Life Recently - JJ#1

Welcome, everyone, to the first official issue of my new blog, which I've decided to call the Jamaraz Journal. As many of you guys will recall, I used to have a regular string of newsletters that I sent out to my email list every half-month. I stopped doing that around March/April, but I had a decent chunk of people tell me they actually really enjoyed reading about what I'd been up to, so this new blog is a continuation of that :-)

So, I hope you've found a nice spot at your local dentist waiting room, and let's begin.

The Jamaraz Music Universe

Or as I like to call it, the JMU. I'd just like to use this opportunity to explain it a bit and make sure everyone's on the same page. Some people may know a lot about it and some of you might've forgotten who I was before you started reading this.

The JMU is my most recent creative pursuit. It's a very large-scale project where I create a fictional world of characters and stories, and the method I use to tell these stories is primarily though music. Music, I should add, which is created by different bands and musicians that are in-universe characters, but really, it's me behind it all.

A still from a video I made a few couple months ago promoting Sammy Phase's 2nd EP.

Currently, there are 3 JMU artists publicly on streaming services right now:

Sammy Phase, a solo indie/singer songwriter from the late 90s

Ross Wonder, an instrumental hip hop producer, also active in the 90s

Sweat Glass Halo, a 3-piece indie-punk band from the mid 2000s.

You can look them up on Spotify and other platforms and listen to their music, and although it says Ross Wonder's first mixtape was released in 1993 (which is the in-universe release date), it was actually just all created by me in the last few months. I have some pictures on my website of me dressed up as all the different characters, you can look at them here.

And to really emphasize the idea that all these artists are in the same universe, there are crossover songs. There's one Sammy song that has Ross Wonder featuring on it. There's also a song from Sweat Glass Halo's debut release that is a cover of a Sammy Phase song. It's all interconnected!!!!!

In the future, I plan to build some sort of network of artists and collaborators in real life, and these people will help me simulate all the different characters and styles of music that exist in the JMU.

It's an exciting project, and when I talk to my friends about it I can tell it goes over most of their heads. It's something I plan on committing to for the next decade or so, because it's the kind of project that's open-ended, and it only finishes when my ideas run dry... And god knows I've got more ideas than I could possibly count.

I made a playlist of every song currently in the JMU, so I recommend you check it out!! You can listen to it here.

I can drive now

I've been taking driving lessons since mid-February this year, and luckily I managed to score a driving test on June 10th. I'm not sure what the situation is like in the USA (where most of you guys are from, apparently), but here in the UK, driving tests are very difficult to book, as there's so much demand but not enough actual slots. All the credit goes to my mum for this one, she managed to swap my original September booking for one in June, which is insanely lucky.

So, I took my test, drove around for about half an hour, and passed it! My examiner was this really chill guy called Richard. The reason I did well was probably because he was so chillaxed about the whole world. He had a voice that would be great for an audiobook version of any children's story.

Since then, I have managed to acquire a car, named it Uko, and I enjoy driving so much. I find it really relaxing, and it's actually got decent speakers for music too. It's got a CD player (get in!!!) and an aux input for an MP3 player or a phone. No Bluetooth or anything... but I've never been a fan of Bluetooth anyway.

Here's Uko in a field when my dad and I went camping a couple weeks ago.

Ooh baby, do you know what that's worth? Ooh, Holland is a place on Earth...

In early July, I spent a week in the Netherlands. Me and my parents travelled there to see some family. I don't have any Dutch family, I just have an uncle and a cousin who moved there a while ago. My cousin recently got married to a Dutch guy, and he's really cool so I approve of her choice.

Anyway, around the same time as we were leaving to go to the Netherlands, I also had the releases of Sammy Phase's 2nd EP AND Ross Wonder's 2nd mixtape on the horizon. My plan was that while I was in the Netherlands I would film a bunch of promo stuff for the two releases, then edit all the videos on the way back, and so forth.

