Jaytech - OK Producer
3D's Cyclone speaks with Canberra-bred, London-based producer Jaytech, whose new LP Everything Is OK is out now.
The ACT isn't exactly a hotspot for electronica, but it has generated quality music from the MIA B[if]tek and sometime resident Microworld. Canberra's implausible assault continues in 2008 with Jaytech, aka James Cayzer. He's delivered an 'artist' album, Everything is OK, of airy progressive trance haunted by old techno melodies. The twist is that, to plug the LP, the DJ/producer has sneakily relocated to the UK.
'I'm living in London for a time,' he confesses. 'I came over here three months ago just to see what it was like. I'm gonna stick around for the rest of the year at least. I'm just seeing how we go at the moment.'
London is notoriously expensive yet Cayzer has wangled some cheap accommodation, staying with a sister 'for very cheap rent'. Jaytech has aligned himself with Above & Beyond's Anjunabeats stable, the primary reason for his move.
His affiliation with the fold - comprising Jonathan 'Jono' Grant, Tony McGuinness and Paavo Siljamaki - began when they licensed a tune.
'I originally had a track from my label, Red Seven, included on one of their Anjunabeats worldwide compilations a few years ago. That track was called Starbright,' he says. 'After I did that release with them, they then showed a fair bit of interest in getting some more of my material on their label. Over the past two years I've released a number of singles with them and now an album - and it's just snowballed from there.'
Jaytech has a knack for circumventing the conspicuous tropes of the trance genre. As such, he's won over those prog types who shun 'trance', like Sasha, in addition to the unabashedly Euro-trance Tiësto. 'It's good to be billed as a crossover artist, because it just attracts more attention, in general, but it's also helped me to cover a lot of bases all at once,' James says.
With Everything is OK, Jaytech, who admires the Welsh outfit Hybrid, reveals a deeper side to his music production. Cayzer has a formal musical background - playing piano - but he's been immersed in electronic music since his mid-teens. Unbelievably, James issued his inaugural record, Music 101, at 16 - before he could legally enter a club.
In later years Jaytech has been known here for his production alongside Sydney's Mark Dynamix, a superstar DJ who stresses his affinities with German minimalism over progressive or trance. Their 2004 collaboration, Identify Me, showcased on Ministry of Sound's 2005 Annual, was an unexpected crossover club hit.
Though Jaytech performs live, he's currently Above & Beyond's warm-up DJ. The Brits trust that he won't upstage them. 'The beautiful thing about it is that I can play whatever I want out of my records and it's not gonna steal the show from them, because their music is generally more epic and cranking in nature than mine.'
Jaytech hopes to return to Australia to DJ at the end of the year. He misses the simple things at home. 'I miss riding my bike around Canberra - that's not really the sort of thing you can do very well here. Canberra is lovely for that.'
WHO: Jaytech
WHAT: Everything is OK through Anjuna/Stomp
WHEN: Out now
MORE: myspace.com/jaytech