Following the release of a fresh lockdown-inspired release, Eloise Feilden catches up with Jackie Moonbather.
My Zoom call with Jackie Moonbather, scheduled for noon on Tuesday 11th August, occurs at exactly the same time as the YouTube premiere for the artist’s latest single ‘Jones on the Phone’ goes live – a fact he himself had forgotten until I reminded him as we began our conversation. The song was originally made and released in May during the height of lockdown, and took Jack only 48 hours from making the initial beat to uploading it for streaming. “It was a product of just being stuck in my room a lot, for obvious reasons. It seemed fitting for the times because it’s about missing somebody and not being able to do anything about it because we’re all stuck at home. There’s only so long that we can keep singing about that so I thought I’d release it really quickly.”
The video was shot by Miro Kiss from GRIT Multimedia, and the bright and open white-walled bedroom that forms the video backdrop reflects a dreamy and romanticised depiction of the solitary lockdown experience. Jackie’s personal experience of this period mirrors the lightness of the video’s aesthetic, as he saw it as the perfect opportunity to get some creative juices flowing and start making as much music as he could. As with many of us, though, at some point that initial burst of energy came to an end, and he tells me there came a point where his attitude altered. “It suddenly just stopped. At some point I’ve just been stuck in my house for months now; I’ve got nothing left to sing about. I have no new experiences.”
As well as making his own music, Jackie Moonbather is also a producer for other local talent as a key member of music collective Blancmange Lounge alongside fellow artists Katie Pham, Oliver Harrap and Rosey PM. Despite the drought of personal creativity that he’s been suffering in recent months, he explains that when it comes to producing music for other people there’s a kind of freedom in collaboration. “When I’ve produced for other people it’s using beats that I’ve had for a little while and don’t really know what to do with, but then other people do. There are less blockages because I can just make stuff because it’s fun to do and it sounds cool and then whether I sing on it or somebody else does, it doesn’t matter.”
Experimenting with new sounds and methods is essential to Jackie’s way of creating music, and he dislikes the idea of being confined to one genre or style. As he describes it: “There’s so much that I like to listen to and there’s so much that I like to make, it’s gonna take a while for me to get all of it out – all of the different feelings and sounds that I wanna play with. I think my music will keep on changing for quite a while as I express all the different parts of what I like and what feels like me. I don’t like it when an artist just releases the same things over and over again; I lose interest really quickly. I like artists, myself included, to always be reinventing.”
I ask how he considers ‘Jones on the Phone’ to be a reinvention of music he’s made in the past, and he explains how he’s been playing around with more electronic sounds. “There are no acoustic instruments on there apart from the piano. I think it’s the first time there’s been a piano in one of my songs.”
Image: Miroslav Kiss
Having looked through interviews with Jackie Moonbather from the past he is more often than not described as having a DIY ethic in his attitude towards making music. I wondered whether he thought this an accurate description of his method of working, and I probed what it means exactly to be “DIY” when it comes to being a creative. “Everything we do is just totally DIY. Everything that me and my friends in Blancmange Lounge Collective have done we’ve recorded ourselves. The way that we as a collective, and I as an artist, have found our way to fit in with the scene and especially with local music is just doing it ourselves, putting on our own gigs and selecting ourselves and all our friends to play.” And the music scene in Sheffield is the perfect place to explore this DIY attitude. Jackie refers to Delicious Clam and Plot 22, two venues which share in the build-it-yourself kind of music-making that appeals to him and his colleagues, as part of the community that Blancmange Lounge have helped create here in the Steel City.
The way that we as a collective, and I as an artist, have found our way to fit in with the scene and especially with local music is just doing it ourselves, putting on our own gigs and selecting ourselves and all our friends to play.”
Somewhat inevitably, the black cloud that the pandemic has cast over the music and live performance industry hovers over the conversation at this point, and we get talking about what the future of live music might look like in the coming months. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see what manages to survive after all of this,” he tells me. “I’ve seen a lot of people getting creative at home, like the live streams that keep happening. I think that will just have to continue for a while. It’s gone on for longer than I thought, live stream gigs and stuff, which I assumed would just be a bit of a novelty at the start, but it does seem to be growing. I did one right at the start of lockdown and I thought it was weird and didn’t like it. I haven’t written it off but I’m not in any rush to do more. It was weird and awkward, and also I’ve got really bad internet connection. (At this point in the conversation our Zoom meeting has been interrupted three separate times by said bad connection, so I’m under no illusion that this is an excuse to get out of future awkward livestream events).
As we close up our conversation, I enquire about upcoming projects and fresh releases. He gives little away, and I joke that he’s keeping his cards close to his chest, to which he says he’s not keeping any secrets from us, but simply doesn’t like to announce anything before it’s done. “Creativity stopped during the lockdown at a very specific point and it felt like attention had to be distributed elsewhere, to focus on other things for a little bit. I just got really into cooking and being really domestic. I’m feeling more creative again now, having been able to go outside again for a little bit, and with things coming up I’m not going to pigeonhole myself. I’ll just do what I feel like.”
Jones on the Phone is out on all streaming platforms now
blancmangelounge.bandcamp.com
