Interview: j'san (+ mini mix)

j'san is actually a relatively new discovery for me. Ever since I got into lofi hip hop music, I've been stumbling upon this wave of young and extremely talented producers on SoundCloud.

One of my favourite ones? The French guitar player / producer I'm having the pleasure of interviewing today. In addition, he crafted a wonderfully chilled mix with some of his favourite tracks (full tracklist at the bottom of the post).

Hey man, thanks for the interview! Tell us the most random fact about yourself. Something which even people in your daily life might not know about you.

Hey! I think people around me know everything about myself except that I make music, haha! However, a random fact would be that I am freaking scared of any flying insect.

How would you describe the mix you created for us in a sentence?

Well in this mix you can see some of my inspirations, some people that I love and some people who truly deserve to blow up.

What's your setup by the way? Do you mind snapping a photo or walking us through how you make beats etc?

I use my maschine mikro, a Steinberg ur22 to plug my guitars and mics, a keyboard, and obviously my guitars and my bass. I also have a pair of monitoring speakers and a sp-404 OG that I mostly use for the effects.

I have a laptop HP omen 15” and I work with Ableton. Most of the time I start with a sample or some chords I record and then build everything around that.

 

How did you get into production actually? I know you play guitar as well, but which came first?

Guitar came first. My dad bought me a guitar when I was 6, he taught me everything he knows (he was a guitar player when he was younger), then Youtube appeared so I started to learn from tutorials online. Production came later for me as I started only 1 year ago. Before that, I was more into singer/songwriter type of stuff. I wish I started production sooner.

You often collaborate with other artists & producers. If you ever could record an album with someone, who would that be and why?

Yeah I love to collaborate, you learn so much from how other people work. I think it is very important and helps my music a lot.

If I could record an album with someone? Ah, it is a hard one, probably Tom Misch or John Mayer, but there are so many people that I admire.

How does your average day look like? Is music a full time thing at this point?

I am a working student actually, doing the first year of a master’s degree in e-business/digital communication.

Do many people in your family / real life know about your music and growing popularity on SoundCloud?

There are only a few people who knows about my music, my parents and a couple of my close friends. I do not really want to talk about my music unless it became really serious.

Speaking of music and growing popularity, what has been your favorite moments so far? A comment, a message or hitting a certain number of followers/plays?

My favorite moment so far is probably when I joined Dream Easy as I was able to meet all of these talented people and have the opportunity to collaborate with them. This made me really happy to be honest. This and nd of course all the kind words that people send me.

You're from Paris. What's the chillhop / lofi beat scene over there? Do people organize events and so on?

Yeah there are some events, for example in August there was a live show organized by Orikami Records (Nymano, 97special, etc…), go follow them they are dope!

I know that Chillhop Records also did a live show in Paris some months ago.

What's on your playlist right now? Any artists we should be checking out?

I’m listening to a lot of Tom Misch, Nohidea, and Quickly Quickly actually. I also really dig Jinsang’s latest tape but I listen to a lot of French rapper as well. The mainstream rap scene in France is really terrible to be honest, but there are really good underground artists.

What's next for j'san in 2017?

I have some projects in the works but I can’t really talk about them, stay tuned!

Thanks a lot for the interview! Any last famous words?

There is this quote from Plato “A grateful mind is a great mind which eventually attracts to itself great things.” I think it says a lot.

Other than that, thanks to everyone who listens to my music and supports me, it means the world to me!And thank you for having me.

Listen to more of his music on the j'san artist profile. Hope you guys enjoyed the interview!

Tracklist: