EJ Marais has announced the release of the LP after the release of double singles from the LP, "Better," and "Love.MP3" which was featured On Rosalia's Spotify Playlist). His third single, "Glamour Professional" premiered exclusively with Variance.
On the process of creating the record Marais explains, "The album came out of a series of sessions I started in early 2018 together with Ekhi Lopetegi, at the time we weren't planning to record an album, but an EP. Since then, the album has met many stages and has been the result of perseverance, I think of it as a mix of many stages and resources. It wasn't recorded in the same place, or mixed and engineered by one person, some musicians have played small parts on it, hence the chaotic credits.
The general idea was to make a contemporary album that included elements from RnB, pop, or Urban while maintaining a melancholic, singer-songwriter essencence. I felt a necessity to bring real instruments into these songs because I was seeking a human, personal touch. When I put the album together I thought that it would be too eclectic but then I thought of it as a collage between digital samples and real instruments and felt comfortable with that. It was also a process of learning and experimentation, I really liked the possibilities of digital manipulation, discovering autotune and all that...
I have always thought that the result of an artist has to reflect the times that we are living. We live in crazy times with constant interruptions, over information and surrounded by the language of advertising and I wanted to make a response to that, to offer a space where people can get lost in. Barcelona as a city has also played a huge role on the album, I was influenced by the freshness of the Urban scene here, especially when it came to mixing genres and taking unorthodox production decisions. "
CUTS - TRACKLISTING
01. Glamour Professional
02. Love.mp3
03. That is That
04. Better
05. Discotheque
06. Smthng About That Style
07.Sailor's Song
08. Bedroom RnB
09. Wetransfer-2sf
10. Cardholder
11. Blanca
12. Feng Shui
EJ Marais Bio:
The eloquent outsider EJ Marais debuts with an LP of contemporary compositions addressing the artist's everyday explorations of life in the early 2020s. His Instagram description reads Folk / Dubstep / Country which speaks to his postmodern approach to traditional genres, cherry picking elements of bedroom RnB, northern indie and balearic breakbeat, held together with EJ's unpretentious English accent. Simply titled CUTS, the album is a melodramatic debut from a vocalist, songwriter and producer equally as eloquent with his use of organic instruments, vaporwave synths and tasteful autotune.
The lead single from the album, 'Love.mp3 b/w Better' - was originally distributed digitally by TWIN before La Castanya gave it a physical release, attracting international attention to the name of EJ Marais. The double A side contained a pair of understated anthems to end an evening at the club, or soundtrack an afternoon lazed away. Blessed with the rich Mediterranean aesthetic of co-producer Ekhi Lopetegi (Delorean), 'Love.mp3' is a lo-fi ballad, a reserved salute to a brand new bae that could have been penned by Homeshake, whilst 'Better' recalls the stoned sway of a Channel Orange-era Frank Ocean: 808s, crestfallen digital vocals, an acoustic guitar loop, a touch of the otherworldly pads and samples so unmistakably Delorean.
EJ Marais was born in Brighton and currently lives in Barcelona, where he has begun to carve out his career and the crew of collaborators that feature on CUTS. Basque saxophonist Haizea Martiartu appears as a Kenny G to EJ's Kanye on 'Bedroom RnB' and percussionist Ander Agudo adds joyful tambourine and tribal bongos to 'Discotheque', one of the certified bangers of the LP. CUTS concludes on an ecstatic high with 'Feng Shui', an ideal road trip tune featuring the backing vocals and co-production of Elsa de Alfonso.
CUTS is an album that fits the youth of our times perfectly. The album's opener 'Glamour Professional' is a lounge-funk track about the excesses of the night and emotional reliance on apps, EJ adopting the croon of a junior Destroyer, and 'Smthng About That Style', a track that has drawn comparisons to MorMor, describes a crush wearing thrifted trench coats on cramped budget airlines. The ambient interlude 'wetransfer-2sf' presents the testimony of a victim of online bullying who overcame her tormentors.
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