Jez Lloyd is best known as the mastermind behind Ink Project. Hailing from Brighton, the multi-instrumentalist and producer, breathes life into the eclectic formation that bends genres at will, while running UK’s Blind Colour imprint. Now, presenting his latest recording, ‘Rhythm Spirit’, Jez seeks to take Ink Project to new heights.
We caught up with Ink Project to talk about ‘Rhythm Spirit’, inspirations, and the current state of the music industry.
Electronic Groove: Hi there Jez, how are you? We are excited to have you here. How have you dealt with the previous year and challenges? Reflecting back, what balance can you make out of it?
Ink Project: I’m good thanks! We’re still in the midst of this pandemic in the UK right now, although infections are dropping, the vaccination rollout is happening pretty quickly and a lot of people are saying we should be out of the woods and returning to some kind of ‘new normality’ by the Summer. Who knows if that’ll happen or not as it’s hard to trust the current government, but I’m just trying to keep my mind off it, stay positive, avoid the news and keep as busy and healthy as possible until the time comes.
This whole Covid period has had a lot of ups and downs for me on a personal level, although it’s enabled me to finish the new album and do a lot of promo work for it, as well as work with some of the wonderful artists on my record label Blind Colour, do my day job in audio, discover loads of new music, make some DJ mixes, watch an insane amount of films, read a lot, spend some time with my family getting out into the South Downs for walks and fishing, etc… So despite a few health scares, it hasn’t been all that bad although we had a lot of live shows, trips and holidays canceled and I really miss seeing friends and family regularly which has been the worse thing about it. Not performing or socializing much sucks and kind of goes against the point of living, but it is what it is.
Electronic Groove: Can you tell us a bit about your origins and your first contacts with music production and DJing? When and why did you decide that your vision should evolve to what Ink Project is now?
Ink Project: I come from quite a musical family and eclectic musical background. My mother is a piano teacher and there are some artistic people in her Italian/Kiwi family like an opera singer and some designers. There are also some musicians in my father’s family as well, including the great Humphrey Littleton, so there was always a lot of music around me when I was growing up – everything from classical music to jazz, classic rock, ’80s, and everything in between.
From a young age, I sang in the choir, played flute in the orchestra and some jazz bands (no bad Anchorman jokes please!). I then went to a very multi-cultural college in South London where I mixed with kids from all kinds of ethnic backgrounds, and around the age of 17/18, completely rejected my classical and jazz roots, getting heavily into grunge, rock, goth, and metal, learning guitar, gigging a lot in London and generally diversifying my tastes from there.
I soon started listening to the label 4AD and bands like Dead Can Dance and the Cocteau Twins and after a brief stint going to psychedelic trance raves and after-parties around London, I discovered ambient music and the genius of Brian Eno, The Future Sound Of London, The Orb, Orbital, and The Prodigy before getting into the likes of Aphex Twin, Lamb, trip-hop and acid jazz, then underground house, techno, electro, drum and bass, and breaks. It was a truly golden period of music and I soaked it all up like a sponge.
I eventually got some Technics 1210 decks with my brother and started buying a lot of records, moved to Oxford, DJ-ed at some parties there, and decided to set-up my own studio, learning a Yamaha A3000 sampler inside-out and experimenting with all kinds of electronica, mostly programming my own beats, some soft-synths and sampling a lot of my own records, re-contextualizing fragments of all of the sounds I was gathering into something new.
After a few failed attempts making drum and bass, techno and ambient, I did some traveling for a few years, came back to London, and eventually settled on Ink Project as a concept, ethos, and sound which I’ve tried to develop slowly over the years as an ever-evolving musical diary.
The idea has always been to keep it artistic, slightly underground, anti-pop, and all about experimentation and collaboration, exploring and fusing multiple genres, and working with different singers from different backgrounds. Music with rich and diverse production values that can work well on record and for film and tv, and with simple hooks and songs containing universal lyrical themes for radio and live performance. It’s been a real challenge to get it right at times and a delicate balancing act, yet very satisfying and creatively enriching. More importantly, I’ve met and worked with some really wonderful people, traveled to some great places, learned a lot about myself as a person and the power of music in bringing people together.
