Mid movie, bad movie, home movie - JJ#2

Hello and welcome back to the second ever edition of the JAMARAZ JOURNAL! I hope everyone reading this has been doing okay since the last issue :-)

It's been a pretty busy couple of weeks since I last wrote, as I mentioned before, I've recently been focusing a lot on non-music endeavours over that last portion of the Summer, so that when college started up again, I had my free time dedicated to making music, not work on less exciting things. (Nothing is as exciting as recording new music.)

Merch and dice

One of the main things that was on my to-do list to finish by the end of the Summer was to completely re-vamp my merch store, and the products inside it. Well... check! Done. You guys all know that anyway. It was actually pretty fun coming up with the new designs and getting it all set up, and it was nice to go back to the roots of it and make sure the whole backend system is still working right (which it thankfully was).

I wanted to just say THANKS SO MUCH to everyone who's bought something since it all dropped last week!! If you haven't yet, then feel free to browse what's on offer here...

According to my sources, the most popular item by far is the new bomber jacket (pictured above) featuring the collage (sorry Alfie, MONTAGE) I created for my GCSE photography coursework, and later used as the cover art for RTZ Deluxe.

Honestly, fair enough, I think it looks really sick and I've considered getting one for myself... but I'm not sure if I fancy parading a collage of multiple pictures of myself and my instruments in public lmao.

And also, yes, CDs are back, blah blah blah. Lots of people have been very happy to see them restocked, and thanks again everyone who's bought one! (or more than one!!) As of now, I'll be waiting about a week longer just to rack up a few more sales for them, then I'll be sending them off to be produced and delivered to me in bulk.

For those wondering, the company that produces my CDs and cassettes is BandCDs, and this isn't a sponsorship, but they're great at what they do and I recommend them if you're in the UK and you need some physical copies of your music. Check them out here if you want. They also do shit like producing VHS tapes for videos or films, which is so cool, and one day I'll definitely be making use of those services. That also reminds me of a VHS-related thing to talk about later...

Once I receive all those precious CDs in a big box at my door, I'll call up some of my friends and we'll have a little sit-down-listen-to-music-eat-snacks-and-pack-CDs session, which should be pretty fun. Then I'll ship them off to all you guys. For those who ordered CDs, I will be in touch via email directly with all the updates :-)

Speaking of clothes

I do have a soft spot for clothes, I love getting new stuff. Well, more like old stuff, because literally almost every piece of clothing I own was bought at a charity shop or is second hand in some way. I recently FINALLY got on Vinted (my old ass was buying clothes off eBay before) and its actually so sick, the prices are amazing.

I went on a little shopping spree last week and since then almost every day I've received a parcel as my orders slowly come trickling in... My favourite thing I've gotten so far is this colourful pair of trainers that look like they came straight from 2009. FOR ONLY 7 QUID TOO???

Shakedown, 1979

Cool kids never have the time... lyrics from Smashing Pumpkins' song '1979', which is universally understood as The Autumn Song.

It's Autumn! Kinda! I know scientifically and astronomically speaking, Autumn technically starts on the 21st September, but you've got to start getting into the autumn mood from the 1st so that by the time the 21st comes round, you can hit the ground running.

Point is, I'm back at college. Well, I technically start on Monday 8th, but I've had a couple days back this week to "get back into the swing of things". Honestly, college is a swing I'd rather not get back into... I hate to be 'that guy' but I've got so many more important things going on outside of college ("oh, how's your little music thing going?") that it feels like it gets in the way.

That being said, I'll suck it up. The main reason I'm there is for the people anyway, I have some nice mates there and I like seeing them. I have 244 days left until I leave. I bought a countdown timer off Amazon and I placed it next to my bed. Gotta look forward to the good things in life!

All my teachers have been telling us about how quickly Year 13 goes by as a way to try and scare us into studying more and shit, but honestly them saying that is genuinely quite a comfortable thought. It's crazy how fast the first year has gone though, because it doesn't feel like that long ago when I was writing a newsletter to you guys talking about starting college, and yet here we are.

It's also mad that's it's just 2 years as well. Primary school was 7 years, which felt like a whole lifetime for an 11 year old kid. Then secondary school was 5 years, which is shorter but still felt like another lifetime, because you made so many new friends and had more "coming of age" experiences. Then college is just 2 years, a weird limbo state, and before you get a chance to settle in, you're whisked away, shat out into the adult world expected to fend for yourself.

Next section

Uhhh this is the section where I would do a little film review but in the last two weeks I haven't really watched anything profoundly good.

I finished Breaking Bad, which is an absolutely incredible TV show and by far the best I've seen. From start to finish there wasn't an episode that dipped below a 7/10 in my opinion (yes, I liked the fly episode).

Afterwards I watched El Camino which is supposed to be a film-sequel to the show. It was good and all, but it felt like an extra long bonus episode instead of a film, so I wasn't too bothered about it, and I could've lived without it.

Literally yesterday, I had a couple friends over and we started watching the relatively new film Pavements, which is like a documentary/biopic film about the band Pavement. We all love Pavement but I think we all agreed that the film was a little disjointed and felt like a collage of random clips with no steadfast storyline - so we gave up 40 minutes into the whole 2 hour-long thing. No hate to it or the band of course, just seems more like a background thing than something to focus on.

