Artist Profile – Jacques Maya (UK)
Jacques Maya is a purveyor of beautiful music. His style sits somewhere between classical based liquid and jazz soaked soulful dancefloor. if that's even a thing.
His work has graced labels like Fokuz, Celsius and more recently, the mighty Spearhead Recordings.
Always looking for that something extra when it comes to liquid drum and bass, we hooked up with him recently to talk about his music, his love of music, and some of the current topics circulating around the drum and bass scene right now.
Jacques! Welcome in!
Thanks for having me!
I definitely seem to feel a great sense of joy when listening to liquid produced by people who have a classically trained background.
You have one of those, which is probably why I’m drawn to your music! Tell the readers a bit about your musical heritage.
I was lucky to get an early start in music – my dad plays quite a few instruments. I started playing the flute when I was nine years old, and piano soon after. I joined a youth orchestra, and a school jazz band. I think the combination of the two helped hugely with my understanding of music. In the orchestra, I thought everything had to be note perfect.
In the jazz band, my teacher got us all to improvise through every song. So there was no such thing as note perfect! Having that freedom in the jazz band loosened up my classical playing, and learning the control from the classical side made my improvisation a lot tighter. I like to think I’ve taken that on board when it comes to my production, too.
You mention in your notes that you started producing music many years ago on a software program called Sibelius. That’s a serious piece of kit. How did you find that experience?
Sibelius is a scoring program. It’s used to write notated music that can be printed out and played. My dad had it on his computer, so when I was young I used to play around on it, composing my own tunes.
I got into electronic music when I was around 12, and Sibelius was all I knew, so instead of writing classical or jazz like the program is meant for, I would be scoring out dance music using the inbuilt rudimentary saw and square waves, the 808s, 909s and so on. Mixing was still unknown to me, but all things considered I don’t think they were bad creations!
So, how did you progress from that into something a bit more EDM friendly?
At school, we had a few music lessons where we were able to use Cubase, which everyone loved messing around on. It wasn’t until I was 17 that I decided I would get myself a program a bit like Cubase, so I downloaded Logic Pro, which I still use today.
This leads us nicely into your drum and bass journey. Playing classical flute and piano is a long way away from music designed for dark, smoky dancefloors, so how did the two aspects of your musicianship merge?
I’ve always loved electronic music, while at the same time loving playing classical and jazz. The precision of sonics that you can engineer through digital production has always fascinated me – with acoustic instruments, you’re kind of stuck to the same sound.
Having said that, there’s a reason instruments like the flute and piano have endured for centuries. Their sound is beautiful, and very innately human and emotive. I definitely find it interesting how many acoustic elements I tend to incorporate into my productions now, I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
You also make music covering other styles and genres as well though. What styles in particular do you enjoy creating, and do you have any plans to release any of it?
I’ve found myself dabbling in a lot of progressive house, breaks and downtempo beats too. I have a lot of unreleased music that isn’t drum & bass! I’d definitely love to release some of it eventually, but it’s a long process.
And then taking that concept one stage further, you also like to incorporate those musical creations into your DNB so that in effect, your art is turning full circle.
We can hear that on Shining for example, where sections of the track would feel at home on a modern soul/R&B record. This is reasonably rare in liquid drum and bass, I think. Switches in tempo are nothing new, but complete merging of genres isn’t!
That’s a niche I’m really enjoying exploring, and I think you’re right, I don’t hear too many liquid tracks that reference other very different genres. It’s a tricky balance to strike, weaving in new genres for the sake of it could result in a bit of a pastiche mish-mash. But when it works it can be really fun. More to come from me in that vein for sure!
Outside of drum and bass, what else might we find lurking in your album collection? Pull a few surprise examples out of the bag for us!
I listen to a lot of old folk, one album I love is “Ask Me No Questions” by Bridget St. John. It’s such unaffected and beautiful songwriting, not trying to imitate or self-vindicate.
Another album I’ve found so incredible in the last few years is “Bamanan” by Malian singer Rokia Koné and producer Jacknife Lee. It’s a mix of Malian Wassoulou and electronic rhythms, and Koné’s vocals are some of the most stunning and uplifting I’ve heard in a long time.
And maybe one last album, last year I couldn’t stop listening to “choke enough” by Oklou. It took me a little while to get into her super-minimal style, but every choice she makes on that album is so beautifully made, with nothing in excess. I think she calls it Baroque pop, and you can hear the counter-melodies and little details that add so much to the emotion of each track.