Electronic Groove: We know you’ve been quite active during the past year, wrapping up what would become your third album as Ink Project. Where did you find the inspiration for ‘Rhythm Spirit’? Did the outside world seep into your studio?
Ink Project: Well as I said before, the last year has mostly involved finishing and promoting the album, working with some artists on the label, and spending time with my family during the pandemic. The years prior to that I was experimenting in the studio and collaborating with everyone getting demos together. I experienced a death in the family, bought a house, and got engaged, my son was born, I traveled around the world a lot with my day job in audio, had a huge health scare and thought I had cancer at one stage and also worked a bit in the sound design side of the industry, so I learned a lot about working with sound and creating sound fx, as opposed to just music. The last 3-4 years have generally been a roller-coaster ride where I’ve learned a lot about life in general, as well as gaining a deeper knowledge and passion for music production, sound, rhythm, and the business side of the industry. All of this, plus spending a lot of time in the countryside and seaside when not working, no doubt influenced the record in some way.
I’ve always been really into sample curation and mangling, so I continued with this approach on ‘Rhythm Spirit’, but added more of my own sound fx this time which I think gives the album more of a cinematic quality – trying to fuse the natural sound elements of earth, water, fire, air, and space into the musical mix.
Electronic Groove: What was the creative process like for ‘Rhythm Spirit’, given the pandemic and the different lockdown measures? Was it all done ‘online’ or were you able to work in person with the other vocalists that make up Ink Project?
Ink Project: This album took about 3-4 years of different collaborations with singers, although after I shortlisted around 20 demos down to around 9, most of the work producing those was done within a year.
I tend to write rough ideas of beats, bass, and keys/textures when I’m feeling creative, then send them to the singers to write their own vocals and lyrics over, then we tend to work on the structure together before I edit everything and produce it all, experimenting with and fusing different production styles together in my own way, garnished with sound fx at the end. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t but it’s generally a very instinctual process for me. The vibe and feel of the production, together with the groove and vocals are always the most important elements for me, and if I’m not moved in a powerful way or ideas and sketches don’t work after a few sessions or flow naturally, they usually get binned. It takes an insane amount of experimentation with this style of music, plus you can’t really rush making art so I always try to let it unfold at its natural pace.
I’ve known FiFi Rong for around 10 years now and Coreysan for about 5 and we’ve hung out, rehearsed and played lots of shows together so already had solid friendships in place before we began work on this new album. A lot of it was recorded and edited remotely with us sharing loads of files as there was really no other way to do it as we couldn’t meet-up in person due to lockdown. It ended up working really well though as they are not only good friends and like-minded, but also top professionals so are always a joy to work with. Yazmyn Hendrix also features on this album and is someone I’ve known through the local Brighton music scene. Her vocals and harmonies are so sublime so it’s great to have her involved as well, and I also worked with my old friend Jamie Chipman on most of the videos and artwork, plus Aneek Thapar on mastering and elements of mixing. Aneek has worked for Ninja Tune, 4AD, EMI, and on all sorts of amazing projects in the past so he was a key piece in the puzzle in getting it all finished with me. I am truly thankful and blessed to work with such amazing people and see this album as a collaborative effort with everyone taking equal credit.
“This whole Covid period has had a lot of ups and downs for me on a personal level, although it’s enabled me
to finish the new album”
Electronic Groove: Diving deeper into the music…How is ‘Rhythm Spirit’ different from your previous albums as Ink Project? Did you take any risks that you hadn’t before?
Ink Project: There is definitely a lot more sound design on this record compared to previous ones and for the first time I decide to mix it all, with a little bit of help from Aneek at the end. Stylistically, it’s not much different to ‘Inside The Sun’ and ‘Satellite On’, exploring multiple genres of music, with electronica at its core. Fragments of my favorite genres and sounds stitched together into some kind of lo-fi audio collage. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it has always been my motto with Ink Project.
