And that my next video was
snating rhythm, it was I think eight months and I
didn't post once once at all, and I just thought,
I don't need to. I've got nothing, there's nothing particularly
to say, you know, I don't feel they need to
engage people. I just I want to focus on what
I'm doing. Okay, how many times you do you you uploaded

(44:16):
to YouTube anything, whether it be you making a joke,
you're playing football. Before were you YouTube savvy? Before you
put up don't you Worry about a thing? I think
I was about eight videos deep, or so eight or
nine videos deep, and there were each iterations of a
of a similar concept. But you know that. Yeah. I
did a couple of kind of interesting, odd electronic things

(44:38):
at first, and then I started doing the multiple face thing.
And I arranged I've told every Little Start, which is
a Jerome Current tune, And then I arranged Isn't She Lovely?
Which is a Stevie tune, and and I arranged I
saw three ships, and I arranged um over a beautiful morning,
and and and a few of the things that but
don't You Worry was the first time it kind of
struck a chord. I suppose, Okay, do you have any

(44:59):
idea what caused a hundred thousand people to watch it
was just purely viral or did someone famous pick up
on it? Or was it listed as you know, video
of the day somewhere. Um well, I'm still not exactly sure,
but I think that what I sensed, very keenly was
that this wasn't just kind of like random people. It

(45:21):
was musicians who are listening to it. It felt I
felt like I tapped into some kind of musicians community worldwide,
where something about the way that I was sharing the
ideas and the musical choices I was making, that was
the thing that I think took people by surprise. And
I didn't really plan that, and I didn't think too
much of it myself, because it was, as far as

(45:41):
I was concerned, it was, you know, a fully up
to date Jacob understanding of music, like this is my
understanding music. This is just this is where I'm at.
This is nothing spectacular other than what I'm thinking. But
I think that specifically the harmony in that particular arrangement
was was quite bold. And I know for I know
for example that when I spoke to Intae, his first
question where his first question was how many girlfriends you've got?

(46:03):
And I said twenty seven and he was like, oh
really man. And then the second question was where'd you
get those chords? And I sort of, you know, it's Quincy.
I thought, I don't know Benjamin Britain because I kind
of got the from Bendorm of Britain in some ways.
And I said, oh, take six five, and I checked
out a couple of names, and he like laughed and
he was like, man, I don't. I don't know how
you did it. I don't. I don't know how you
got to those conclusions like it's just mind blowing, man,

(46:25):
it's crazy. And and that was really validating for me because,
as I said, harmony was so important to me, and
I really really loved it, and I loved pushing it
and it felt like the musicians of the world sensed
something in that video. But but and part of it
was a musical thing. I think maybe part of it
was also just a style of communication, which at that
time it wasn't particularly rife. You know, like you had
people doing split screen videos sometimes, but they were kind

(46:47):
of comedy people or or they were you know, it
was it was like a different a different currency, whereas
I think I was doing something that was sort of
purely musical. It wasn't trying to be anything more than
just musical. And my feeling is, and I'm probably not
right past to ask, but my feeling is that something
about that as a statement, as a pure statement, struck
some kind of chord with with people. Okay, how long

(47:09):
after that initial time you're hearing from Q before you
put out your first album in my room? Mm hm,
three years? I suppose. So what happens in their three
year period. Well, um, I went over to Montrose, Switzerland
to the Jazz Festival, and I don't know if you've
been there, that's just beautiful, beautiful place. And Quincy kind
of rules the roost. He is kind of like king

(47:29):
of montro And so I went over there to meet
to to meet the great man, and I met Herbie too,
and Quincy, you know, Quincy what was just so excited
about what I was doing, and he kind of offered
to be my my manager and to represent in terms
of management. And I was extremely flattered and and really thrilled.
And I was also a little uncertain because I've always

(47:51):
done things kind of in my own time and on
my own terms, and I I really was not about
to say like, yeah, I'm going to go and be
a big star. I knew that I needed to just
do what I wanted to do. And so, you know,
I met Quincy's team, who were just amazing people, and
I got to know them a little bit more, and
the kind of consensus that we came to was like,
let's just be friends for a year before we sign

(48:11):
any contracts, before we do anything. I just want to
I just want to explore the thing. I want to
take time, I want to get I want to I
want to refine what I'm doing and and they were,
they were amazing about that, and they really gave me
a space. But you know, things started to come in,
like I scored a commercial for Beats, which was really
exciting at that time, and um, I I started to
think about how I would tour um and even before

(48:32):
in my room, I was thinking about at a tour
and I was, I was gifted this concert, this gig
that that Quincy kind of orchestrated for me. That was
I was. I opened up much of justice will for
Herbie Handcock and Chick Career two just giants, legends and
heroes of mine. And I had this thirty minute window
and it was like, Jake, if you want to come
to montro and open up for these guys in some way,
And I said, yeah, I'd love to, but I have

(48:53):
not a clue I'm going to do this. And you know,
we we we spoke as a team like what what
could we do it? I could bring a band over,
I did not. I did not want to bring a
jazz band. I didn't want to be a jazz kid.
I didn't want to do do the jazz thing. I
didn't want to to do that, and I thought I
could play on my own on the piano, but I
thought there must be something more dynamic I can do
that could that could kind of reflect more of my process,

(49:13):
you know, one man band type process. And out of
the blue drops a Facebook message from an m I
T PhD student whose name is Ben Bloomberg, and Ben says,
hey just saw your video. Don't you worry about a thing?
And I think it's beautiful. And I make stuff. You know,
I work with the Orc, I've worked with Image and Heap,
I work with okay Go, and I built I built

(49:35):
a robot opera for a composer called Todd Mcover. And
you know, I like building stuff. And have you ever
thought a boy building stuff? And if you have, like,
give me a call. Let's jump on Skype. And it
was one of those crazy moments where it's like, Wow,
this is exactly what I need to be doing right now.
So Ben, when I jumped on Skype, we had like
a five hour marathon thing, and I had lists and
lists and lists of stuff I had always wanted to
build from, you know, intelligent harmonic systems, to tiered rhythmic

(49:57):
manipulation tools, to a one man's show with the circle
of instruments, to a vocal harmonizer where I could sing
harmonies and play notes and out would come the harmonies.
And Ben was Ben was really amazing, and he said,
you know what, let's just start with the harmonizer and
see how it feels. So I flew over to Boston
a few months later, and a few things happened in
that trip. One was I did my first ever master
class at Berkeley, which is a school of music in Boston,

(50:21):
and it was it was the first time I've ever
seen anyone ever in the real world who was a
fan of mine. I've never seen anything like it because
it was all invisible from here from London. It was
like this random thing that was happening in a different universe.
And and the day before I went to Boston, I
got a call from someone at Berkeley said, I heard
you're coming to Boston, that you want to come to
a class and be like guessing people together. And I
got in that room and like the entire room was

(50:43):
packed so full that none could breathe, and it's spilled
out into the corridor and all along the thing, and
I was completely unexpected. I mean, you have to understand,
I had no I had no reference point for what
the real world was like. I'd never even traveled abroad
on my own, Like, this is my first flight alone
away from home. And I did this class and it
felt crazy to have people that kind of spoke my
language that were interested in I went to see them.