However, in typical Ricky Jamaraz fashion, I had a last-minute revelation of "fuck the promo, I'd rather just make more music", so I rapidly packed a bunch of microphones, an audio interface and a couple pairs of drumsticks, with the idea to somehow find a room with a drum kit and a bass guitar and record Sweat Glass Halo's debut EP, completely fuelled by spontaneous excitement.

After arriving, I did a bit of research to find any local practice studios that had the gear I needed. I ended up landing on this one place called dB's, which is not only a series of practice rooms with rentable drum stuff and other instruments like basses, but it's also a bar and music venue. Such a cool vibe! It was in the city of Utrecht, which wasn't far from where I was, in the town of Maarn.

Here's a pic from there website of a typical rehearsal room for hire there. Basically identical to the one I was in.

So, on one of the days I was there, I packed up my duffel bag of recording equipment and set out towards the train station in Maarn. I caught the train, which I might add, was the single greatest train ride I've ever been on. Like holy shit, it was so clean and spacious! British trains can't compete.

I spent a few hours there at the practice studio and managed to record the drums and bass for 5 songs. While recording the drums I actually went through two pairs of drum sticks, so I had to buy an extra pair. Special shoutout to Pim who was working there at the time, he seemed like a really chill guy.

After my session was over, I took my recordings back to where I was staying, and recorded the vocals and synth parts over the next couple days. If I recall correctly, the whole EP was finished within 72 hours of me starting it, which I was really pleased with!

Here I am in the room I was staying in, recording some vocals. You can see the NT1-A mic I used here, and also my laptop glowing in the background.

Now it might make sense to people why the EP is called 'Tot Ziens, Cruel World', because "tot ziens" means "goodbye" in Dutch, so it's a little nod to that whole spontaneous ordeal of recording it while on holiday.

You can listen to the EP here!

Brief intermission No.1

Because this particular post is my first proper blog post and I've got to catch you guys up on all the interesting stuff from the last few months, as you can imagine, I've got quite a bit to say.

There's absolutely no pressure to read all this in one go. No one will laugh at you or judge you if you take a break.

Okay break over let's carry on!!!!

Five Knutmos walked into a bar

A few of you guys may now that in recent months I have been spending some time working on another music project, a band called Knutmo Five. Now, this has nothing to do with the Jamaraz Music Universe at all - it's a band that my friends and I formed, and I'm currently the drummer.

The band originally started out as being a backing band for my friend Alfie's solo project called "Radcliffe Camera", with me drumming just as a favour. Any previous readers of my newsletters will remember me talking about this in November / December 2024.

The OG Radcliffe Camera backing band in late November 2024, with me (left), Alfie (centre) and Link (right).

In this video I posted on YouTube a while ago, you can see the original line-up of the band playing Alfie's song 'Photo' (starts at 13:40). Alfie on guitar and vocals, our mate Link playing keyboard (even though he was supposed to be the bassist lmao), and me on drums.

As time went on, Alfie and I began writing songs together, and Alfie came to the conclusion that instead of wanting a "Radcliffe Camera backing band", he wanted to just form a band and have it be a fully collaborative project.

We soon enlisted the help of my friend Ollie on guitar and backing vocals (the same Ollie who's in the RJ live band, so there's lots of overlap!) and our friend Nikol on bass. Then we renamed the band to Knutmo Five. That's right, only four members even though we're Knutmo Five. It's because I got the idea for the name of the band from a random sign on the side of a building in Stoke.

The band in early August 2025.

Recently we posted a little Q&A vid on YouTube, if you fancy meeting the rest of the band then go watch that here!

The debut Knutmo Five album

Now I'm going to have to be careful about what I say here because I don't want to give too much away, but I will say that by the time you read this, our first album will be completely finished. Really exciting stuff!!!! I don't think I'm allowed to leak the title or anything though...

The entire album was recorded from scratch in a week, from July 20th to 27th. It was an extremely fun process, and the high-density recording sessions really reminded me of the sessions for my album Return To Zero, which was recorded almost exactly a year prior.

I was sort of the main producer guy for the sessions, because I had the most experience recording stuff. We (Alfie and I) recorded all the drum tracks for the album in about 3 hours in a rehearsal room in Stoke. Then we headed back to my house in Nottingham and Alfie stayed over for the following week, and we recorded everything else.

