Jackson Roy has released his debut EP Natural Cause, out now, alongside focus track ‘Glitterball Daze’ and its accompanying video.
The four-track release follows debut single ‘Natural Cause’ and ‘How Do You Like That?’, which earned early support from whynow, Far Out’s Big Indie Playlist and a strong reception at The Great Escape. The EP was written without any plan to release or perform it, a creative freedom that Roy says is audible throughout: “I could just start again or completely change it. That was actually really freeing, and I think that is reflected in the music because it is far more free than what I’ve made before.”
‘Glitterball Daze’ is the EP’s centrepiece. It blends piano-pop, psychedelia, crunching guitars and a jazz-tinged undercurrent, landing somewhere between a showstopping musical finale and a piece of music that has forgotten what genre it was supposed to be playing. Its origin story is equally distinctive: Roy met two older women on a train, one of whom was telling him about her grandfather’s dream of playing the organ at Blackpool Tower Ballroom. He had to get off before hearing whether the dream came true. “So I wrote a song imagining what happened,” he has said. “He becomes successful, but the ego and the greed gets to his head, and in the end he puts loads of explosives around the theatre, and on his final night pulls the trigger and blows everyone up.”
Elsewhere, ‘Exhibit’ moves between 1970s yacht rock and a J Dilla-esque groove before ending in something approaching extreme metal at a jazz festival. Closing track ‘June (Soon To Grow)’ begins tender and serene before odd time signatures, heavily manipulated sounds and repetition introduce an escalating sense of unease.
Roy wrote and produced all four tracks himself, playing guitar, bass, saxophone, piano, synths, flute and whistles, with co-producer and drummer Rian O’Grady, bassist Oscar Browne, cellist Mat Roberts and backing vocalists Felix Mackenzie-Barrow and Yasmin Harrosh completing the lineup. The EP was mixed by Dani Bennett Spragg (Wunderhorse, English Teacher).
He headlines The George Tavern in London on 29th July.
Photo credit: Reuben Bastienne-Lewis
