POST-BURNOUT
Two weeks ago today, the highly coveted Dublin music producer Jaq Reidy dropped his hotly anticipated debut EP, 3 TO 11. Initially inspired by Dante’s The Divine Comedy, Jaq explains the concept behind it to us. “It was supposed to be one of three [EPs], but I decided to scrap that idea,” he says. “But it’s called 3 TO 11, and it is a…I was working in Circle K at the time, when I came up with the idea, and I would always be put on a three-to-eleven shift [on] Saturday [and] Sunday, and I’d usually, after the three-to-eleven shift, I’d go out clubbing after I finished. I’d get on the 133 and head to the fucking Academy or something.
“But I just started doing that more and more, and I found myself exhausted, but I was like, ‘You know what?’ I was listening to music, and I was like, ‘I should make music like this! I should make something that people just push each other in mosh pits [to] or, like, start dancing with each other. So, I thought of 3 TO 11; and it was supposed to be one of three parts, ‘cause I was going to do, like, the hype music is 3 TO 11, and that was going to be, like…it kind of feels like hell, so it was going to be Inferno, and I was going to call the next one 7 TO 3, and that was going to be confusing, kind of distorted, psychedelic; it was going to be Purgatorio, and then the last one was going to be soulful and, like, kind of heavenly, and that was going to be Paradiso. But, yeah, I just really liked that idea, and then I made 3 TO 11, and I kind of like it on its own, so I was like, ‘Fuck it! I’m going to put this out!’”
Initially inspired by acts like A Tribe Called Quest, Kanye West (who he now denounces), A$AP Rocky, Joey Bada$$ and Tyler, the Creator, Jaq’s journey as a musician and producer is the inverse to the typical trajectory. It’s much more common to hear of musicians who eventuate into production, but for Jaq, it was the opposite. “I got into music at 16, when I got my first laptop, and I started making beats on GarageBand and then FL [Studio],” he says. “And I kind of wanted to be a producer, and I didn’t know any rappers or any singers or anything, so I was just like, ‘I’ll do it myself,’ and I started rapping at 17. And then COVID hit…and I was like, ‘Yeah, I might as well just put out more music,’ and I met Victor [Williams] and Róisín [McKeown] and all these people, and then I kind of just kept it going since then. So, I kind of wanted to be a producer, didn’t know anybody, so I started rapping.”
With his production and rapping skills combined, Jaq has created a unique, full, bombastic, energetic and fun sound. “The reason it’s like that [is] because if you heard my older stuff, it was very depressing,” says Jaq. “But the reason it’s like that…I don’t know, I just used to make sad, loner music. I still kind of do, but it’s not out yet. But I don’t know, my friends were like, ‘Oh, Jaq! Like, you’ve got to start making stuff that can get turned up in the club!’ I was like, ‘You know what? I made this ten-song mixtape on SoundCloud, let me just do something completely different.’ I met Kylte, who’s my DJ and he mixes and masters everything, and I started making…I made ‘BROKE!,’ I made ‘TONY DANZA!,’ like, hype kind of like, but dancing kind of music. A mixture of…like, you know, ‘EAST!’ and ‘BROKE!’ are kind of stuff you can dance to. ‘TONY DANZA!’ and a couple of other songs that I’ve been putting out, ‘BLUE ON BLUE!’ as well, are kind of just in your face, get rowdy. And I’ve done a bunch of songs like those and made them into an EP that is kind of like club music. It’s club music or aggressive music and it’s like music to, like, get turned at a party! [Laughs] Break a window at a fucking bank or something! I don’t know.”
Beyond the studio, Jaq has been honing his live performances too, which can be best seen with his live Jaq’s World series. At the time of publication, there have been two Jaq’s World events. Talking about these shows, Jaq explains, “That came about with…I didn’t come up with the name! I’m not that narcissistic, like that! Let’s get that straight! [Laughs] But it was Emmanuelle Chucks, who’s my manager – he’s a genius, he is fucking insane with, like…he’s always on top of his stuff and he’s always, like, very professional – and I did the open mic with Victor, that Vision Lab open mic, and I really wanted to perform again, and, like, a lot of my friends were like, ‘Oh, when are you doing your own show? Like, I’d love to see your own show,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, why not? I’ll just send a bunch of emails.’ And I sent an email to as many venues as I could, and then Sound House was the only one who got back to me.