On two of the days, Ollie came down and we recorded some extra parts from him. Sadly, Nikol wasn't actually able to come down due to some transport issues, so the bass parts were played by either myself, Alfie, or Ollie, depending on the song. Also, crazy thing, but I found out that even though Ollie is left handed, he can play a right-handed bass perfectly fine?? That genuinely takes some skill, because whenever I've tried playing any left-handed instrument, it sounds like I've been playing for only a week...

But yeah. There's just something magical about having a period of time in the summer dedicated to recording music and making a piece of art like an album. I'm excited to think about what I'll be working on next year...

Even though I absolutely loved recording RTZ by myself last summer, I think I enjoyed recording this album more, because of all the fun stuff I got to do with my mates in between our recording sessions...

Like...

Cutting 93% of my hair off

I know most of you know about this because you would've seen my post on Instagram a few weeks back, but yeah, I went and buzzed off most of my hair. I really felt like doing something different, and I can say with complete honesty that it's felt like a really nice fresh start. And drying my hair after a shower has never been easier!

I got Alfie and my other best mate Rhys to cut it while I sat in the bath. They deliberately cut it really messily so that we could film a fake ransom video and make it look like I had been taken hostage...

Here I am cutting my own hair while the others took a break.

Afterwards, I tidied it up a bit, but I ended up fully buzzing it the next morning. I can honestly say that that evening was the most memorable Tuesday night of my life, and the best part was that it was 100% pure stupid fun, and despite what you'd think, us three were completely sober the entire time. However, we had eaten some chocolate I brought back from Belgium earlier that month, so who knows what might've been in there...

Brief intermission No.2

Yeah I thought I might have another one of these because it's going on longer than I thought. Hope you're enjoying this so far tho!

Alright, we're back, going live in 3... 2... 1...

Peggy in the sky with diamonds

So I was with Alfie and our friend Sam one week and we had just come out from a gig in Notts city centre. We went to see a band called GRLwood, whom Alfie and I had never heard of, and Sam had vaguely heard of. The purpose of our outing was just to touch grass and potentially discover some cool music.

They were okay. I'm not massively into "queercore" or whatever the internet describes these guys as. Quite heavy and emo but not in the way I'm personally used to.

As you can imagine, the three of us stuck out like sore thumbs wearing our blue jeans and t-shirts while the other 100 people there were dressed almost exclusively in black, with the average person having more piercings than I do limbs.

Anyway, despite all this, some of the songs they played were genuinely really good and it was a good show. All in all though, I'm glad the music didn't blow me away - because it was on the tram ride into town that we found out about the ex-drummer's accusation of sexual assault from the singer back in 2020... Not sure if anything's been proven, I haven't looked into it much, but yeah. We just went in with the thought "I hope their music isn't that good because I don't really wanna be a fan of them now..."

Wait I've literally just realised I wasn't even meant to be talking about this, that was the like the biggest tangent ever holy shit. What I MEANT to say was this:

After we came out of that gig, we saw some of Sam's friends, who had just come out of a different gig at this place called Peggy's Skylight. They told us about it and said it's a venue that specialises in jazz (and adjacent) music, and that really piqued my interest.

So, maybe a week later or so, I bought tickets to go see this band called Con Alma, they play latin jazz stuff. Again, never heard of them before, but I was willing to take the chance.

Oh my god. They were so good!!!!!! The place was amazing, it's a proper jazz club with tables and chairs in front of the stage, they had food and drinks served there, it made me feel like I was in a 1960s film or something.

I'm a fairly large fan of jazz music but I had never seen it performed live in front of my eyes before, but it was incredible to see the members play around their instruments with such precision and skill, communicating to each other with subtle facial expressions and nods.

Con Alma live at Peggy's Skylight on July 30th 2025

I went there on my own, so they sat me on this table facing the stage, a row of 3. Quickly, I made friends with this sweet old woman named Pauline, and she told me all about the place, all about the members of the band, and all about the staff who worked there. "That's Evie, she started here a couple weeks back, but she seems to be settling in well."