(51:05):
We built this vocal harmonizer. It was amazing. He's a brilliant,
brilliant minded guy. M We then sort of graduated that
idea into this one man show which we started to build.
And essentially what that was was a circle musical instruments
with with loopers that connected them, so you had a
double bass of grand piano, you had percussion, keyboards, melodica, guitar,
Me and my vocal harmonies are at the center. And

(51:28):
that that show was kind of sketched out for this
Montro gig. And that was in July of two thousand
and fifteen, I believe, And so I went over to Montro.
That's only five years ago, I suppose, but I went
over over there and I did the gig. I did
that the thirty minute gig, and we've never even run
the show through. It was such a last minute thing,
and it was really really really exciting and completely new.
I haven't even really done gigs before. It's kind of

(51:50):
like my first gig, you know. And so I went
there and I experienced that feeling of like three thousand people,
no one knew who I was, and and and it
was it was crazy. And there was Quincy Jones her
handcocked chick career, and Rashida Jones just sitting on the
side of the stage just kind of looking and it
was just a crazy moment, you know, really really crazy moment.
And from that moment onwards, it kind of flipped and

(52:11):
suddenly I think I felt like I had something to do,
and so I did. I did some gigs, I did
more gigs, I traveled just in different places, and we
put together a little bit of a touring crew for
the one man show. We we designed a visual element
to it too, where there were these two connect cameras
xbox cameras which captured my three D skeletal movements and
so when I looped something, I would step away from
an instrument and you'd have a Jacob incarnation on stage

(52:32):
playing that instrument in visual loop to go with what
you were hearing. So it's this kind of audio visual thing,
and it was it was super fun. And one year
later I released Him in My Room, the album which
I made over the course of about three months between
those two summers, and those are kind of like my
first songs, and it was really gratifying and really exciting,
and I learned times from it, and and so it

(52:54):
was this thing where it's like, well, I guess I've
got fans, I guess I've got an album. I guess
I've got a show. I may as well be I
may as well be having a career. And so I
went on tour, and I toured from July one, which
was the Daily album, dropped to the end of What
I Guess with the One Man Show, and about mid

(53:16):
teen I I was kind of excited about what I
might do next, what I might create next, um, and
there all sorts of things that happened kind of between,
but between these times I'm mentioning, but I had this
idea that whatever I did next, I wanted to be
in some way collaborative, because this was fun and everything,
the one man show thing. But after a while it
was a little bit exhausting because it was like I

(53:37):
couldn't really play. I couldn't really be a musician too much.
I could be a I kind of you know. I
ran around playing all the stuff and nailing it. And
I was most excited by the audiences because I started
to play the audiences a little bit and learn what
what that felt like and learn what kind of people
they were musicians they were. But I think after a
couple of years, I was a bit exhausted by it.
So I came back and I thought, whatever I do next,

(53:57):
it's got to be something collaborative, and it's gonna be
something big. And then that's what led me into the
whole realm of the kind of quadruple album which became
Jesse Okay. A couple of things. Adam Fell, who runs
the label you're on, he would tell me, oh, Jacob's
fans are really passionate. This is even you know before

(54:19):
Jesse Okay, how did you gain the fan base or
did you just you know, show up Because normally, unless
you have radio play whatever you you could say you
want to go into it, but no one comes. Um
It's it's hard to say. I think I think there
was probably something, and again I'm probably the wrong post
to us, but I think there was something in what
I was doing in spirit which connected with people in

(54:42):
a sense that I wasn't trying to be a pop star.
I wasn't trying to gain fans. I wasn't trying to
sell records. I was kind of just committed to getting
as good as I get doing the thing I was doing,
and I wanted to deepen it. And so I feel
like the musician community trusted that in a certain kind
of way because they knew that it was quite something

(55:03):
about it was real and quite pure in a sense
like it wasn't I wasn't. I wasn't trying to sell myself.
I kind of never have tried to sell myself too much.
It was just a sense of I want to do
something that feels right, and something about that I think
gradually started to connect with people. And you know, I
look back now and I think my first fans were musicians,
and I would do gigs and it would be like
musicians and be like, well, this is this is kind

(55:24):
of niche and cool and for me great fun because
they speak the language, so I can make jokes and
they're laugh musical jokes, and I can take them places,
I can defy their expectations, and there's this unspoken understanding.
And then after my room came out, I sensed this
kind of widening circle, which I thinks. I guess it's
always had musicians at the center of it in in
a sense, but I think something about the kind of

(55:46):
the spirit of it and and the fact that it
was just that I've always do. I've always been committed
to being myself and that's been the most important thing
um and I've always been willing to share part of
that process with the world. I think part of that
connected to people. One thing that I think was a
turning point for my fan base was one moment after
a gig in Chicago on February the Febuen for recall,

(56:09):
two days after the grammar is the first time I
want two Grammars, which is crazy, and a fan of
mine took me aside after the gig and said, hey,
I transcribed all of your arrangements and I said, wow,
that's crazy, and he showed me the transcriptions. They were
like ridiculously accurate, and I thought something, this guy's this
guy is really amazing, And I said Hey, can I
ask you like ten minutes worth questions just about music?

(56:29):
And I said, yeah, sure, it's like can I film
it setually? Sure? And he says, hey, Jacob, what's um
what super ultra hyper mega meta lidian and I've made
this art. It's like a concept I've made up. I thought,
like I made up the concept. I said, well, June,
it's it's the concept of superimposing multiple lidian modes on
top of others. And it feels really bright and it
feels really alien, but it makes sense because it's grounded

(56:51):
and the fundamental and so what's the fundamental? Said? The
fundamental is this and said, hey, Jacob, was negative harmony?
I said, well, negative harmony is It's a principle that
I come across when I was at school, and it
was the idea that you could invert all harmony across
an axis and it would become a like an alternate
way of of of hearing and staying the harmony. That
was a foreign thing. And I explained these things to him,

(57:14):
and I kind of, I guess in human terms, it
was like, this is not rocket science, this is not
physics and crazy. This is just human stuff. It's just
like high resolution emotional stuff. And so we spoke about
all these kind of nerdy concepts and I felt great.
I mean, it was cool to have someone who asked
me the questions. That video made a big impact on
the musicians community around the world. It seemed it had
a million views within a couple of months, and and

(57:36):
I think that people connected. Not the thing that I
was interested in seeing the comment to that video that
made me think was that it wasn't musicians who are
connecting to it, just it was also people who are
who are listening to the things I was saying as
well as the things I was playing. And off the
back of that video, I got a call from Ted
to come and do a Ted talk, and I also
got a call from Wired magazine to come and do it.

