#RisingArtist: Amber Jay from her bedroom to the studio.
The Liverpool based artist and new name to the 2020 music scene - Amber Jay, plays with the boundaries of bedroom and alt pop with new single ‘Pencilled Brims’.
Pencilled Brims holds a microscope over an initial moment of intimacy and how that moment almost becomes suspended in our minds, to be witnessed and analysed during and after the interaction has occurred. It highlights how in the action of intimacy there is a vignette-like experience around the event, allowing us to hone-in on specific details to extract their beauty. However, suddenly finding yourself tied within a person so intensely, can mean you lose sight of yourself and the perspective of the situation. The line between love and obsession becomes equally blurred and no matter how much you try and change a person ‘the nature of the beast never leaves its side. Pencilled Brims holds a microscope over an initial moment of intimacy and how that moment almost becomes suspended in our minds, to be witnessed and analysed during and after the interaction has occurred. It highlights how in the action of intimacy there is a vignette-like experience around the event, allowing us to hone-in on specific details to extract their beauty. However, suddenly finding yourself tied within a person so intensely, can mean you lose sight of yourself and the perspective of the situation. The line between love and obsession becomes equally blurred and no matter how much you try and change a person ‘the nature of the beast never leaves its side.
Amber Jay’s delicate vocals and experimental production take notes from heavyweights such as Marika Hackman, girl in red and Julien Baker. Having received support from BBC Introducing Merseyside and BBC6 Music, her latest track ‘Pencilled Brims’ is a hauntingly gritty futuristic track that explores the pressure and value of intimacy. It provides a unique introduction to what we can expect from Amber Jay’s debut EP, which is due out in early 2021.
Amber Jay’s musical journey began at the age of thirteen when her Aunt gifted her guitar lessons, flowing from there into composition GCSE courses and she has been writing consistently ever since. “I would write songs at night, in the dark and on my bedroom floor forever in fear of my parents hearing me sing and asking what I was doing”. Drawing on the connection of character narrative, Amber Jay has always been fascinated by the relationship between music and screen. This influence can be felt in the cinematic moods in the experimental production of her music while also pulling on those emotional chords from Amber’s songwriting abilities.
My mum always tells me of this time when she put a CD on for me when I was six and left me listening to it in my bedroom. She returned to find me balling my eyes out to ‘The Circle of Life’. She went to turn it off and I apparently was like ‘No, it’s so sad. I want to hear it again’. Which explains this weird reflex I have when I really like a piece of music, even if it’s not partially sad, I start to well up and cry.
