Jade Statues may be a new name for some followers of Dream Catalogue, but the Vancouver native is a name who has been waiting to burst onto the scene for som...
just thinking about one of my fave vaporwave albums again
LVLSRVRYHI-059: Jade Statues | The Levels Are Very High
Hey! How's it going? I usually start with the introductions so, for anyone who doesn’t know, who are you / where are you from?
It's going well :). My name is Jacob, aka Jade Statues. I live in Vancouver, Canada.
What are some of your early musical memories?
You know, it’s kinda funny. When I was a kid if I was with my Dad we would listen to Ministry and Slayer and stuff like that. We used to drive around listening to "Thieves" when I was like 4 years old. Its still one of my favourite songs. If I was with my Mom we would listen to Boards of Canada and Bjork, and when I think about it now that's pretty much exactly the space I want to be operating in musically. Somewhere between Ministry and Bjork lol. I owe a lot to my parents for exposing me to a wide array of music from a young age, and allowing me to engage the interests I had in learning music.
You've referred to the My Blade EP, out now on TAR, as "the most honest" work you've done up until this point. How do you see that honesty establishing itself across the record?
I suppose it feels that way to me because the past 2 years that I've worked on it have been very turbulent - in good and bad ways. I made every track on it in a different setting, each of those settings are very tied to memories now that were born out of that turbulence, if that makes sense. Settings like a 24 Hour Vet Clinic my friends lived in that I stayed at a lot, my parents basement, the house of someone who is very close to me, and the house I live in now that is somewhat isolated from the rest of the city. When I listen to the EP it's sort of like looking at a photo album of the past 2 years, or something like that. Plus, when I started it I didn't know exactly how I wanted it to sound and by the end of it there was this similarity about the tracks that just sort of happened naturally. It's sort of surreal to me.
My Blade by Jade Statues
Alongside the track Machine Birth on your Facebook is a description stating, "A being with great power, borne of Plant and machine, has taken it's first breath. And it will envelop us all." Both this proclamation and the artwork for the record are suggestive of a larger overarching narrative. Could you tell me a bit more about what it is that the EP is drawing on conceptually?
Yeah while it is a very honest, personal record to me it's also a concept album, haha. A sentient being is born out of the combined energy of human technology and the earth's natural power, so basically an "Organic machine" - Humans try to obtain, harness, and extract the being's power but the being essentially turns the earth into an extension of itself before they can. The earth is now a sentient organic machine. I've always been inspired by the worlds that metal albums created, sometimes just with album art. Mastodon's "Crack The Skye" changed everything for me when I heard it. I just love writing concept albums lol.
You worked with Flufflord for the EP art and have a video project in the works with Chrome Destroyer and the resulting pieces show clear relationships to the textures and sounds found on the EP itself. Is there a specific visual or even physical context you see your music existing in?
I've always been really interested in visuals and filmmaking from an early age. Tea and Chrome are definitely two of my favourite visual artists right now. I described to them what I was going for musically and they just nailed it visually. I love the format of 3D and I often like to heavily tie it into the whole Jade Statues "universe" if you will, because 3D allows you to create and bend HD imagery in such a way that I like to think I'm doing with music and to me it just sits right. 3D just feels right to me. I would love to have the budget to do elaborate stage designs with visual mapping and such, and I definitely want to make a full length live action film one day.
Your track 'Invocation' was recently featured as the soundtrack to a video on Memory Hole (Everything is Terrible), a space in which scattered debris of inane internet clips are forced through generative cycles of trash, redigestion and regurgitation. Are these modes of internet discourse reflective of your listening and production habits in any way?
I guess you could say they are, I often spend more time messing with samples and making weird sounds than I do actually making songs. I've been a huge fan of those guys for years. I thought it was really funny that they used "Invocation". It's supposed to be like the immaculate orchestra tuning before this grand opera or whatever and they put it with a bunch of people getting stuck in miscellaneous shit. If EIT is reading this, I'd love to play a set at the week long festival of celebration/sacrifice to the Jerry Pyramid when it is built.
Tell me a bit about s.M.i.L.e. (or Shadows Making Imperfect Love Endlessly) - the party and radio show you run alongside Baby Blue, x/o, Sebastian Ruslan, and J.S. Aurelius. What are the origins of that project? In reference to the name, do you see yourselves as working *in* or *as* shadows? What role does imperfection play in the collective?
Me and Baby Blue used to do a party together called "Cyber Spa" with Wobangs and d j b. That had been over for a while and I was itching to start something new, so I hit up Baby Blue and asked them if they wanted to be a part of it, and they said yes. We then asked x/o and Sebastian Ruslan - who both are a part of an art collective / mix series called Immunity - if they wanted to be residents too and they said yes, we decided on the name s.M.i.L.e. , J.S. joined us on our 3rd event and the rest is history..... We are all the shadows! "shadows making imperfect love endlessly" is simply a description of people dancing. I would say imperfection is perhaps a part of all of our creative processes and s.M.i.L.e. is a place we can bring all our styles + our guests styles that might not be similar to ours together and create something special. We like to use our laptops and CDJs in imperfect ways as well ;)
Did you set out with a particular idea for this mix? Where and how did you record it?
I don’t have any mixes online really, so I wanted to make an accurate representation of the of sets I usually play, at s.M.i.L.e. and just in general. I tried to include a lot of my music and a lot of my friends' music. Some of the songs in it are just ones I'm really feeling lately. I recorded it sitting in my bed, and also in my studio on VirtualDJ, then added more effects in Logic after.
What do you have planned for the rest of 2017?
It's almost over! Damn. I really need to save up some money so I can move out of Vancouver. I'm pretty tired of living here. Other than that trying to tour / do as many shows as I can and continue to help curate s.M.i.L.e. :)
If you had to pick something for people to listen to immediately after this mix what would it be?
This, on loop, forever.