(57:57):
They were doing a series about this. You know, you
might have seen some of these five Tiers five five
Levels of Understanding videos. So would be someone will come in,
like an astrophysics expert and say, okay, this is astro
physics but explained to a six year old, thirteen year old,
eighteen year old PhD student and like master. And so
they asked me to do this with Harmony, which obviously
I was very excited to do. So I came in

(58:17):
and did that, and and that video that very brought
in a lot of people, which is which is very
very cool. And I think that what I realized was
that I was building a sense of trust between me
and my audience where people would trust me in my
creations more than they would trust how much they liked
or understood the music I was making, because there was

(58:40):
a dialogue that I was interested in and opening up
four people about what music is and how it fits
together and and and what drives it and why the
concept why these kind of like heady concepts, theory concepts
which means nothing without musicality behind them, why and how
they can be applied in ways that are cool and
makes sense and a groovy and kind of hip. And
so there was this rush, this influx of people who

(59:03):
had always been thirsty to kind of get interested in music.
And obviously primarily this is musicians, but it really energized
that community when I started to talk. And I think
that the moment I started to talk, it stopped being
about the music. It started being about the person in
a certain kind of way. And so I would tour,
I would travel, and I would and I would talk
and I would play, and in a certain kind of

(59:24):
a way, there was a sort of freedom that I
was operating within where I wasn't planning much. I wasn't thinking,
you know, what, what would be great is if I
if I build a campaign, I make an album that's
just like this, and it fits into this nation, We'll
get players in here, and then this person. It was
more kind of like, let's just you know, let's let's
imagine that genres just don't exist for a second, and
let's imagine that the music industry doesn't exist for a second.

(59:46):
Let's just do something that is real and and that
is meaningful to me. Because in my mind, if I
think about what successes for me, success is just sustainability. Really,
it's being able to do what I want to do
for a long period of time and have people you know,
be there for that and and and help guide it.
And so I think that to answer it's a long
rambling answer, but to answer you a question, I think that, Um,

(01:00:10):
I think that I've noticed a trust that exists around
the way I think about music, which permeates the music
I make and the music that I talk about, and
the music that I learn from um and I think
that with the with the Jesse project, what I wanted
to do was to stretch as much as I could
open my my kind of genre space, to encompass whatever

(01:00:31):
kind of music you were into, Like, there will be
something you might like that that might encourage you to
jump on the train that is that the you know,
the Jesse train. So Volume one was a very orchestral
album and it wasn't remotely classical. Well it was, I
supposed remotely classical, but there were so many other things
going on, but it felt like an orchestral album. Volume
two was more of a folk album, and Volume three,
I guess you could says it's an R and B

(01:00:53):
album or a little bit more of a pop apum
or electronic album. And I guess maybe maybe the thing
that's been a value to people, and certainly I would
say musicians, is the is the kind of fearless approach
to making something just for the sake of making it
rather than for the sake of anything else, and just
kind of writing that out and seeing where it ends up.
And I don't know where I was going to end
up at all, but that that's the kind of thing

(01:01:13):
that I've been committing to Okay, a couple of things. Uh,
someone who goes to your show would be stunned by
the then participation. You're you direct the audience to do
certain things. How did you develop that? I will never
forget two YouTube videos that really inspired me to do that. Well,

(01:01:34):
I guess three things. First of me, my mom conducting
because that was my first understanding that of what music
should be. So I think that stayed with me. Two
is Bobby McFerrin in the eighties did these spontaneous inventions
gigs with just on his own with the mic and
he would just do crazy stuff and it just be
be weird and wacko and get the audience to be
his accompanying figure, or he would accompany the audience. And

(01:01:55):
that to me was like, Wow, I can't believe that's possible.
I company you can get away of doing that. And
then and then I saw Freddie Mercury at Live Aid
with his corner response thing, and I think it's after
the first song he just said he was like what
and then the audience goes because he puts the microphone
their face and he goes who blaa, and he was
going and I thought like Wow, that's crazy. That's so crazy,
you know, that's so cathartic. And I'd love to try that,

(01:02:17):
you know. So last year when I went on the road, Um,
I did it. I started my show with that wo
wow wow, you know. And I guess that there are
there are blessings and curses to having a musician heavy
firm base, but one of the blessings is that those
guys can hold a key. And so when I realized this,
that it was more than just like a corner response
with one line. It became much more of a thing

(01:02:38):
of like at the end of each concept, after the encore,
I would stand at the front of the stage with
no instruments, and I would sing, and I would give
people notes and I would say okay, and I wouldn't
say a word, but I say, I point to say,
one third of the room, and I go and there
we go. And I point to another, you know, another third,
and I say, and they go, and I pointed this
god room. And then I wouldn't I wouldn't saying anything.

(01:03:00):
I would use my fingers up and down and the
notes would move and the harmonies would change, and people
I think people really really kind of responded to that,
and for me, it was like, I give me such
such a crazy feeling, and it's like a you know,
I felt massive and tiny at the same time because
I wasn't doing anything, but they were doing everything. But
somehow I was kind of I was guiding them there.

(01:03:21):
So I was hooked. I was completely hooked on that.
And since then, I've done all sorts of crazy stuff.
I've got people doing some rhythms and I've got people
seeing a different stuff. And and honestly, I think the
important thing with that is is far less the musicianship.
It's more just that it's like a sais of humor.
I guess that that people that people respond to and
a sense of ease. It's like it's almost like I'm
giving people license to be who they are rather than

(01:03:42):
who they need to be by saying just just saying
just just go there, just like just step across the line.
You're welcome, like you're welcome in my space. And and
and that to me is if there's anything I guess
I guess I hope to inspire by by the show.
It's like it's that feeling that you're invited. It's like
this is not an exclusive thing. You don't have to
be anything, you don't have to feel or like anything.