“And, to be fair to them, I wasn’t known at the time; I had done one, like, half of one song and they were like, ‘Yeah, OK. Just as long as you get everything organised, we’ll give you the venue for a renting price,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, grand.’ And, I don’t know, we just…like, Emmanuelle was like, ‘Call it “Jaq’s World,”’ and I was like, ‘OK.’ Like, ‘This is your thing; you’re going to do this and this and this.’ And we sold, like, over 100, and I was like, ‘Whoa! For my first gig, that’s crazy!’ And the last one we did, the second Jaq’s World, was incredibly stressful. We had a live drummer, everything was going wrong, and then by the end, we were like, ‘Great! We’re done! Like, thank God. Let’s not do another one of them for a while!’ But, yeah, no, I just really wanted to perform so I was like, ‘Let me just do it myself.’ It was kind of like the same thing with me starting to rap, I was like, I could wait for someone to come along and be like, ‘Oh, I could use your beats,’ or I could do it myself.”
With everyone producing nowadays, Jaq feels that it’s important to keep upping his ante and he finds that his exploration of live events has inspired him in the studio, too. Taking particular inspiration from live performers on instruments, he explains, “Rather than watching rappers and DJ sets, I prefer watching the live instruments ones to get ideas for, like, how they up their production. Like, there was a sliding guitar in one of my friend’s […] he’s a session musician, so he was doing a gig with this guy, and he was playing slide guitar, and I was like, ‘Wow, OK.’ Like, ‘OK, I like the sounds here. I like this sound there. Oh, he’s using a saxophone here. OK.’
“I say if you just want to see what all the other rappers are doing, go to their shows, but I would suggest going to live musical events with instruments and stuff. It was the same with when I got into production and rapping, I found myself listening to less rap and more soul music, like jazz, pop, rock, like, stuff with higher production value. ‘Cause I like rap, but a lot of the time it could just be a beat made by some guy and it’s just rap bars. Whereas, with soul music, it’s like different bridges and this part goes this way and this part goes that way and there’s funky basslines and it’s crazy.”
Jaq is a part of a new collective of producers called Soul Temp, which are open to working with musicians who want to reach out. Jaq still studies music in his downtime to make sure that his knowledge and passion don’t faulter, but for him, it doesn’t feel extraneous. “It doesn’t feel like homework,” he says. “It’s definitely great fun. I love doing it. Even just learning the history about music, you learn fun facts about your favourite artists, like, ‘Oh, shit! OK, I didn’t know they were doing that,’ and, ‘Oh, wow! That’s actually a separate sound done by this person,’ and it’s fun. I guess if you don’t love the music, it can feel like homework, and you’re not trying to do that and you’re just trying to do a song to get big, it can feel like homework. But I don’t really hang out with people who are just trying to get big. It’s like, we live in Ireland! There’s no way we’re getting big! Unless Ireland gets big for music, we’d have to move to England or America to get big, so, right now, I just like people who are doing it solely because they love it, and it you do that solely because you love it, I don’t think you could see it as homework at all.”
Jaq Reidy’s debut EP 3 TO 11 is out now on Spotify. You can follow Jaq on Instagram. For a much more in-depth discussion with Jaq on his new EP, producing, Soul Temp, studying music, the Dublin hip-hop scene and more, tune into today’s episode of POSTBURNOUT.COM Interviews, premiering at 17:00 (IST) on YouTube and available elsewhere afterwards.
Aaron Kavanagh is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Post-Burnout. His writing can also be found in the Irish Daily Star, Buzz.ie, Totally Dublin, The GOO, Headstuff, New Noise Magazine, XS Noize, DSCVRD and more.