In conversation with Happy on his latest EP ‘SKID MARKZ’, Jean RN lets us in on his experimental approaches
Ipswich-based Jean RN has just released his fourth EP ‘SKID MARKZ’, which features four equally playful and complex tracks.
Releasing all self-imposed limitations implemented on his 2022 EP ‘Laughing Alone, Eating Salad’, Jean RN describes laying down chords and melodies before creating what he calls a ‘sonic bed’ for his tracks.
Balancing inspiration from the styles of BJ Burton and Oneohtrix Point Never, he blends humour with gloom as he showcases his ability to not take life too seriously.
Opening up about the simple pleasures of human connection and good music, Jean RN lets us in on his unapologetic approach to music, embodied by distorted synths and intricate layering.
Join us as we discuss noise gate play, the desire for chaos and Jean RN’s creative process.
HAPPY: What are you up to today?
Jean RN: I’m just chilling today – I saw Melt Banana last night (who RIPPED fyi) so I’m feeling pretty inspired this morning. I’ve been putting off recording vocals for a new project for a while now so I’m gonna try tackling that later.
Tell us a little about where you are from? What do you love about it?
Jean RN: I’m based just outside of Ipswich, Suffolk in the east of England. There’s a lot of countryside around here and I definitely appreciate being right by the coast.
There’s not loads deal going on culturally, but London and Norwich are super easy to get to from here. Living here can make connecting and collaborating with like-minded artists (especially in more niche experimental genres) tricky so the internet has been a godsend, in that regard.
HAPPY: What inspired you to explore a more experimental and carefree sound with your EP ‘SKID MARKZ’? How does it differ from your previous work?
Jean RN: I’ve always preferred an experimental approach with my stuff – it’s just a kind of sound that I naturally gravitate toward. In the case of SKID MARKZ I had finished writing all the songs before I started production on it – simple and straightforward songs, generally consisting of a couple of verses and not much else.
It might have been a conscious decision to present the songs with varied production to kind of ‘cloak’ the simple nature of the songs? I know if I went down a more traditionally-pop path with the production, it would have been a much different EP.
HAPPY: Can you describe your creative process when working on a project like ‘SKID MARKZ’?
Jean RN: Once all the chords, melodies etc. were in place I’d generally mess around in sound design sessions where I’d play with mangling samples and create a kind of sonic ‘bed’ for the track, on which I base any choices in synths and stuff.
Once I have an idea of how I want that initial secion of the track to sound, it makes it easier to see where the production wants to go as the song progresses.
Obviously everything’s subject to change – the instrumental break in ‘Sure’ was originally much heavier, until I came up with the bass and synths in the second verse, when I realised the following instrumental section would be better suited to a mellower atmospheric sound.
Once the initial blueprint for a track is done I’ll spend some time working on various effects and transitions between sections.
HAPPY: Are there any specific artists or producers who have influenced the direction of ‘SKID MARKZ’? How did their work shape your approach?
Jean RN: The sonics of Vaporwave-adjacent artists like death’s dynamic shroud and Oneohtrix Point Never for sure influenced how SKID MARKZ turned out, especially the type of time-stretched samples and the crude use of soundfonts in the songs – the vocal bass synth in ‘Sure’ is pretty much a love letter to that sound. BJ Burton’s productions were another big influence on the EP; the verses on ’30th May 2022′ were very much inspired by his penchant for placing noisy elements in a Pop framework.
That said, I’m not actively thinking about these artists when making something – I suppose I’ve consumed their work enough that those proclivities have kind of seeped into my subconscious, informing my decisions.
HAPPY: What role does humour play in your music, especially with tracks like ‘Diarrhea’? How do you incorporate playful elements into your work without losing depth?
Jean RN: If anything, I think those playful elements give art more depth. In a world where so many of us use humour as a coping mechanism (from hurt, anger, whatever), moments of levity can make a piece more relatable to the viewer/listener – where the funny bits make the darker bits seem darker, and the darker bits make the funny bits seem funnier.
Anyway, I find projects that are 100% humourless, more often than not, quite boring. I guess in life I try not to take things too seriously, so it only makes sense for that to come across in my music.
HAPPY: How did the production techniques and sound design choices on ‘SKID MARKZ’ evolve from your previous EP, ‘Laughing Alone, Eating Salad’?
Jean RN: On Laughing Alone, Eating Salad I put a few limitations on myself with what sounds I used and tried to keep a more cohesive sonic palette (there’s a lot more guitar on that record, for example).
With SKID MARKZ the only real rules I put in place were that it sounded abrasive and electronic (for lack of a better term), which resulted in a harsher and more synth-heavy project.
Going through the project files now I’m noticing there’s not a great deal of additional sound design done to the synths, especially the basses – many are just a simple sine or triangle wave, where I threw on some kind of distortion and called it a day.
There’s a lot more layering of sounds than I remember – I guess when I listen to the tracks now I hear those layers as one cohesive sound, which I guess is what I’m going for.
If there’s one shining star of this EP, it would be the humble noise gate. While they can be helpful for mixing as well as having some really cool applications with sidechaining, I discovered gates are really great for applying stuttery, glitchy textures to sounds, if you automate the threshold just right. There’s gate play all over SKID MARKZ.
HAPPY: What are some of the challenges you faced while creating this EP, and how did you overcome them?
Jean RN: The project files could get pretty big, sometimes upwards of 180 tracks in a song – often totally unorganised, which made mixing the EP more of a headache than it probably needed to be. With the sometimes-chaotic maximalist aesthetic I’m going for it can be hard to discern which sounds are necessary for the songs, and which sounds are just adding noise, eating up headroom.
I had to be honest with myself and ended up killing a lot of darlings across the EP (there’s a 5th song which I decided to leave off the project as it just didn’t serve the vision of the EP).
I’m getting better at keeping my project files organised and concise, now! My CPU’s definitely grateful.
HAPPY: What’s coming up?
Jean RN: I have a couple of remix projects that should be coming out in the next month or so, I’m super excited about that. I’m currently working on another EP which I want to get out there by the end of the year… just gotta record those vocals (ew).
The new EP’s going to be different from SKID MARKZ; a bit more straight-forward, pulling from more mainstream genres of Pop music (still lots of noise and weirdness, though).
HAPPY: What makes you happy?
Jean RN: Good music makes me happier than anything. Genuine human connection. Cats. Touching grass. Cooking. Nice comments about my songs. Those bizarre Sonic Adventure voiceover videos on Youtube.