This time around, I also forced myself to play a lot of the rhythms into the computer by hand, using drumsticks on a Roland SPD-SX to trigger samples and percussion sounds, so there was more of a performance-based element and the production doesn’t sound over-quantized – I hope! Like the first two albums, it was made in Ableton Live and I used a lot of different samples I’d found and recorded, some soft synths, plugins, and random bits of hardware. I used some of the Arturia synths, bought all of the UAD plugins for processing (which I absolutely love!), and mixed the album using a Softube Console One to control an SSL XL 9000 K Series. I also used a few little drum machines and hardware synths like an Alesis SR-16 and a friend’s Nord Lead 2.
Electronic Groove: Ink Project has always counted on music videos to ‘thicken the plot’. What videos have come out of ‘Rhythm Spirit’? Do you see Ink Project as more than a musical outlet?
Ink Project: Coming primarily from the underground music scene, apart from when we play live together or I DJ alone, I’ve always preferred to remain a bit faceless and let the music, artwork, and visuals do the talking, working with really talented and unique singers and designers to give them a platform under the Ink Project banner and front the project more than me. A lot of people don’t realize I’m the main orchestrator behind it all but I actually like that and prefer to operate in shadows and behind-the-scenes. Having worked with both FiFi Rong and Coreysan for a while now, they are both seasoned performers, look amazing and so feature prominently in the videos for the first two singles, which were filmed separately in Paris and Berlin.
I think because of my facelessness, together with my love of film and sound design, I wanted to get some powerful but relatively simple videos made for this album. Working with the amazingly talented Zee from Video Siren and Jamie Chipman, we were all really happy with how everything turned out, capturing the lyrics, vibe, and spirit of the album perfectly.
Electronic Groove: Do you have plans for live shows in the near future or have you had any recent ones? What’s the situation like with COVID-19 and the restrictions taken in Brighton? How do you feel about them?
Ink Project: I think the last show we did was headlining the Kaya Stage at the One Love Festival in 2019. Since then, we’ve just been writing and working on other projects. Corey’s solo album came out in October which I worked with him on and released, and Fifi has a new solo album coming out soon as well. We were supposed to do some festivals around the UK in 2020, plus an album launch show in London and a tour in 2021, but all obviously got canceled due to Covid. We are hoping some summer festivals and a few gigs may happen in 2021 but we still don’t know, so we’re just holding tight and have been looking into live streaming as a potential replacement. Otherwise, we may have to wait until 2022. I’ve just been doing some DJ mixes to fill the gap while we wait for more news.
Like most places, Brighton is like a ghost town at the moment, although it has a kind of eerie calm to it without all the usual seaside tourists around that I kind of like. However, the live music, comedy, and theatre scenes down here have obviously taken a massive hit and a lot of musicians are suffering, with many focusing on writing while looking for other work, others quitting completely or branching out into session work, songwriting for others or doing production music for film and tv. Covid has really ripped the life and soul out of the city which is usually such a vibrant and colorful place although knowing Brighton, it’ll soon be back in full force like a lot of other, culturally diverse cities around the UK.
Electronic Groove: How do you envision the return ‘to normal’ for the music industry in particular? Do you think some things will change forever?
Ink Project: I have absolutely no idea, to be honest! I’ve got some friends saying that live music, clubbing, and festivals will be back in August without any restrictions, some are saying maybe October with social distancing and needing to show proof that you’ve had a vaccination, and others are saying live music won’t fully return until 2025! Predictions seem to change from day-to-day. Either way, I think we all know that live streaming will become more and more commonplace in the future.
“There is definitely a lot more sound design on this record compared to previous ones”
Electronic Groove: What can we expect from Ink Project for this year? What are your next goals?
Ink Project: At the moment, we’re just trying to get some good press and buzz around the album, do some DJ mixes and hopefully arrange some live shows or online streams. The future is definitely uncertain but we hope we’ve created an album for the times we are living through right now. It just feels great to get it out there – especially on vinyl, along with some amazing remixes from the likes of Charles Webster, Synkro, Gaudi, Babe Roots, and more.
Electronic Groove: Thank you for sitting down with us Jez! It was a pleasure. We wish you all the best going forwards!
Ink Project: Thank you! All the best to you too!
Ink Project’s ‘Rhythm Spirit’ is out now via Blind Colour. Stream and buy here.
Follow Ink Project: Facebook | Soundcloud | Spotify
