JAY JAY JOHANSON « OPIUM » 17th JUNE — 2015
It was in 1996 that Jay-Jay Johanson, a young man a courageous offering. Johanson opens his heart with from a cold climate, fascinated by the Bristol sound fearlessness and modesty, gracefully lowering his they called trip-hop and Portishead in particular, guard and evoking the questions that torment men of first tapped delicately on our eardrums. his age: love, solitude, immaturity. The songwriting The intoxicating album that definitively put this rare is unerring, the words have a suppressed poetry. This and elegant Swede on the map was called Whiskey. new Johanson is the work of a guy who has survived It was the beginning of an enthralling adventure. the avalanches, who is no longer looking for answers In only a few songs he revealed a family tree that and is content to sketch out the perspectives in as spread its roots far and wide: on one branch Lee many songs. Some titles are serious (Harakiri), but Hazlewood, or pop from Talk Talk or Nilsson, others immediately take up the reins casting a more on the other John Coltrane with Johnny Hartman, gentle, peaceful light, like Scarecrow, a collaboration and a whole army of calm jazz or symphonic with Robin Guthrie that would not have sounded recordings sampled from everywhere imaginable. out of place on a Cocteau Twins album, or of the Almost 20 years later he has returned with an strange positivity of Be Yourself or I Love Him So. incredible new album. This new release is called The strength of Opium is that it asks questions that Opium and it contains the very essence of Johanson’s don’t necessarily have an answer; it offers a collection music: an ease with inventing melodies, a voice that of songs freed from any certitude but which convince gently caresses, and the jacked up, heady rhythms through their modesty, through their precision. that lift and carry the songs. From the peaceful In short, Jay-Jay at his best. harmonica opening of Drowsy / Too Young To Say Good Night to the smoke-wreathed love song I Don’t Know Much About Loving, via titles with a sporadic and light groove (NDE, Alone Too Long), Opium is Pierre Siankowski Questions & Answers — Stochkolm march 2015
In the 70s and early 80s, Andy Warhol did some interviews with famous people for his Interview Magazine. Usually he asked other famous people to interview the person, but sometimes he did it himself. And when he did, he always asked the same questions – it didn’t matter who he interviewed, it was always the same questions. Here follows what would have been Andy Warhol’s interview with me.
Q: Hi. Q: Are you writing now? A: Hello! A: I’m writing all the time.
Q: How have you been? Q: Do you type or write by hand? A: Fine, thanks for asking. Well, busy making my new album, Opium. A: I write by hand.
Q: Did you have breakfast? Q: How is Sundbyberg? A: Yes, Earl Grey tea and pancakes with raspberries. A: It’s just like any suburb.
Q: Do you take showers or baths? Q: What do you do out there? A: Baths! A: Play with Sixten.
Q: What was your first job? Q: Who? A: As a kid I used to hang out at my dad’s printing office. A: My child. I loved the huge spaces full of paper, and the loud metallic rhythm coming from the Heidelberg machine. Q: How many children do you have? A: One. Q: What’s your favourite movie? A: You know I adore Hitchcock, Psycho, Birds, Rear Window. Q: How old is he? But I recently saw Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest A: He’s eight now. again, it was on a long flight back home from concerts in Argentina, and oh, that film is just amazing. It had a huge influence on me when Q: What is it like being a father? I made my first album, Whiskey. But I also have to mention Kubrick, A: Oh it’s great. The Shining is one of my favourite films ever. Q: Does your son give you a balance after the hard work Q: What’s your favourite colour? on tour and in the studio? A: Hmm, grey, closer to black than white. and if that’s not regarded A: Yes, absolutely. as a colour I guess I would have to say red. Or green. Q: Do people follow you into bathrooms just so they Q: Isn’t New York great? can say they peed next to you? A: Yes it is, I really have to spend more time there. Paris and London A: Oh, I don’t know. I have never asked them what they’re are the cities, outside Sweden, that I know the best and that are doing in there really. closest to my heart. Q: Do you sign autographs if people ask you? Q: Did you ever think you’d grow up to be a singer? A: Of course. A: No, never, I always thought I was too shy to dare to stand on a stage in the lights, in front of all these people. But when I saw Chet Q: Do you have groupies? Baker play live in my small home town all that changed. He came A: They follow me on tours, hang around the back entrance after on stage, moved his chair away from the lights, and was sitting in the the shows. They write and send paintings. It’s amazing how many dark whispering those lovely sad stories. I felt, I can do that. paintings are done.
Q: Do you go out a lot or stay home? Q: At this point of your life, what do you not have that A: I used to go out all the time when I arrived in Stockholm in the you’d like to have? early 90s, and in London in the 80s, but lately I really prefer to stay A: Oh, just more of what I have. I want to create really good work at home, maybe it’s because I’m touring a lot, so when I come home and have fun making it. I don’t wanna go out. Q: Do you have a dream concert? Q: Do you dance? A: Not really. A: Well I used to dance, all the time really. And that’s how I met my piano player Erik. I was his break dance teacher, but that’s 30 years Q: Do you ever get nervous? ago now. A: No.
