Jamie T
"bang bang anglo saxons at the disco"
Location: London
Websites:
Bio: Some two and a half years after the release of his Mercury nominated debut album ‘Panic Prevention’, Jamie Treays is set to cement his status ... (more)
as one of the UK’s most genuine and exciting young musicians with the release of his new album ‘Kings & Queens’ on September 7th on Virgin Records. It is preceded by new single ‘Chaka Demus’ which is out now.
But why the long-hiatus? Burnt out after a hectic period of touring following the success of his debut release (over 200,000 UK sales, tours in Europe, the US and Australia), Jamie decided to take his time with his follow-up and explore different musical avenues. Originally starting down a folk direction, he quickly scrapped this because, to quote the man himself: “it was just a bit boring.” What followed was an intense eighteen month period for Jamie and his production partner Ben Bones, where the sole mission was to create music that would make people excited. It was a tough period for Jamie, who put himself on creative lock-down, with the only music surfacing being the blistering Sub-Pop inspired punk-rap of ‘Fire Fire, which came with a home-made video that felt like a late-80s Powell-Peralta skate movie. It was a track that exploded all over the blogs but left his fans split down the middle about what direction the Wimbledon born lad was taking.
They shouldn’t have been concerned. By alternating between his garden shed studio and a higher-spec East London recording space, plus the decision to not release any music until he was 100% satisfied, Jamie has completely avoided the second album trap. In his words, ‘I didn’t do my second album. I did my third one instead.’
‘Kings & Queens’ features eleven songs. And what songs they are. Short, sharp and punchy, mainly. Slow, dreamy and haunted, occasionally. Still pungent with the whiff of London streets and messy times, but less celebratory, more troubled and increasingly poetic, veering suddenly from the in-your-face facts of life, to cultural comedy and, inevitably, to surreal, anxious night-time imagery. It often sounds like the connection between the darkness and street violence of the early '80s and the obvious similarities to the tense, recession-hit Now, as a generation of kids raised to expect abundance and money find themselves thrown out of work by obscure mistakes in distant financial institutions. Nothing as direct or as dull as protest rock, you understand. Just snapshots of stressed young England from a precocious talent who has quickly evolved into an acute, self-possessed artist.
Kings & Queens is exactly the album that Jamie T's admirers hoped he would make... full of the gutter poetry, anger and humour of the first album. But tougher, more focused, more confident... and with even better tunes. Jamie is happy with his work, and typically defiant and self-deprecating in his ambitions for it. 'I made Panic Prevention four years ago. If this one doesn't sound different then it's a shame. This album was a process of freak-outs, then confidence, and then just... getting through it. If this album could achieve any one thing, it would be that it forces people to fuck off and let me get on with what I do. And for people to accept that I'm not going to do the same thing over and over again. There are artists that we all trust to do that, and I want to win the right to be one of those artists.'
Having played an incredible sold-out tour of the UK and a stand-out performance at Glastonbury, Jamie T and his band The Pacemakers have announced they will take to the road again in October for their biggest nationwide tour to date.
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