We have been loving the work of Sydney multi-instrumentalist Jerome Blazé for years now, and are so stoked to see his sophomore album ‘Living Room’ finally get its official release this week.
We took some time out with Jerome who provided us with a track by track insight into the album and the whole creative process surrounding it.
Coloured 2
This is one of the oldest ideas on the record. I wrote the chorus almost 8 years ago when I first moved to Sydney. I actually released the track in a previous instrumental iteration, hence the ‘2′. Many years later I revisited it, I knew it captured the something important to the album. I decided to start the verse with the final line from my last album, picking up where I left off and serving as a kind of mission statement for the record – ‘I can’t do this on my own’. All the plucked sounding verse elements are a combination of palm muted upright piano, violin, saxophone and who knows what else.
Let Your Heart Fill Up
I came up with the drums, piano riff and verses for LYHFU in 2021. The idea just stuck around in my head again and I knew I wanted it on the album – it just feels like Sydney to me. It really came to life from the initial idea through some contributions from friends, BVs from Sarah Levins, violin from James Tarbotton, upright bass from Sabine Tapia, saxophone from Ned Olive and a sample from Zion Garcia’s track ‘MUNCH’. There’s also some subtle samples from Tourist and The Clientele thrown in on the back half for good measure. I was quite specifically inspired by the outro of Death and All His Friends by Coldplay for the big second section – if you listen you’ll know what I mean. It was also the first track I tried the more spoken word stuff on.
Is This What I Have Missed? (feat. Sarah Levins and James Tarbotton)
This track began with a jam James Tarbotton and I recorded messing around sending his violin through my Space Echo. Quite a while later I revisited the recording, sampled it and put it together with this Amen style break I’d chopped up from some drums I recorded with my friend Pete Longhurst. I always imagined there being three perspectives or ‘voices’ on this song. Sarah Levins is one of the best lyricists I know, so I knew she’d be the perfect addition with the song being so imagistic. The cello solo came out of another improvised recording session with James Tarbotton. When he launched into that screeching passage out of nowhere I knew I’d found thethird ‘voice’ for the track.
Hyde Park (The Late Afternoon Light Runs Along Macquarie Street Near Hyde Park)
While all of the tracks capture a collage-like approach to music making, Hyde Park in particular is a real tapestry. That initial drone is some sort of deep abstraction of a Punch Brothers track, the drums are a sample of my friend Ollie Quirk on an unreleased song from band we played in together during uni and there’s also some subtle vocals from Krisha Umali who was in the same band. The main piano melody was also chopped out of a random recording I made years before. It was a fun way to create a melody, because I just don’t think I would’ve come up with it if not for wrestling with the baked in piano flourishes. When it came to finishing off the track I asked my friend Niki Johnson to double that melody with some vibraphone. It ended up being a fun challenge because I had to transcribe what was otherwise a random string of notes and then get Niki to lock in with the original sample. Luckily she’s a pro and did it in a heartbeat!
Time Passing
I’d just seen the film ‘Rye Lane’ and was really inspired by its quirky vibe and soundtrack. I made Time Passing off the back of that. The basis of the track is two samples. The first was from a UK folk duo called Flyte. They have a beautiful song called ‘Chelsea Smiles’ and there’s a tiny little string/guitar snippet at the end which played some chords that I’d been wanting to use in the album. The other main sample is a drum break from US producer Karriem Riggins from a track called ‘Riesling Pour Robert’. For the “verse” section, I just threw together a bunch of random voice memos and bits of recording – I wanted it to feel like you’re fast-forwarding through time. It was one of the final tracks to come together for the record and the whole process was very quick.
The Arrival (First Sight)
Time Passing felt right being a shorter track, but I wanted to explore the chords from the verse more, which felt very Coldplay, The Verve, late 90s/early 2000’s brit-pop-y. I decided to make another track with just those chords as a way of creating space to explore them. I’d recently re- discovered this picture book that I used to love as a kid called ‘The Arrival’ by Shaun Tan. I was struck by how much I resonated with it still to this day, particularly with themes of otherness and migration. Recounting that experience of discovery is what the lyrics are about. There’s also a core sample of my friend Hinano Fujisaki’s track ‘Afternoon Sky Blue’. Hinano’s last EP is just so beautiful and I wanted to find a place to work with it.
Over Salzburg
I made Over Salzburg, you guessed it, over Salzburg! I went to Austria a few years ago and there’s this huge castle in the centre of Salzburg. When I got there, I knew I wanted to go to the top of the castle and make some music up there, just for the epic-ness of it. When we were walking around during the day, we stumbled into a church with an organist practicing. I got out my phone and recorded a little snippet. When it came to the evening we headed up to the castle and I used the organ as the basis of the track. I combined it with a sample of my friend Oliver Beard who we’d spent some time with earlier in the holiday. Despite it being made so far from home, the combination of the chords and the melody still felt very Sydney to me, which is why I chose to include it on the album.
Living Room
This was one of the first tracks I started in the living room, titled aptly! I was listening to the Danger Mouse and Black Thought album heaps at the time and wanted to make something in that world. I had a set of chords I was keen to use for something but I wanted them to be played by a non-keyboard instrument. I sent them to James Tarbotton, he layered them up with his violin and I ended up centring the track around that recording. Much later in the process I felt the chorus vocal texture needed a lift, so I asked a bunch of friends to come over and record a mini-choir, in the living room of course. It has this real trip-hop undertone to it, which I funnily only really started to delve into towards the end of the process. I think that downtempo vibe had been a subconscious influence early in my life.
Emerge (For Sarah)
The origin of ‘Emerge (For Sarah)’ was made years ago. My partner was stuck in bed sick, so I decided to make a soothing ambient track and send it to her to help her feel better. Years later I rediscovered the track and it just felt like it captured a real moment in time. I decided to sample myself and turn it into a new song. I’d also been listening to this beautiful cover by BADBADNOTGOOD called ‘The Key To Love (Is Understanding)’ heaps, so I grabbed the drums and it fit together perfectly with the initial ambient idea. From there it was just about layering life on top of it all. My friend Ned Olive was over for a rehearsal the day I’d put it all together and he dropped in some saxophone parts that came to underpin the track. Later on in the process we also recorded pipe organ with a friend who luckily had access to a huge church up the road. It’s a real collage that worked out in the best possible way.
Rosella Blessing
I’d had this idea to do an abrupt cut to an Olafur Arnalds-esque piano moment for ages and I wanted to find somewhere to do it on this album. Rosella Blessing almost serves as a vessel for that. At this point in the album, I was really trying to lean into space as a musical way of realising these ideas of the everyday and the mundane. I just wanted to sit in the simplicity of one texture for a while, both in the intro and the later piano section. People like SAULT and Four Tet were big influences for the record. I find it’s really powerful when they just present you with one repeated idea – rather than pushing you away it almost draws you in further, connecting you to all the nuances of the sound. I thought that using minimalism in that way was an apt musical metaphor for tuning into the small, beautiful everyday moments like the afternoon light streaming across a brick wall.
Another You
As with Rosella Blessing, I similarly wanted to find a sense of space in this track. The lyrics of Another You had been around for a while in various iterations and I knew they had to be on this album. I re-purposed them into this track and they fit perfectly. There’s this really long chord sequence once the drums kick in where I almost wanted to just get out all of the un-used chord ideas I could’ve used elsewhere in one go. Similarly, the big instrumental moment is a combination of all the friends and musicians who contributed to the album as a way of harkening back to the journey. The outro also brings back a melodic theme that runs throughout the album – you can hear it in Time Passing and Is This What I Have Missed too. I just wanted to create a moment that tied up all the ideas and sounds in the album and it all came together quite easily.
Fans can catch Jerome Blazé this week as he showcases at SXSW Sydney as well as his forthcoming album launch show in Sydney. Check out the dates below:
Tour Dates
18th October, 11:00pm – SXSW Sydney @ The Agincourt
19th October, 7:00pm – SXSW Sydney @ Lord Gladstone
28th November, 7:00pm – Living Room by Jerome Blazé, Live In Concert @ The Landsdowne (Album Launch)