Making music is supposed to be fun.
It sounds obvious, but many artists get lost in the Sisyphusian struggle of making whatever genre is popular at the time to reach a certain goal. They may push a boulder up a hill and reach that goal, only to realise there’s a newer, bigger goal — and the boulder comes tumbling down again.
Justin Jay, the seasoned producer, DJ, label boss, and educator, chooses not to follow this pattern.
“You can do whatever you want. You can speed up the BPM. You can change the drum beats. You can sample other things and just explore,” Jay says. “People can often be trapped by really arbitrary ideas in their own heads, and once they realize that you’re actually free to do whatever you want you can have so much fun.”
A few years ago, Jay was so lost in the Sisyphusian cycle that it eviscerated his mental health. He found himself planted in front of his laptop, letting the blue light erode his corneas as he grinded away until sunrise — making music for money, not music he loved.
When he realised continuing that way wasn’t sustainable, he quit touring and moved back in with his parents to separate himself from the music industry. In that phase, he became self-aware that he wanted to be an artist who creates whatever he wants; that’s what he did on his third album, You Are The One.
Across the 12 tracks on the record, Jay’s uncaged attitude shines through. From the soulful house of the opener, I’ll Always Love You, to the seething UK garage-tinged Walk Away, then to the classic trance sound of You’re Fake, this album keeps the listener guessing from start to finish.
But it always sounds like Justin Jay, thanks to the intense energy he put into the songwriting for this particular record. Songwriting is now his baseline for manipulating different sounds and genres.
“For so much music, it’s not about doing something new with the sounds. It’s actually about using the exact sounds that we’re used to to create an illusion or create a feel that is nostalgic or whatever. I think it’s super fun, because then it becomes more about the songwriting, which is my favorite part,” Jay says.
In fact, that was one thing he was struggling with when he took his hiatus from music. He was scared of the vulnerability of sharing his songwriting and the authentic elements of that like lyrics. Now he is facing that fear head-on:
“We make music to express ourselves. The more we can do that honestly, the better,” Jay says.
When he returned to music, he started writing songs with new band, Fantastic Voyage (also the name of his record label). The band featured some of his close friends and fellow musicians. Together they released tracks such as What Do You Want and Can’t Complain, and they performed at various major US festivals including Bonnaroo and Dirtybird Campout.
Then the pandemic made touring impossible. The band dissolved and in those two years without gigs, most of Jay’s bandmates moved on from music to other careers.
Jay was back to making music by himself. Except he now had the confidence to write songs that reflected his authentic feelings, and he was facing isolation along with all the other complicated experiences that came with the pandemic. This is the phase when he wrote most of the songs on You Are The One.
In listening to the underlying composition beneath the electronics, the album sounds quite a bit like a breakup record. On the acoustic-guitar-driven Reflections, he sings: “I got some things to improve on. I got some things to admit/If I keep lying to you. How will you ever forgive?”
Then on the folk acoustic album closer, On My Own (Ft. Austin), Austin sings: “I must be changing because I can’t wait to move on.”
But despite this sombre messaging, he didn’t write this music to get over a breakup. He wrote it to depict what it’s like to be in a situation of unrequited love.
“I look at this album as this self-help exploration which comes with some challenges. But ultimately can be really positive,” Jay says. “There’s a lot in a situation like that that you cannot control. It’s really important to shift focus onto what you can control, which is yourself.”
He shifted his focus towards cultivating inner strength and independence. Since then, his production pallet started expanding exponentially and it hasn’t slowed down.
In the first part of 2024, he travelled around the US making music with different dubstep and bass artists such as Chef Boyarbeatz and Bauuer. They gave him a crash course in different sound design techniques, leading to Jay’s debut bass EP on Zeds Dead’s label, Deadbeats, titled Wait For The Drop.
Jay also ventured into the far reaches of techno when he travelled to Berlin to work with an underground artist named Freeman 713.
“I’ve never made music with anyone who is so particular about techno,” Jay says. “He makes tracks that don’t have breakdowns, that are the most elite, hypnotic techno. That could not have been a more different experience from anything I’ve done all year.”
While he respects and enjoys that each subgenre is different, all this experimentation helped him to understand where these different genres overlap. That’s what allows him to link them so fluidly within his productions and DJ sets.
“The difference can be, ‘What are the drums?’ Then you change the drums. Now it’s a different subgenre..” Jay says. “It’s all much more similar than one might think.”
In fact, one of the challenges of You Are The One stemmed from the similarities. After diving deep into making so many different subgenres (an experience he equates to the grad school of music production), he had to contain himself to ensure the album felt like a cohesive body of work as opposed to a hodgepodge of all his musical interests.
“The aspiration during COVID was to push the absolute limits of chaos and eclecticism; making it as varied as possible. It took a couple of years for me to figure out that this album doesn’t need to be everything. It can be more focused,” Jay says.
His songwriting was key to making the album more focused, but so were his production methods. For example, a sample pack he heavily relied on to make You Are The One was the JungleJungle Sample Pack, a completely free collection of sounds from jungle tracks produced between 1989 and 1999.
According to Jay, this sample pack is part of the DNA of all electronic music. Labels such as Shall Not Fade and Lobster Theremin have the samples all over their catalogues, he adds.
“It’s funny because it is all just illegal samples of other people’s songs, but just really short snips,” Jay says. “The key for making something nostalgic can sometimes just be using something old.”
Jay also applied this approach to his synths as well. He frequently used Rave Generator 2, which is similar to JungleJungle but lets you chromatically play samples from old rave tracks.
“Justice, on their most recent album [Hyperdrama], has a song called Generator. They used all the Rave Generator sounds,” Jay says before going on to revel in the rumour that Justice made their legendary debut album on Garageband. “It’s so sick that you can hear a masterpiece like Cross by Justice and be like, ‘Wait this was made on a piece of software that literally, everyone has access to for free on their computer’.”
This is the exact approach Jay passes on to his students. He has been teaching Ableton courses since 2019, many of which are free, and all anyone needs to join the class is a computer that can run a free trial of Ableton.
When Jay makes music, he uses his laptop and a pair of Bose earbuds. One time when he was on a call with a student, Jay said the word “balls” into his earbud mic. That sample became the track Ballz which John Summit played to a sold-out crowd at BMO stadium in Los Angeles.
Jay’s put out numerous collaborations with his students. The title track from his Deadbeats EP was produced with one of his students, Bayer & Waits. He also released a hard groove single called Back to the Groove with student coldsweat.
“I don’t know why every producer doesn’t teach. I’ve experienced the most amount of technical growth in the past years since I’ve started teaching,” Jay says. But improving his own skills is only a bonus he gets from teaching. “I was just in Vienna, Austria and I didn’t remember the absurd percentage of famous classical composers that are all from this one city. Part of the reason is each great composer taught the next great composer. They all taught each other.”
While Jay is too humble to compare himself to the Viennese masters like Hadyn, Mozart, and Beethoven, the principle is the same. He is teaching a new generation of music producers to make music based on one idea: having fun.