(01:04:04):
You just need to be present and will make music together.
You know. Well, when I saw the last tour in
l a uh, and I saw the things you're talking about.
The people didn't look like musicians. There were musicians there,
Herbie was there, you know, Steve I, etcetera. But the
people that on the floor, they were fans of you,
just like they would be fans of somebody else. So

(01:04:26):
this is the thing, this is the this is the
magical thing. I think. It's like I think everyone's a musician,
that that's the thing, because I think music is just
completely fundamental to being a person. And so all you
need is to give someone license. You don't need to
give someone skill. And I think that if you give
someone license to be a part of something that they

(01:04:46):
will And so yeah, I've I've definitely noticed that it
doesn't have to be musicians who sing. But it's it's
the energy that's the special thing. It's not oh yeah,
you're out of tune. No no you're not. You're not
you're not welcome here. It's more like, you know, if
you're a musician, then then you'll carry the the non musicians.
If you're a non musician, then you'll carry the people
who aren't singing. And there's a sense of community about
it and a sense of unearthing a a primal energy

(01:05:08):
which I've I've loved and I honestly I've been bowled
over by by by how far it's come away from
the musicians thing and how much it just becomes more
of a kind of experience that anyone can have. Okay,
so why the name Jesse? Why four albums? Because music
history is littered with people say, oh, this is a series,

(01:05:30):
I'm gonna do X number and they never complete it.
And you're also kind of boxing yourself into the concept.
So can you talk about that? Yeah, you're absolutely right.
A lot of my friends call me j C. It's
just like a nickname I've had for a decade or so,
and I quite like it, so I've I've adopted it
a little bit, like Hey Jay, see this, Jay, see that?
And this album. It's a kind of it's a kind

(01:05:51):
of self titled exploration, I suppose, but it's not really Jacob.
It's not like Jacob Collio or anything like that. I
wanted to found a sort of spirit at the center
of it, which encapsulated some of the values I've been mentioning.
But it's like, you know, you set someone free in
a world where everything, anything is possible. It's like the
infinite child embodied in a character. Jesse is the character
really so so you know, at first I thought I

(01:06:13):
could call it, you know, worlds or ecosystems or and
all this stime. I was like, that's not it, that's
not something else is going on here. I'm bringing something
to life here that's a part of me in some ways,
and it's also something I don't yet understand. So so
Jesse became that that figure for me. Essentially, Um started
as one album, a massive album, spilled over into a
double album when I realized that I actually had more

(01:06:34):
to say, and then I realized that a double album
would be so compressed in terms of like everything I
was trying to say with it, which is so much.
So it became three albums. It was three albums for
a quite a long time. So you've got the big
acoustic space for in one, small acouse space Forlume two,
and then the kind of negative space Volume three and
four that is great, terrific. I've got a concept, and
I realized that that's not complete, because you need to
come back to where you started to be a good storyteller,

(01:06:56):
and so it's borning. Before I've always kind of held
as the space which would somehow bring the concepts and
the flavors together with which it is doing. And it's
not finished yet, but it's it's quite crazily exciting, so
I guess it. It evolved slowly but surely, and I
planned out not what the music would sound like, but
what the music would feel like. And I knew the
Volume three would get weird, and I knew it would
get dancing and poppy, and I knew the Volume two

(01:07:18):
would be a bit lighter to the touch, and it
would be a bit more sensitive, and it would, you know,
it would feel a certain way. And I knew Volume
one would need to be expansive and broad, and I
knew I wanted to call up some musicians I respect
them and get their help on this because I couldn't
do it alone. And so littered across the albums are
so many musicians that I love and respect, from the
metropol Orchest and and and Lauren Vola to Steve Via
to Liella Havas and Dody and Austin Gari sam amed

(01:07:41):
On and then with Volume three, you've got you know,
Keyana La Day and Mahalia Tyed Dolla Sign and you've
got Tory Kelly and Jesse Rays and t Pain and
and and Daniel Caesar And I think for me, these
are all different. There's so many different kinds of flavors.
And that was always the goal. As I mentioned, that
was always the goal was to do something that was
somehow collaborative. But you know, I'm producing the album on

(01:08:01):
my own. I'm sitting in the same chair I've kind
of always sat in, and so something about that for me,
it's nice. It feels like I'm stretching something that I
understand already, a bit like how I learned the piano.
So I'll take something I kind of know a bit
and I'll drop myself in the deep end of what
that is, and I'll just try and get as deep
into it as I can and and just like have
have a bunch of fun and just so see where
it ends up. Okay, But the albums are recorded sequentially, yeah,

(01:08:25):
to a point. I mean when I was getting started,
I would jump between them all the time. You'd be like, oh,
I'm feeling of vol in three. Day to day, I'm
gonna do something weird, or I'm feeling a gentle day.
I'm gonna vollowing two song today, but voling one. I
did fast because I had a flight, a book to flight.
It's always the best way to set a deadline. I
find this book of Flight. I had a flight to
Holland to record the thing, and so I had four
weeks to write and like write an orchestra and arrange

(01:08:45):
all of the orchestra parts for an entire album, And
so I did it. In January, flew over recorded the album,
and after that I hoped between two and three for
a while. I did a bunch of work on three,
and then I said it came back to two, and
then I finished two and released that one last year,
and then Volume three. At that point it was like
forty demos or something like those, and those of different ideas,
lots of little seeds of experiments and things, and and

(01:09:07):
even right up until about about a week before I
delivered the album, the album was a lot longer than
it than it is now. The album now has twelve songs,
but up until a few days before it was about eighteen,
um but I realized that I think it was important
for me to learn how to call that statement into
something that felt a little bit more cohesive. Um And
so yeah, now what I've got to work on his
volume four, which is a bit weird, but I guess

(01:09:28):
you know, Volume four in some ways is the combination
of all the different flavors. But yeah, I've hot between
the universes a bunch throughout the creation process. Okay, some
of these people are household names, certainly in the Spotify world,
Spotify top fifty, etcetera. Did you call these people call?
Did you have a previous relationship? I mean some people
are jazz rap, Tori Kelly's, you know, pop singer. How

(01:09:50):
do you established relationships with all these people such as
they'll work with you? Well, I guess being a musician
in the twenty one century, um me, it has has
its benefits. And one of those is that it's it's
easy to to reach other musicians. And I guess I've
always felt that to an extent that the majority of
the people I reached out to, you know, I had
some kind of relationship, whether it's like you know, we

(01:10:10):
just we we follow each other, or we've messaged a
little bit, or we've had a session or two together before.
So someone like Tied all a sign for example, you know,
Tie hit me up on maybe it's on Twitter or
on Instagram about three years ago, and it was just
it was just, you know, really excited about but working
together on something. And so I've done a bunch of
work for him, and I've I've been on a few
songs of his and I always knew I wanted to
get him on something, but I didn't know when that

(01:10:32):
would be. And so you know, I sent him a
message or I faced time with him or something. I said, hey,
you know, I've got a song and Majley is singing
on it and it's pretty much finished, but it's it's
missing some some secret source. It's it's missing some dollar
sign magic. And he he that's This particular example was
it was very gratifying because he he had a bunch
of stuff planned, but he moved everything out of his calendar.

