ON OUR RADAR: SPACEJAM
Spacejam share the importance of staying up to date with current trends in the music industry and not being blindsighted by the media.
Introduce yourself!
We are Spacejam, an English-Swiss power trio whose incendiary space rock is laced with dreamy psychedelia, uplifting euphoria and effortless charm.
How would you describe your music to a potential listener?
Our music is a mixture of many different influences. Mainly rock in the largest sense and then there are plenty of other ingredients that are added to this rock world. As I am the main songwriter it's all my musical culture that influences my songs. It goes from punk through new wave through brit pop to current artists like Yungblud, MGK ...
Since being a BAND, do you feel it has grown in the direction you hoped for, or has there been any setbacks?
Yes because I never had a precise and definitive direction. I always wanted us to stay open to everything! Yes I know it's huge, but as a songwriter you can't limit yourself to just one direction. Yes I had setbacks in my early career, because at the very beginning when you decide to create a band you have a very precise idea of the style and the musical influences and especially of the direction in which you want the band to go and it's usually at this precise moment you lock yourself into a very limited musical style. That's what a lot of young inexperienced artists choose, the choice of their ignorance, at least that's how I started. Lucky for me, I learned from my experiences and that's what makes me the artist that I am today.
Which tracks are you most proud of to date and why?
I am very proud of our last song ‘ALIVE’ because it's for me the sign of a renewal at all levels. I believe a lot in meetings and I had the chance to meet very open-minded musicians with a great musical culture and at the same time very aware of current musical trends, we no longer produce music as we did there 2 years ago. You have to stay up to date and for that you have to surround yourself with people who have understood this whole process. The song ‘ALIVE’ has a much bigger reach today given the current societal context than I imagined when I wrote it in early 2020! We go from a song of love, of rupture to a song almost of resistance to this world which today wants to deprive us of loving, of living and of locking us in our homes!
Where do you feel you fit in in an ever changing and demanding music scene?
I think the band should especially not be locked in a specific style which would prevent it from being in constant evolution! On the contrary, it's by remaining vigilant to the musical world and its influences that the band will also remain constantly evolving in this increasingly competitive world. Only those who don't adapt will have no future.
Do you have any tips for keeping your mental health in check throughout this period of time?
Yes and most important of all: turn off your televisions and mainstream media and turn your brains back on! If in 2021 you are not able to seek information other than through traditional networks, this shows that you are no longer free to think, nor to live other than in fear! I am sickened by the deafening silence of all our known and most virulent artists, those who explained to us that the society in which we lived was bad and that we were all manipulated, where are they? And all those big known bands who don't do and say nothing, or "stay at home and put on masks" !! They have all become the spokespersons for this dictatorship without even trying to understand, or even worse, they are afraid for their business. To stay mentally healthy unite, find out what is really going on, stay in collective action, help those who are afraid and most of all stay awake and resist.
What issues are important to you? How do you use your music and platform to communicate these?
The biggest issue for us is to be able to continue to make a living from our music because everything is expensive to continue creating, manufacturing and selling our music. On the other hand, we no longer have the income generated by our gigs. As we are not music superstars, our music distribution platforms do not earn us much or too little money to just make a living. Obviously we have developed our means of communication with social networks, Facebook, Instagram ... and we are running paid campaigns on these social networks to reach more people, but all this requires money that we do not or no longer have because we no longer have financial income either! It's quite complicated and the future seems very uncertain to me if nothing happens!
What are your top three albums at the moment?
Tickets To My Downfall - Machine Gun Kelly
Doolittle - Pixies
Weird! - Yungblud
What’s one song you wish you could have written?
Tomorrow never knows by John Lennon on the Revolver album.
If you could tour with anyone, who would it be?
The Cure.
What should your fans be expecting from your band in the near future?
We have about thirty songs just waiting to be recorded. As long as I'm not dead I have plenty of great songs for our audience to discover.