Exclusive: Just A Gent walks us through his huge new EP, HTTP://EP
It comes with a super-fun mini site you can play around with.
The future-bass genre (to coin a phrase that already seems pretty dead tbh) has been a notoriously difficult one to remain relevant in. As quickly as it exploded with an army of bedroom-built producers and Soundcloud savants it kinda went away. Many have moved on, or simply faded into obscurity. But the good ones - the real deals - they evolved thanks to an immense talent and production nous that has longevity on the mind.
And Just A Gent can firmly claim he's in it for the long haul with his new EP, http:EP - another showcase of the talent that's seen him regularly tour this country and play to huge crowds, whilst also regularly riding a wave of global success and support from genre forefathers like Skrillex and ZHU. A year in the making, it's a concept EP in truest sense, one that finds the still very young Aussie producer pondering our industrial future and melding of man and machine: "I was super inspired by the concept of people merging with machines/the internet and
made a lot of these beats with that Industrial Futuristic theme in mind. The concept is that this EP is the conglomeration of the favourite tracks of five human/androids and what they were listening to when the world fell apart."
With an eye on the complete package, he's also created a super fun little mini site (hit it at HTTPEP.COM), where you can explore the tracks on a very dated old desktop screen. Once you're done playing around, feel free to come back here and tuck into the EP proper, along with reading a few words from the gent himself on each of the EP's stellar six tracks. With features from Thief, Thandi Phoenix, Yvng Jalapeno, T$oko and Dia Lone, it's a wonderfully diverse collection of tracks, held together by the EP's central themes and one of Australia's most consistently great electronic producers. Oh and if you're in Newcastle tomorrow, make sure you catch him at THIS THAT Festival.
DROWNING ft. YVNG JALAPENO
Yvng Jalapeno was one of the first Aussie producers that ever reached out to me. We have been mates for years and we started on this track a couple of years ago. The track went through like 20 iterations until we finally settled on a version. We wanted the track to be
something people could listen to both in the car and in the club.
SPACE ODYSSEY ft. THANDI PHOENIX
I met Thandi when I was looking for someone to sing with me for my Day N Nite Like A Version and we hit it off. She is an amazing singer and songwriter and ever since we worked Day N Nite together I wanted to work on something original. The original beat for this track was tilted Space Oddity and I made it after playing Mass Effect 2 for like the 4th time and I was super into Bowie as well so it just made sense. I originally intended on keeping it as an instrumental until Thandi heard it and wanted to put her spin on it. Obviously she smashed it.
HOLD ft. THIEF
I caught the train down to Thief's studio in Sydney and we put together a really rough vocal take on a super old experimental beat I made. I really loved what we had created but wanted to spice up the track, so I chopped and pitched his vocal all over the shop and sent it back to him. He loved it and wanted to record it the way I had spliced it so I caught the train back down and we basically finished Hold that day.
VIBE ft. T$OKO
I have always wanted to put out a rap track. I love what a lot of Aussies are doing in the rap game and T$oko was one of them. Beat wise this song to me was a bit of a rollercoaster. I always loved it but never knew where to take it. I never really thought it would turn into a rap track but damn I am glad it did.
404
The page cannot be found... 404 is the heart of the EP. I based the concept and the story around this song. 404 is a http error that I get all too much on the internet. It’s also half of 808 which is no coincidence as the original version of the track was made almost entirely out of 808s.
INJUSTICE ft. DIA LONE
Injustice is probably my favourite track on the record. I had been working this beat for a very long time and wrote a bunch of hooks etc. that just never seemed to work. I started working with Dia Lone thanks to a collab that's still a WIP with the legendary Xavi. I love what we did together on that track and I knew he could pull this off so I sent it to him and the next day he hit me back with a demo and it was delicious. I went all out on some of these sounds and experimented to the max. I hope everyone loves it as much as we do!
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