(01:10:53):
He sat for a whole day and sang all this
crazy stuff and and he was so excited. I think
it was very energized by by the music because I think,
you know, he's such a dominating force tire. You know,
he's featured on everyone's albums. He's just a massive, dominating,
kind of influential voice that's instantly recognizable a list guy.
And I think that maybe what he found refreshing, at

(01:11:14):
least what he said he found refreshing about all I
need was that it wasn't trying to be any of
those things. It was just a song. And also he
could use his ears because his ears are crazy. Actually,
he can hear all sorts of crazy stuff and has
all sorts of musical intuitions and ideas which I think
are amazing, and I think he he often feels like
he can't use them, and so I think he got
very excited, almost overly excited, and he sent me so

(01:11:34):
many tracks of him doing crazy you know, auto tune
riffs and stuff, and it was it was profoundly amazing.
And so I use a small percentage of that um
in the song. But most people were like that, you know,
we've had we've had a connection. I'll send a d M.
Occasional I would call out to someone called, like I
did that with with Kiana, for example. I've never I've
never met Kiana, had contact with her, but you know,
I sent I sent her a song. I sent her

(01:11:55):
the song on on a d M. And management then
reached out to and and she said, God, I love this,
Let's do it. And that was really that was really
gratifying foot for me. And I've been giving a list
of people that I respect the heck out of and
I've wanted to work with for for a long long time.
And so I think part of this project was thinking,
how how can I make this person a part of
this project? And at what point in the journey should
would they most apply? You know? And then how do

(01:12:17):
I build a bridge from my world into their world
and kind of make it makes sense? And I like,
you know what, what what can I learn from that? Okay?
The coverage your famous for are from a different era,
you know, it's you're you're pulling from Stevie Wonders albums
in the seventies, you know, the early eighties Lion or
Richie All Night, Long Moon River, which is older than that.

(01:12:38):
Uh A, how do you decide what songs to cover?
B What do you think about those songs which are
all visa V what is popular today? Great question? Well
as far as what's my criteria? For how do I
decide it song to arrange. It's kind of simple. I
just need to love it. I think I need to
get excited about it and love it and think that
there's something I can add to it in some way

(01:12:59):
or the or the it would survive my reinvention. I
guess I could say, um, And in answer to your
latter question, I think that a lot of the music
that was written, yeah, from seventies and back was was
harmonically substantial. And it's it's a funny thing to say,
but you know, you have someone like Stevie and his
songwriting style was so rich musically, it was so much

(01:13:20):
going on in the songs, but he was able to
do it in such a way where like no one
kind of batted an eyelid. It was like, yeah, you're
welcome to just dance to the song. It's a great
to you, but actually check out this modulate you know. So,
so there's there was this multiple levels of his music.
So if I if I kind of set my imagination
loose on a song song of his, the possibilities are
just endless because of all the choices he's made. The

(01:13:41):
more kind of material there is in that to start
with the more I can run with as a as
an arranger of a song, so you know, and something
like moon River. You know, it's not the mirror is
crazily complex. It's actually a very simple tune. But something
about the melody I've always loved and and you know,
it's got a sense of structure, it's got a little
ark to it, which I wanted to really kind of encapsulate.
I wanted to stretch that. And it just has a
lovely spirit to it, you know that that original, that

(01:14:02):
original Mancini version. It's it's something really really lovely about it. Now,
there's plenty of songs that are hip and popular right now,
which I absolutely adore, kind of for other reasons because
actually it's not often you hear a song on the
radio nowadays that has chords in it, like, you know,
like more than just kind of like Gore or or
you know, it's like, actually, the harmony tells a story,
and obviously I love that stuff. So I tend to

(01:14:23):
be drawn to songs that tell those kinds of stories
because I think that it inspires me to tell a
bit more of my own. And what give us a
couple of examples, Oh wow, um, you take someone like
fascinating rhythm, uh, and that's a song that again it's
quite simple, it's very repetitive. Um. But you know you've
got you've got this thing that kind of twists and
turns and it moves around these different these different spaces harmonically,

(01:14:46):
and and it's catchy and it kind of stays in
your mind. It has lots of energy built into it
has a sense of humor. And I love that too
because it really means you can play with it. And
lots of words. So I take words and I put
them in weird places and I flip them over and
all that kind of stuff, And that that's all really
good from because, as I say, when you're arranging, it's
just about like what do I have to work with it? Like,
what are my materials? What can I what can I
what can I add here? Um? And you know there

(01:15:09):
there are there are people who are doing this today.
But I think that in general today some of the
some of my favorite music that's coming up today is
appealing to me in terms of production above all else,
Like the production shops of people these days is absolutely astounding, UM.
And I think it can be a little detrimental to
the music at times. We have a society at large,

(01:15:30):
in my mind, which is very used to compression. And
I say compression in a musical sense and a non
musical sense. And I'll explain that when I say musical sense,
compression just means that you decrease the dynamic range. So
when a song goes on the radio, for example, it's
very compressed, and you have all the quietest sounds made
a lot louder so you can hear them, and all
the louder sounds are made much quieter so that they
are reasonable. And so you get these really flat wave forms,

(01:15:52):
which is just and it comes out the radio and
it's like, yeah, okay, I get it. I can listen
to that background. It's not going to necessarily pull me in.
It's not gonna pull me out or push me away
or whatever. It's just it's like a flat wave form. Now,
I think people, I think people do this. I think
education does this to people. I think it's like you
go into an educational system uncompressed flak, you know, completely

(01:16:14):
uncontained raw, and it's very easy to be worn down
by the voices around us that say, actually it would
be it would be much more reasonable if you just
conformed here, or if you did it my way or
this is the way it should be done, or or whatever,
And I get it. You know, it's scary to have
someone who's very creative in the world. It's like it's
unruly and it's unpredictable and it's hard to control. But

(01:16:35):
I think that what we're used to as a society,
especially with in age of social media, is is compressing
ourselves too into oblivion. You know, you think life is
about extremes, it's not about it's not about what's on
the surface all the time. Sometimes it is, but but
life is about going all the way up and all
the way down. And for me in my life anyway,
those are the moments that are most colorful for me,

(01:16:55):
and the moment I draw from as a creator the
most too, you know, really low, really high, really big,
and then the middle ground can be soft. It doesn't
need to be everything. It's not like everything has to
be in the middle distance. It's like that you can
be foreground and you can be background. And and so
what what overcompression does to our lives is it kind
of defeats any kind of currency of threshold. You know,

(01:17:17):
so all of our our worst impulses, our loudest thoughts,
our biggest fears, are quickest, easiest shots of endorphins. Those
rule us in that world, because those are the only
things that even cut through their insane compression that that
we've that we've come to do. You know, a lot
of us don't really know about stillness. I certainly don't
know about stillness. I think that there's so much to