Turns out she goes there 4 or 5 nights a week, so much that the little row I was sitting on had been dubbed "Pauline's row".

I also got talking to this other guy called Andy, who was Pauline's friend. He was really chill. You might think this place was just filled with pensioners who like to sit and watch live jazz, but it genuinely had a massive mix of age ranges, with a decent few around my age. I just happened to really hit it off with the septuagenarians that night.

My trip to Bristol (and other places nearby)

Okay, so this is the most recent interesting thing I've done. From the 14th to the 18th of August, Alfie and I took a trip down to the southwest of England to visit and stay with a couple friends; Cici and Aidan.

I drove us down on the morning of the 14th, and even though it was a 3 hour drive, it felt like it went by a lot quicker. That was all down to our "Bristol Boyz" playlist that we had assembled in the days leading up to the trip.

Once we got there, we unloaded our stuff and headed into Bristol city centre, where we explored a few shops and looked at some overpriced vintage clothes (sigh). We went into Rough Trade Bristol, which was really cool. If you don't know, Rough Trade is this series of record shops; there's 5 in the UK, 1 in NYC and 1 in Berlin. In there, I bought a book about Elliott Smith, partly because I love him, but mostly because it was only £5, which is pretty cheap for a book in general, and especially for a book from Rough Trade.

The next day, Alfie and I headed into Bristol by ourselves to have more of a walk around closer to the waterfront, which was really nice. There's this little park in the city called Brandon Hill, and in this park is the Cabot Tower, basically this brick tower you can walk up and it's one of the highest points in Bristol I think. It was so sick looking at the city from above, one day I'd love to go there at night.

The view from the top of Cabot Tower

Now comes Saturday, which Alfie and I decided was our dedicated beach day. Our original plan was to head to this seaside town called Clevedon, spend some time at the beach there, then head to this nearby larger town called Weston-Super-Mare. However, within about an hour of being in Clevedon, we were enjoying it so much that we didn't fancy leaving. To be fair, I don't think Weston's that great anyway, it's pretty over-commercialised and crowded.

The beach in Clevedon had this thing they called a Marine Lake, which was basically like a man-made, sectioned off area of the sea. It was honestly so great, and I think more beaches should do something like it. It was essentially a very large swimming pool, but with a sandy floor and still filled with sea water. Alfie and I honestly had such a good time there, and it was so sunny (thank the lord!!!!) that it really made me feel like I was properly on holiday.

On our final day there, Alfie, Aidan, Cici and I drove to Cardiff, which was only about an hours drive from Bristol. On the way there, Alfie and I played the others the full Knutmo Five album. Even though we had shown a good few people various songs, these guys were the first people to hear the final masters start to finish. And they both absolutely loved it, which is a good sign!

The Prince of Wales bridge going over the river Severn, connecting England and Wales.

My favourite part of the journey was probably driving over this big bridge to get into Wales. I really love a good bridge, and it was my first time driving over one.

You get some people with this thing called "megalophobia", which is a fear of large structures. I genuinely think I have the opposite, because I'm just in awe at large structures, and driving through a big bridge like the Prince of Wales bridge genuinely makes me excited. What's that called? Megalophilia??

Anyway, Cardiff was nice, but the bridge was the highlight lmao

Alfie (left), Aidan (centre) and Cici (right) in Cardiff.

This is the end now

Thanks so much for reading issue #1 of the Jamaraz Journal. I hope you enjoyed it! I'm looking forward to doing more of these in the future :-)

In the future I think it might be cool to maybe have segments on here, like a film review or an album review on every post. I think I can make it so people can comment on these posts but I'll set that up sometime in the future. We'll see where it goes I guess...

If you want to get in touch, feel free to email me at music@rickyjamaraz.co.uk

See you soon!!!!

RJ

Issue #2 will be out a couple weeks from now! If you'd like to get updates about whenever I post here, plus the chance to grab some discount codes for upcoming new merch (including restocked CDs), then sign up to the RJ email list here.