Q: Do you work out? Q: Can you give us some background? A: No no, but the whole of Stockholm is doing it. I’m taking long A: Sure. I was born on the Swedish west coast at the end of the 60s, walks, to the studio for example, it gives me time to think and focus. at the same time as the Woodstock festival and the moon landing. I moved up to Stockholm to start art school in 1991, and it was just Q: Do you sing every day? after finishing my last year that I got a record deal. A: Just about. I write my songs with pen on paper. In my living Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie and I started working room or in my bedroom or in my kitchen, or while together already 1997, he worked on She’s Mine But out walking, in airports while waiting or in hotel I’m Not Hers from Tattoo, he played on Far Away rooms somewhere in the world. Then I take these and Escape on my third album, Poison - and we have scribblings and sit by my piano or with the guitar kept in contact ever since. Now we are working on on my knee, and start taking out the chords and the a full album that hopefully will come out next year. key and the tempo I want to sing this song. Then This is just a teaser of what our creation can sound I call my guys, Erik and Magnus, and we meet in like, he’s such a great man with a unique sound. the studio and start dressing up this naked skeleton in a dress that suits. I might get some arrangement Drowsy, the opening of the album, and the intro inspiration ideas from old soundtracks or kraut or to the song Too Young To Say Good Night, are psychedelia, but usually we just try to make the song two tracks that means a lot to me, I can’t really sound as interesting as possible in a most natural explain why, but the writing and the recording just way. Erik and I have been playing together now for turned out better that I even could have imagined 30 years, and Magnus got involved in 1995 when I it myself from the beginning, a true magic moment started recording Whiskey, my first album. Erik and in the studio. I Love Him So is a song about my Magnus has been there by my side all the time in my son. And he, of course, means more than a lot to career, in the studio and on stage. It is in Magnus’s me. Moonshine was great to record. We haven’t studio, Break My Heart, that we have recorded all worked with this heavy and hard sound ever, well ten albums and Magnus has also mixed all my work. at least not since Keep it a Secret on Poison. NDE, which means Near Death Experience, is a song that I see Opium as a direct continuation of Cockroach follows the song On The Other Side from my album which came out 15 months ago - but this time i knew Spellbound. early that the new songs would include a certain charm that has not been there since Whiskey and What else... Well as always Chet Baker is there as Tattoo. And I guess the intention with Opium was a strong influence, but also Jamie XX and Burial to compose as beautiful songs as possible and to and some of the great soundtrack composers like produce it as interesting as possible, full of cool Morricone, Hermann, Rota and Schifrin. breaks and haunting instrumentations, beautiful mesmerizing monotone guitars and strings and mysterious drums and beat constructions.
The title Opium is again linked to the idea that I would like to make the listener addicted to my voice, my songs and my music. 1996-2015 in 10 albums
1. WHISKEY - Released 2 September 1996 — The journalists wrote that it sounded as if Chet Baker was recording with Portishead, or as if Frank Sinatra was hanging out with Massive Attack in Bristol, and I guess that was exactly what I wanted it to sound like.
2. TATTOO - Released 15 April 1998 — I had visited France for the first time in my life on the Whiskey tour, and discovered so much French music that had a huge influence on this record.
3. POISON - Released 18 April 2000 — The darker the berry the sweeter the juice they say, and Poison is my most depressive album so far, almost suicidal, but also includes some of the most beautiful songs I have written.
4. ANTENNA - Released 2 November 2002 — A big change, almost all the songs are made with the German electronic wizards Funkstörung and a string orchestra, but what people remember is the remixes that became the uptempo tracks on this album.
5. RUSH - Released 19 September 2005 — Half the album was again dance music, produced by the house genius JP Ensuque, the rest was the beginning of going back to my roots.
6. THE LONG TERM PHYSICAL EFFECTS ARE NOT YET KNOWN - Released 22 January 2007 — Back again in the same studio, with the same musicians as on the first three albums, Long Term became a very important re-start for me, with the original influences and ideas, but this time without the sampler and DJs.
7. SELF-PORTRAIT - Released 02 March 2009 — More introvert again, but some very interesting krautrock-influenced experiments turned out very good.
8. SPELLBOUND - Released 02 May 2011 - Made at home, by my piano or with the guitar on my knee, naked, intimate, acoustic and possibly the most beautiful conceptual record I’ve done.
9. COCKROACH - Released 23 September 2013 — The peculiar drum beats are back again and jazz music and the dramaturgy of soundtracks are more present than ever before.
10. OPIUM - To be released 17th June 2015 — Opium is still so close to me that I can’t really talk about it, and as always after finishing an album, I feel totally emptied, as if I will never make another album again...
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