(01:17:38):
learn from being dynamic and all that to say that,
I think what music is becoming now is thrilling and
infinite in some ways. And I think that's what's cool,
is to seeing people mix hounds together, mix flavors together,
collaborate across disciplines, you know, which is amazing. But it
has the danger of losing a kind of delicacy, a humanity,
um of of letting you in rather than kind of

(01:18:02):
stressing you out. And I think that we live in
quite stressed out space. And so I guess what I'd
hope for is a world where music can be sensitive,
like deeply sensitive. And that's not to say it has
to be simple, but you can have sensitive, rich complex
music as much as you can have sensitive, simple, open music,
and I think both have a very important role to
play in the world. Okay, in today's streaming world, the

(01:18:24):
history of music is available on the streaming services. So
you have all these genres, the acolytes of those genres
can be listening to that just that, But there is
a top fifty which is really dominated by hip hop.
So I have two questions for you. One, to what
degree are you a fan of hip hop? Too? To
what degree are you a student of the charts, the

(01:18:47):
radio and what people are listening to? Great great questions.
I am indeed a fine of hip hop. I listened
to hip hop, probably in a different way to the
way that someone who wasn't a musician would listen to it.
You know, I listened to it for for for for
groove a lot of the time. Like you know, you
take Dealer for example, and you think, yeah, like you
Dilla didn't really chart particularly and he didn't really he

(01:19:10):
wasn't really at a household name, but he completely kind
of he completely unbuilt hip hop and rebuilt it single handedly,
like he granually re reimagined what that could be. And
you know what he did that made that possible was
he turned the quantized button off on his NPC three thousand,
which is like revolutionary, and the quantize button is what
had been switched on in the popular music since basically,

(01:19:33):
which is the thing that drum machines inspired, which is
like everything's grid based. Do do do do do? Everything
is in a row, everything's the same size, And Diler
was like, no, no, turn the contents button off and
you get these sloppy grooves that go not like do
but like there's like a science to that of like
how to get that to feel the best. So when

(01:19:53):
I listened to hip hop a lot of time, I'm
really excited by that. But just because I'm a I'm
a musician, but I also think that hip hop has
has a kind of an ability to reach people in
their power and to appeal to people's power and energy
in a way that other kinds of music just kind
of don't like it. It It kind of takes space in
a way that I find really inspiring. It's like it's
it's almost like a it's like a light. It's like

(01:20:15):
I've got something to say, I've got something to show,
and I can I can do that in so many
different ways that for me as a musician kind of
often blow my mind because I think I think about,
you know, how do I tell a story in terms
of music? But these the story the story is telling.
Styles are much broader in hip hop. You know, you've
got people being poets and and using ryme for reason,
and you've got someone like Kendrick who's who's combining all

(01:20:38):
these forces. And as you can imagine, I'm a huge
Kendrick fan, and I love what he did with Butterfly,
and and I love how he how he transformed just
what that could be like, what what that could really
what that could really do for the world. As far
as whether I'm a student of the charts or not,
I don't think I described myself as a student of
the of the charts. I think it's interesting to hear
what's on them, partly because I I it helps me

(01:21:01):
learn what is acceptable, whether or not I choose to
act on that um. And also I think it shows
what's important at a particular time. And the charts always
tend to show what kind of themes are dominating, what
kind of style is dominating. And you know, one thing
I've noticed dipping into the charts and often I guess
it's a side point that my main experience of the
charts is like taking Uber's, which obviously haven't done much

(01:21:22):
this year. But I don't sit here at home I
listened to to Top fifty ever, I I just don't.
I don't just don't do it unless someone says, have
you checked out this new song, and I'll say, oh,
I haven't. Let me listen to it, see what it
sounds like. But when I jump in an uber, I'm
always like, Okay, this is this is how it is
not right now, and I think that it's it's very interesting,
but often quite joyless. That's what I've noticed. There's there's

(01:21:43):
not a lot of optimism. It seems of genuine joy
and things that just shine, you know, and you know,
you you take a band like like cold Play, for example,
who What Who I Love, and you think something about
company is actually very joyous, it's very hope giving, and
I think I respond to that in a non musical level.
I think I shape that and I respond to the
fact that that has a place in the world. And

(01:22:03):
so I guess when I listened to the charts, I'm
listening on on on on a few different levels. And
it's always interesting to know who's who's in the charts.
But I think for me, I'm always excited when I
feel like something shines through, when something has has an
impact on me. And and sometimes those things are like
the grime ist, poppyist, hardest hitting things ever, because those
things are badass, and sometimes it's something that's kind of

(01:22:23):
unexpected that makes it up. Then you think, wow, that
really tells a story. But I don't have any particular criteria,
like I don't. I don't see reason to expect to
be moved more by what's on the charts, say then
what's on some other list of music. But it's always
interesting to know, like what what's in people's conscious and
heart hearts and minds. Okay, so you were nominated for
Album of the Year needles to say many people were

(01:22:45):
unaware of you. What has been your experience of denomination
m Um, Well, after the sort of flabbergastedness which you
could probably imagine, which which is still going and it's
taken to weeks for me to even see it really
because it's it was just it's it's overwhelming and crazy
and immensely gratifying and strange. Um. I think it's been

(01:23:08):
interesting seeing the dialogue around it from a distance, and
I haven't engaged massively with it because in some ways
it's like not my business, because my business is to
make the music. But um, you know, I I completely
understand the people are very surprised and very confused, and
and I also I also understand that there are people,
for example, like The Weekend and like Garga who absolute

(01:23:30):
giants and people I massively respect who people would have
expected to get that nomination or that you know, the
to to be to be acknowledged in that sense because
of what they represent in the music industry. Um, I've
also experienced a kind of a real deep surge of
support from from the musicians community, you know, friends of
mine and people I've made connections with over the last

(01:23:53):
five years. And I think that there's a real excitement
that that it's possible to to kind of create for
the sake of creation, but to be held in whatever
esteem you know, that particular nomination means. And it's crazy
to sit, you know, next to Taylor and next to
Dour and next the Post and Chris Martin and the
Gang and everyone in that in that category and to
feel like I don't maybe need to apologize for who

(01:24:15):
I am and what I'm what I'm doing, and that's
a kind of interesting feeling. But you know, I guess
I've been I've been taking it day by day and
and I think what strikes me about the Grammys, which
I which I really love, is that it was founded
by musicians and it's voted on by musicians, and that
sets it apart, I guess from a lot of other awards,
take the am As for example. You know the Grammy,

(01:24:35):
you have to have a I think it's two credits
on in a creative sense, on you know, a piece
of recorded music that's been published to have a voice
in the Grammys. And so I think something about the
Grammys it is quite pure in a sense that you know,
it should feel like whatever the music is should be
pitted equally against whatever the other music is, not because