Afterwards, we decided to watch that new War of the Worlds adaptation that came out recently, the one with Ice Cube playing some government hacker trying to help stop aliens from invading the earth, while simultaneously trying to navigate a fractured relationship with his pregnant daughter, who feels she is subject to over-protection from him. Considering that he watches her every move with military-grade surveillance drones, I'd say it's fair he wasn't invited to the baby shower.

To top it all off, this entire 90 minute film took place ENTIRELY within a screen recording of Ice Cube's computer, and every interaction was just like a recorded zoom call or something. Interesting concept, executed horribly. Literally the worst film I've ever seen in my life, but at the same time, fairly entertaining. If the purpose of films is to entertain... then surely this could be considered a good movie? Nahhhhh.

Very Heavy Suitcase

The other day, I managed to get my grandma's old VCR to work with our TV, so now I've unlocked the power to actually watch VHS tapes. That night my parents and I watched a tape of The Fast Show live in Hammersmith. The fast show is like one of my favourite TV shows ever, it's very 90s and very British, a comedy sketch show, and most people I know haven't even heard of it which is a real shame because it's so good.

Here's a clip. The genius is that all the different sketches have their own signature punchline that they just repeat in each sketch, and a lot of the time you know exactly what's coming, but it's how they get there that makes it funny. To me, anyway.

Back to talking about VHS though, I bought an old VHS camcorder a while ago, but now with the power of a special adapter and my grandma's VCR, I was actually able to watch what I'd filmed properly. Yesterday on my Instagram story I posted a clip of me playing a Sammy Phase song that I recorded on that VHS camcorder.

The next challenge will be finding a way to somehow convert those VHS recordings into normal computer files, but once I do that, I think it'd be really cool to film a whole Sammy Phase music video on VHS, so that's a little side quest of mine that I'll accomplish in time.

Streaming

Now, probably the most recent thing I've done is I've started streaming on Twitch. By started streaming, I mean I've done it once and it went alright.

It's something that I've been kind of wanting to do for a while, but I never really knew how to fit it in with what I wanted to do music-wise. After having some general thoughts recently on my direction and where I wanted to take the JMU project, I've landed on a solution that I'm pretty satisfied with. But first let me explain the problem.

The problem is I'm very all-over-the-place. Since starting the JMU project, it's been heaven for me, because it's allowed me to freely make whatever type of music I fancy making with absolute zero judgement from myself or others.

But, despite it being very fun for me to rapidly switch between projects and drop releases spontaneously, I must admit that I realise there is no structure whatsoever. And having no structure probably makes it quite intimidating and/or difficult for new people who don't know me to join the movement and fully appreciate all I have to offer.

So, the aim is to make all of my work more accessible for the general public. You guys are great and all, but I feel like I haven't had a fresh set of eyes on me for a while, and I want more people to feel what I'm creating. To do this I need a bit more structure, and last week, after pondering this for a while, it came to me.

This might sound like I'm talking about a load of conceptual nonsense but it's important that i just get this out in written words

Basically, you all know that the Jamaraz Music Universe is made up of multiple fictional artists (with me behind them all), and each artist has their own EPs and Albums etc... I kind of came up with an idea for a "release cycle", where I would solely focus on ONE artist at a time, and in turn, ONE release of theirs at a time.

So, it would work like this. Right now, my focus is on this artist called King Hertzie, who makes a form of electronic music. I am currently working on creating the music for his first release, and from now on, when I livestream, you'll be watching me doing that in real time.

Now, when I finish Hertzie's first release, I will compile it together into a proper EP or album or whatever, and release it for all you guys to listen to and enjoy. And from that point, I'll begin working on my next project, which again, I'll actively share the process of through my streams. Maybe a scrappy debut by a punk band, maybe some 70s psychedelic rock album, who knows.

And hence, the cycle is born, and it will continue like that until I come up with a better idea on how best to balance following my passions as sincerely as possible while making it entertaining and digestible for other people to enjoy.

That's the plan. Realistically, you could live without knowing that, but I feel like me telling you might A) help you understand me as a person more and B) give me more motivation to actually stick with it now that hundreds of people have read this.

In terms of streaming schedules, I haven't figured shit out yet. As I say, I've only streamed once so far so I'll be taking a bit of time to settle into what feels natural to me, but I aim to stream maybe twice a week, and either showcase the music I've worked on since the last stream, or work on new stuff.

If you fancy dropping by the next time I do a stream (sometime next week likely!), then please do follow me here on Twitch! And as usual, anything and everything I make gets dumped straight to my lovely supporters on Patreon, so if you fancy hearing all the new music I make as soon as I make it, then supporting me for £1 / month here on Patreon is probably right up your street.

With all those plugs out the way...

It's time to wrap up now. Thank you for making it down to the bottom of this thing, it means a lot that people read these things!

As a special reward, here's a link to a King Hertzie song I made a few weeks ago, just so you can understand his kind of style, and you know what to look forward to! Fans of Neon Indian will feel at home :-) Headphones recommended!!!!!!!!

See you in the next one

RJ