Opening a Time Capsule of a Record With Jye’s ‘Sleeping In'
While still figuring out what the record means to him as an artist, the first full-length debut album released by Jye serves as an awakening for the Melbourne-based musician. Holding on tightly to a number of songs that never made it into the final project, Jye opens up with Unpublished to discuss the creative process of building the full-length debut, Sleeping In, that was approximately five years in the making. Each track intimately reflects the stages of Jye’s life, as his down-to-earth personality is seamlessly intertwined into the record as the sounds effortlessly bounce with light, vibrance, and tenderness.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Sleeping In has become the debut release for your independent label, A Perfect Fume. Can you walk us through why you decided to open up your own label and how it feels to have your first full-length project be its debut?
[JYE:] I just wanted to have a creative outlet that didn’t just have my own name attached to it, so that was kind of the idea behind starting the label. Whether I end up signing anyone else or just use it as a platform for collaboration with other artists. At some point, putting out some merch around it. Originally, I was going to do it as a clothing label and then combine it with releasing music. Maybe do some merch collabs with some other artists as opposed to just trying to take their money from them.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Do you have any artists in mind that you hope the label works with?
[JYE:] Yeah, I mean, I’ve chatted with a few friends about maybe doing a compilation album soon. I’ve spoken to Ricewine and he’s keen to submit a song or something to a compilation album. So yeah, that would probably be the first project as some sort of collection.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Understanding that you self-released your last three EPs, can you describe what that freedom feels like in your creative process?
[JYE:] Yeah, it’s kind of a blessing and a curse. It’s good to have the freedom of being able to release it all yourself, but when you don’t have anyone chasing you up about it, it can kind of drag on. Do you know what I mean? I found, especially with the first few releases, I kind of just did whatever I wanted, and have experimented with a few different sounds so I’m not completely boxed in I guess. That also shows on this album as well. Having the freedom to really do whatever you want was part of the reason why I started the label.
[UNPUBLISHED]: As it’s been almost 2 weeks since the album's release, how does Sleeping In represent you as an artist now?
[JYE:] It’s good to see it finally coming out. It was a really long, really drawn out process to actually get it out. I kind of had a lot of hate towards it until it actually came out. And now that it’s come out, I can kind of appreciate it as being its own thing and living in its own little realm where I don’t really mind how it performs at this point, or how people receive it. I’m just proud to have it out and have it sitting there. I feel like it’s been the biggest journey since I’ve moved states twice.
[UNPUBLISHED]: I read that the album serves as a time capsule of the past five years of your life. Is there a story amongst writing one of the 12-tracks that you tend to always gravitate towards when you think about the writing process?
[JYE:] I really like the song “Sleeping In” which is the title track that feels pivotal for me. I made the first half of the song when I was living in Melbourne pre-Covid and then the second half of the song I made during Covid when I moved back to my hometown. That’s kind of what the whole album represents. This kind of transition between living in the city of Melbourne and Covid when I moved back in with my parents on the Sunshine Coast, which is like 2000 km away. Now moving back to Melbourne 2 years later, and the album is coming out. I feel like that song represents these moments pretty well as half of the songs were made during Covid and the other half were made pre-Covid. That particular song [“Sleeping In”], I had half of it and management said why don’t we extend it and get a feature on it or something. I then split the song into two and made a completely different sound aftwards. I feel like that’s a good representation of the whole project.
[UNPUBLISHED]: “Lemon Lime” had been part of the batch of singles released from the album. How did you react to the instant love over that particular song and did it prepare you at all for the release of the full-length project?
[JYE:] I think it was pretty exciting because that was one of the newer tracks that I made off the album and kind of more the direction that I wanted to go in. It’s just a fun song with some of the lines in there like “driving down the coastline, pumping all the tunes we like” and that’s what I was doing at the time. Over COVID, we didn’t get locked down where I was staying, but all the shops and stuff were shut, but we could still drive around. So I was just driving around, listening to the demos for the album. So, it’s kind of ironic that one of those songs in there is about driving around the coastline, listening to these types of songs. And the album is all of those songs.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Was there a song off of the album that you found was the hardest to complete, either sonically or lyrically?
[JYE:] Probably “Rest My Head” just because it was the last song that I had to finish re-recording the vocals for and it just sat for so long half finished. It came to the point where it was the last thing to do before the album came out so I needed to finish it. Technically speaking, it wasn’t hard, but it was hard for me to get through. The paralysis of not being able to just work on music or anything and pump it out. The pool of songs that made it onto the album came from probably like 30 or 40 tracks. I’ve made like three or four albums worth of stuff in the time that this album has been made. Every three songs seems to represent what was originally a full album worth of material. The original tracklist that I signed a distribution deal around, there were only like four of those songs on this tracklist that got approved and scheduled for release. Then we completely remade the whole thing. So, it’s cool to have the album come out now and see how that whole journey has been for me.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How do you feel about those songs that didn’t make it onto the album? Do you ever feel like you want them to be released on a deluxe version of Sleeping In or are you okay with keeping them just to yourself for now?
[JYE:] Some of them I don’t really like but I’ve been compiling some older stuff and newer stuff together into what’s going to be two mixtapes. Might have that come out pretty soon, maybe even sooner just because I feel bad it took so long for this album to come out so I’m going to have to overcompensate. And when I say mixtape, I mean it’s just the same kind of stuff as an album. I make all my stuff in a bedroom studio anyways so, everything I make is basically a mixtape but we’re just not going to put any money behind it. It’s just going to be low-budget and we’re not going to put any pressure behind it, just going to work to put the music out.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What’s one song off of the album that you are most excited to play live?
[JYE:] I think “Lemon Lime.” It would just be a fun one to play on stage because it’s pretty synthy, up-beat but still just chill enough. It’s a nice vibe, I don’t like using that word but I feel people would enjoy it. I’ve moved around a bunch, so I don’t have a band at the moment so I’m still trying to get that all sorted out now.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What’s something you hope listeners can take away from this project?
[JYE:] I guess I’m still trying to figure out what I’m meant to take away from it. It feels like a real self reflective album where maybe I didn’t realise I was writing so much about things that would hit me later on. If some tracks resonate with other people, then that’d be pretty cool. In general, I think my favourite thing is when people message me and tell me that they’re inspired to go make music or make art. I find that with all of my releases, they don’t make a lot of sense to me personally until a year or two later when I can reflect on them. It’s hard to see the bigger picture until later on when you look back at it.