(01:24:57):
of what the music represents, but just because of what
it sounds like. And man, I just didn't see it
coming at all. But I'm immensely gratified that somehow, you know,
this part of my my musical journey, as it's continuing,
as it's growing, can be can be recognized and can
can get that nod. Okay, It's one thing to labor
in obscurity or off away from the spotlight. Many people,

(01:25:21):
once the spotlight is upon them, they become inhibited. Uh,
they try to live up a standard there. You know,
the landscape is littered with people did something great, they
got universal acceptance. Could never equal that again. So to
what degree do you believe already or is it in
your mind use a negative word that this might be crippling. Yeah,

(01:25:45):
so I've thought about this very much. Actually, I'm not
worried because I think that I've been very clear with
myself about why I'm doing this, and I think it
would be crippling. It will be crippling. The expectations at
this point in my careup crippling if I planned it,
you know, if i'd have if I had a campaign,
if I spent millions of dollars on every music video
because I knew that what I really needed was an

(01:26:07):
Album of the Year nomination or Album of the Year
win or whatever. I think if I'd set out to
do that. Honestly, it's completely valid to to want that
and to strive or something like that, but it's it's
never been my thing, and so I think the reason
I feel safe in a sense creatively is because I've
got more ideas than I have time for, and I

(01:26:27):
think if there's anything this might kind of buy me,
it's it's it's time in a sense. It's like time
where I can be I can do things on my
own terms for longer, and that hasn't led me wrong
thus far, and so I think that I think I'll
only really know what it feels like over the course
of over the next few months. And I can't say
anything for sure, but I think that it's it feels

(01:26:48):
like a spotlight is on something which is not it's
it's almost like it's on something that's outside my control.
It's not something I even care to control per se.
I don't think that the next album might create needs
to equal the success of Jesse Volham three. I think
it may surpass it or it may not, and I
don't I don't mind too much because I think that
what's exciting for me is just being able to to

(01:27:11):
to make connections with people, and obviously the main excitement
for me about the Grammy is that it's it's just
so cool to be to be able to kind of
communicate on that scale and for my statements to stand
in in in that in that scale. But I somehow
feel like if I'd done things in a rush, or
if I had, you know, signed with Quincy on the
day that he asked me to, or if I had

(01:27:31):
compromised really in any in any way along my journey,
I feel like this was all for something, like I
was investing in something, some goal. But I don't feel
like that. I don't feel like I've compromised, and I
don't feel like there's a reason for it all to happen.
So it almost feels like a bit of a bonus
to a healthy process which has been going for a
long time. And sure, there's definitely pressure, and there's definitely

(01:27:53):
I mean that there's there's there's time pressure, there's energy pressure,
and there's expectations. But I think in a certain kind
of a way, I just trust. I just kind of
trust it. I trust myself in it, and and I
trust the right thing will happen. Okay, people think that
musicians are only in it for the money. Certainly, Gene
Simmons says that, but I've found a true artist wants

(01:28:17):
more people to experience their art. Now that a door
has opened and people are aware of you, and theoretically
you could have a bigger peak, but this is pretty
high up. There is there any desire to say I
want to make a piece of music that will spread
to more people? Oh yeah, definitely, definitely. I that could

(01:28:40):
take so many forms that I'm not sure. I'm not
sure how how I would answer that creatively. Yet I'll
make it simple. Do you say, hey, I want to
write a hit? Um? I did. I'm not sure I
would say I want to write a hit. I'd love
to write a song that reaches lots of people. I
guess that maybe that's a hit, but I think that
I'll know if it feels good to me when I
listened to it. Um. And I think that if if

(01:29:02):
there was ever a moment to consider what that would
be is now and and hell yeah, like I'm I'm
excited to consider what what place I would take in that,
in whatever space has been made available for me at
this point in my career. And yeah, I'm I'm I'm
I'm excited to figure that out. And I think I'm
also excited to, in so doing, bring people into something
which is bigger than a single moment. You know, because

(01:29:22):
I've never been the kind of artist who is led
by singles, campaigns, particularly or the idea that it always
has everything is about this one moment. It's all about
happening right now. And so rather than wanting to peak,
you know, I think I want to bring people into
something which is just moving, and I think the movements
what's important. So what I would hope if I did, say,
for example, write a hit which would be super cool, UM,

(01:29:43):
would be that people would figure out that it's part
of something bigger and then and then those other parts
of of the operation would would get elevated to you know.
And for me, somehow that feels like the most sustainable
way of writing a hit, rather than thinking this is
a chance for me to write one song that completely
changes the and then I can feel like I've done
my thing. I almost feel like, you know, there's absolutely

(01:30:04):
no cap to the number of people I would love
to reach. Um. But I think that I think that
it needs to happen in in its own time, and
I would be really excited to bring people into this
like ever expanding world that I'm kind of operating in,
and I'd love to I'd love to figure out like
what what it all means in a in a global sense.
I'd love for more people to come to my shows,

(01:30:25):
for example, and experience them, and I'd love to to
to reach more more people in that sense. But I'm
not too fussed about having a hit, to be honest,
in a in a pure sense, I think I'm I'm
more interested in making music that there is right to
make when it's right to make it. Okay, you were
a young viril man on the road. Although your music
may be unique, certain things stand true. The travel, the gig,

(01:30:51):
the fans, the dope, the alcohol, the women. To what
degree have you partaken of the perks of the road,
great question? Um, I honestly, I've never been into drugs
and alcohol particularly. I'll have a drink occasionally and that
could be nice, but um, you know that. So I
think that that part of things I've always tended to

(01:31:12):
stay clear from. And I remember going on the road,
and I remember having a drink after each show the
first time on the road, and I remember doing the
show the next day and thinking I just don't quite
feel as sharp as I did yesterday, and thinking, you
know what, then it's probably not worth it, so I'm
going to stop. So I was actually quite pleased with
myself for stopping that thing. Um, as far as adoring
fans and and and girls and all sorts of things
like that. Um, I mean, I guess I'm very early

(01:31:34):
on in my journey and I've I've definitely seen that
there's that there can be a particularly kind of attention.
I'm quite a I have quite a vivisited in a space,
as I mentioned before, and so I tend to be
quite careful about who I who I share that with. UM,
But I love interacting with people at large. And and
one thing that's a feature of my particular shows that
I've I've noticed that it seems to be a little

(01:31:56):
unique is after the gig, I'll get like a queue
of people two hundred on and it's like three hours
of question and answers about like how do you think
about this, Jacob, or how would you approach this? Can
you give me some advice about? You know? And I
actually I just love that. I mean, that's so cool.
And I mean I did it every single one of
my one man shows. I did like a second show
after every show, which is just talking to people. That

