Tag: Camera

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sophie Jamieson Shares Gorgeous “Camera”

London-based singer/songwriter Sophie Jamieson released two EPs in 2020 that caught the attention of Bella Union Records, who quickly signed the rising British artist, and released her Steph Marziano-produced full-length debut, 2022’s Choosing.

Choosing was a subtle reworking of the sound that Jamieson quickly established through her first two EPs. While her first two EPs flirted with playful experimentation, her full-length debut featured a much organic, simpler and intimate sound, centered around arrangements of live drums, bass, cello and piano that are roomy enough for Jamieson’s mesmerizing vocals to take the spotlight.

Jamieson described the songs on her first two EPs as “black holes” and while Choosing manages to cover similar thematic ground, it never takes its eyes from what lies beyond, never fully releases its grip when its telling her to let go. The album is deeply personal documentation of a journey from the painful rock bottom of self-destruction to a safer place, and imbued with a faint light of hope. Focusing on the bare bones of each song, the album’s material is influenced by songwriters like Elena Tonra, Sharon Van Etten and Scott Hutchinson, and sees Jamieson singing openly about longing and searching, of trying, failing and trying again, and the strength of love in its varying forms. 

“The title of this album is so important,” Sophie explained. “Without it, this might sound like another record about self-destruction and pain, but at heart, it’s about hope, and finding strength. It’s about finding the light at the end of the tunnel, and crawlingI towards it.” 

Ultimately, Choosing asks the listener to look deep within themselves and to show them that they can take whatever pain they’re experiencing, and choose, to some extent, how they let it affect them; whether they let it burn them down or whether they choose to look it straight in the face. “The songs are bursting with something, and that energy just needs to be reshaped into love for the self,” Jamieson explained. “I can say this from a place of having learned now how to love and care for myself. The love that reverberates through this album is like the green shoots of something I have happily learned to nurture into my present day.” 

The London-based artist’s highly anticipated sophomore album, the Guy Massey and Jamieson co-produced I still want to share is slated for a January 17, 2025 release through Bella Union. The album is a deeply personal reflection on the cynical nature of loving and losing, the anxiety we can’t keep out of our relationships and the perpetual longing for belonging that drives us to keep trying and failing, to find a home in others. The album sees Jamieson lifting the lid on the roots of how we love and digs in even deeper, leaning into our deficiencies but from a stronger, healthier place that is much less afraid of the pain that inevitably comes with feeling everything.

Sonically, the album’s material is reportedly much more exploratory, playful and detailed with a richer palette. The raw emotion of Jamieson’s songwriting and delivery is joined by new instrumentation, including omnichord, harmonium and sub-bass, as well as rich string arrangements by Josephine Stephenson that help to weave a yearning connection through the beating heart of the album’s material. “There’s a lot of warm autumnal colors, and then more glittery, dark, starry skies. Something about it all has really come together to illustrate some things that I didn’t know I needed to articulate in this way”, Jamieson explains.

I still want to share‘s second and latest single, album opening “Camera” is a brooding and stunningly gorgeous song which begins with Jamieson accompanying her expressive delivery with strummed acoustic guitar that swells and builds up with a cinematic arrangement of strings, shuffling drums and twinkling keys to a slow-burn fade out. The song captures a narrator, who’s slowly unraveling with a woozy precision.

“I wrote this song when my heart was broken and I was trying to hold everything when it didn’t want to be held,” Jamieson explains. “I wanted to be able to draw an outline around the pieces, fit them into a frame. Something in me knew that I’d find some peace if I just let things stay blurry, but everything in me wanted to find some focus. This song is the yearning, wrenching of trying to define a love that was less simple, more layered and less graspable than I could accept.”

Co-directed and shot by Malena Zavala and Sophie Jamieson in Brecon Beacons, Wales, the accompanying video for “Camera” features dazzlingly cinematic imagery.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s Anton Newcombe Leads Pure Ensemble 6 at Space Fest 2016

Created by Nasiono Association, Space Fest is annual Gdansk, Poland-based festival of shoegaze, space-rock and alternative rock that features the prerequisite live music, but much like CMJ, Mondo.NYC, Northside Festival and others also features meet-and-greets with legendary and renowned artists, workshops for Polish and other internationally-based musicians, a battle of the bands-like competition for young, up-and-coming bands and more. As an annual celebration of all things psych rock and space rock-inspired, Space Fest in his almost seven year history has gradually become a scrappy yet internationally recognized festival with an increasingly diverse lineup of bands from across the European Union, Poland, the US, Canada and elsewhere. 

One of the festival’s standout highlights over the course of its history is the Pure Phase Ensemble, a collaborative collective that features one permanent member, Karol Schwarz (KSAS), who also manages Nasiono Records, and every year Schwartz is joined by a rotating cast of local musicians and at least one internationally recognized musician, who acts as a guest musical director, mentor and collaborator through a series of workshops and joint songwriting that culminates with the group performing their new material during the final night of the festival. 

Now, if you’ve been frequenting JOVM over the past couple of years, you may recall that during the course of the Festival’s history, they’ve invited the likes of  Spiritualized’s Ray Dickaty, Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier, Placebo’s Steve Hewitt, Marion’s Jamie Harding, Six by Seven’s Chris Olley, The Bad Seeds and The True Spirit’s Hugo Race and RIDE’s Mark Gardener. Last year, The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s legendary frontman and founding member Anton Newcombe led Pure Phase Ensemble 6 with Serena Maneesh’s Emil Nikolaisen, and the collective managed to impress festivalgoers with a live set that included “God Drugs” a menacing, droning, and murky dirge, consisting of layers fuzzy and distorted power chords, thundering drumming and an almost mosh pit-friendly hook over which Newcombe laconically delivers his lyrics. While forceful, the song manages a lysergic haze. 

Also, every year the organizers create a documentary of the festival and the documentary features brief interviews and live footage with festival organizers, Anton Newcombe, who says that his appearance at last year’s Space Fest was a way to convince and entice establish artists that it’s a serious and growing festival; the UK’s MDME SPKR, Italy’s Be Forest, Germany’s Camera, the Icelandic-German act The Third Sound, Poland’s Wild Books, Lonker See, The Fruitcakes, Rosa Vertov and The Czech Republic’s DIV I DED. Additionally, the video features impromptu interviews with thrilled festivalgoers and more. The documentary offers a glimpse of a rarely seen Gdansk, a city with a burgeoning music, arts and nightlife scene, full of hungry, young creatives  — a marked departure from the city’s long-held reputation as a grim Soviet satellite city. 

Interestingly, the videos serve as a teaser for this year’s Space Fest, which take place the weekend of December 1 – December 2 and will feature Maciej Cieslak of renowned Polish shoegazers Scianka, leading Pure Phase Ensemble 7, Italy’s New Candys, Portugal’s 10,000 Russos, Mugstar, Switzerland’s Blind Butcher, Germany’s Odd Couple, Mexico’s Tajak, the UK’s Dead Rabbits and up-and-coming local acts 30 kilo slonca, and Wilcze Jagondy.