(01:32:17):
was a bit draining after a while, so I kind
of stopped for this last year. But um, I love it.
I love connecting with people. I think it's there's something magic.
But this is a world that I'm familiar with. These people,
you mean something into their in their life. They will
then say, come to my house, let me make you dinner,
stay at my house. It's all that off limits or

(01:32:37):
if you, you know, dip your toe in some of that.
I wouldn't say anything is off limits, per se. I
have a pretty good compass about who's genuine and who's
cool and who's not um And obviously, you know, you
learn that, you learn from experience, but you know, yeah,
every every so often you'll think, like, wow, this is
a fascinating group of people or a fascinating person, and
I'll go and spend time with you. But but honestly, like,

(01:32:59):
the road moves so far, and I know that the
amount that I have to give every night on stage
means I can't afford to spend too much amante on
other people and things outside of that. So I tend
to keep myself to myself on the road, to be
honest with you, But obviously there's always a sense of
adventure and that there's there's a joy in kind of
being open to that Okay, now you have a long

(01:33:21):
history playing music. Did people always say you were gifted
and you believe you have some special skill or do
you believe it's the old ten thousand hour rule and
you've put so much time into it that you have
a facility that you can then expand upon good question.
I don't think anything is black and white like that.

(01:33:44):
It's it's it's probably a mixture, you know. I know
for a fact that people in my family have been musicians,
and very good ones at that, and so I guess
it would make sense that I have a particular predisposition
to it. I've done at least ten thou hours, so
I'm sure that's part of it too. I think that
there's something there's a way that the ancient Greeks tend
to talk about the word genius, which I like, which

(01:34:07):
is that a genius is not something that you are
so much as something that you have so you can
have a genius. It's like, oh, I'm having a genius.
I'm having a genius idea. I'm having I'm having a
moment of ultra connection, you know, of transcendence. I know
that feeling. I have had those in my time. I've
had to learn how to court them, how to deal
with them, how to manage them, how to separate myself
from them to a certain extent, I think, I think

(01:34:29):
everyone has the capacity to do that. But it's a
particular combination of of circumstance, of of of luck, of
sort of courage, I think, and willingness to to be yourself,
and also willingness to listen and conform to others to
a point to And I think that everyone strikes a
different balance with that. You know, I'm I'm pretty good
at being Jacob. I think I'd say that I'm pretty

(01:34:50):
good at being myself. I'm pretty good at knowing my
forces and understanding them and how to work with them.
And I think I'm I'm good at drawing lines to
a point creatively about how to organized, and I'm good
at I think I'm quite good at having ideas. And
so I think that actually that is what's maybe productive
in a sense more than God, I'm a such a
good piano player, or because I'm not that good at piano,

(01:35:11):
but I'm not that good at any of the one
off skills that you might say, Oh, Jacob is a
great singer or bass player or drama. I don't. I
don't think of myself as spectacular any of those things.
But I think what an artist does is an artist
combines forces in a way that is unique to that artist,
because no idea is ever truly fully unique, right obviously,
but the way that ideas can be combined can be

(01:35:31):
just beautiful and so meaningful, and there's infinite potential for
those idists to be combined. So I think for me,
I almost think about my skills in that way, like
I'm not a master at any of these skills. So
the thing that I've tried to master and I think
i'm I think I'm pretty good at it is is
who's Jacob today? How can I use that in an
open way? How can I bring people together using the

(01:35:52):
forces that are in my world in my life? And
how can I learn and dig deep into something that
I love in this case music and just understand it.
So I would I would sort of put as a
testament to what I can do. I would say it's
a combination of things. I would say, um, you know, yeah,
perhaps I have some kind of genetic thing that means
that means I was going to be drawn towards music,
But I've had a patient and love giving family who

(01:36:15):
have always made space for me to be who I
needed to be. That's probably the number one thing I
would say. I've always had a space to play. Children
tend to make as many ideas as there are ears
to hear them, I think, and I was always always
pased to hear my ideas, So that was a big one.
I would say. I had and I had enough resources
to get started. I had a microphone, had a piano,
had had a logic, I had tools to work with

(01:36:35):
um And I would say that I've although I wouldn't.
I don't think of myself as particularly hard working in
a funny way, because I don't feel like I've ever
slaved away at something for longer than I've been interested
at it. But I've worked so super hard if I
if I'm honest with what I want to say and
how I want to say it, and like just equipping
myself to do so. So I think that the mixture

(01:36:56):
of time and luck, and resources and and and skill,
and I think above all a sense of openness and
a sense of determination to be Jacob in all situations. Okay,
so needles to say Jesse four is the next one, Hey,
what comes after that? Be? Do you have no idea?
See do you just go along this path or you

(01:37:17):
say there's a whole another avenue. I want to explore
b to to to the largest extent. I don't know
what's coming, man, I'm not sure. I set out to
do Jesse almost with with the thought in mind of like,
if I can do Jesse, then I can do anything.
And so after Jesse, I can I can really get started,

(01:37:40):
Like I can really decide what I what I want
to do, because I want to. I want to figure
out what it means to write for an orchestra. I
want to figure out what it means to collaborate with
a rapper. I want to figure out what it means
to work with a banjo player, or what I want
to I want to write for choirs. I want to
stretch myself all this stuff. So I did that thinking
I don't know what I'm going to want to do,
but I'm going to make sure I have all the
skills and I'm equipted as far as I can to

(01:38:01):
do whatever I want to do after this, And I
don't know what that is yet. I mean, I think
there's there's so many avenues that I've been exploring a
bit in the last couple of years. You know. One
of those is scoring for film, for example, which I've
I've been drawn drawn towards, and I'm doing some of that,
and that's exciting to me. UM. I think that I've
barely scratched the surface of what's possible, UM in my
in my creative life. I just it's it's it seems

(01:38:23):
infinite for me, and I think I want that to
continue to a point even tho affinity you can be healthy. UM.
I think I've barely scratched the surface of what's possible
in the live performance realm. And I think that for
someone with the skills that I hold, I think I've
barely scratched the surface of how connective, UM, the things
I'm doing, the music I'm making, the experiences I'm building

(01:38:46):
for people can be bringing people together. So I want
to I want to be led by whatever I'm led by.
I have those priorities pretty solid and and I'm I'm
wide open. I don't have a clue, honestly, but I'm
excited to find out. Well, you've done an excellent job
of describing who you are, where you came from where
you're going, and I think this will be very enlightening

(01:39:09):
for those who are unfamiliar with you previously. So Jacob,
I want to thank you so much for your time
and for doing this. Thank you both. Thank you so
much for having me. This has been something I've been
looking forward to for ages actually, and it's super super
nice tab a chance to talk to you about this.
Until next time. This is Bob left Sense

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Bob Lefsetz

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