DubeatsProducer, DJ, remixer, label boss, taste-maker. Jamie Odell wears many hats and wears them well.
Under his Jimpster alias, he has become one the most revered deep house artists operating on the scene today. His esteemed labels Freerange and Delusions Of Grandeur continue to help break incredible new music and equally impressive acts such as Detroit Swindle, Tornado Wallace and Session Victim. From his UK base, Jimpster has inadvertently become a standard-bearer and custodian of the authentic house sound, and carries this flag to the four corners of the world.
We got the awesome chance to have a quick chat with the boss-man himself and hear a little bit about the making of his stellar new release.
Interview With Jimpster
1.) Thanks so much for taking the time to chat with us today! Really stellar release here, can you break this one down for us, and give us a quick run through of the 3 tracks?
Glad you like the release! The lead track Smile For A While is a little slice of uplifting positivity in trying times, written in the first few weeks of the Covid lockdown. Echoes In My Head is a dubby, percussive house track with a trippy vocal sample, rolling bassline and featuring my beloved recently repaired and serviced Juno106.
2.) Our premiere track, Echoes In My Head (Head In The Clouds Mix) has so many different elements coming together, can you talk through the production process of this one?
On the Head In The Clouds Remix I wanted to pay homage to the musical genius of Larry Heard which you can hear coming through in the piano chords and synth lines. There’s also a bit of an early Italian deep house vibe as I’ve been rediscovering a lot of my old vinyl since lockdown and digging out labels like DFC, Calypso, UMM and Heartbeat.
3.) You’ve been curating a very powerful catalog with Freerange over the years. Can you chat about the process in which you pick what you’re releasing under the label?
The selection process for Freerange is pretty simple…. If it moves me enough to want to play it out in a DJ set then chances are that it will work for the label. I have fairly broad taste and love the more soulful end of the house spectrum right through to the more minimal and electronic. In most cases there is a common thread in that the groove has a bit of an organic feel and a looseness, even if it’s very electronic, to add that all important human element to contact to the listener.
4.) Has the lockdown/quarantine affected the way you choose or release the Freerange releases at all?
It has yeah. Inevitably most DJ’s, myself included, have been thinking a lot less about the dance floor impact that a track will make, and far more interested in its musical content, the soul, the lyrics if it has vocals…. Even though I miss playing music on a big system, a packed dance floor couldn’t be further from my mind right now so my priorities have shifted quite a lot and this is reflected in my A&R process for the labels.
5.) As someone who’s a musical inspiration to many, who do yourself look up to or draw inspiration from?
Louie Vega, Lil Louis, Four Tet, Floating Points, Caribou, Lars Bartkuhn, Pepe Bradock, Moodymann, Solid Gold Playaz, Mood II Swing
6.) Are there any young bucks, or up-and-comers on your radar right now that you’ve been enjoying listening to?
Laroye, Blair French, Hugo LX, Kareem Ali, Space Ghost
7.) Can you give us a peak at what’s forthcoming on Freerange for the rest of the year?
We’ve got excellent EP’s coming up from Laroye, Greg Paulus, Simbad and Matt Masters plus exciting news about just signing a new LP from Crackazat for next year!
8.) What other projects do you yourself have in the queue for Jimpster, and anything else you want to plug here to our readers?
Keep your eyes peeled for Jimpster remixes of Sunburst Band on Z Records, Baiama for Razor n Tape and Manabu Nagayama & Soichi Terada for Unknown Seasons. I’m just finishing off a new Franc Spangler EP for Delusions Of Grandeur and hopefully the Jimpster LP will be ready before summer next year. My first ever sample pack for Loopmasters will be dropping in January 2021. I continue to play weekly Friday’s and Saturday’s at my wife’s restaurant and bar called Acanteen in Essex which is great fun and we now get a really musically-minded crowd enjoying great food, drink and tunes for our socially distanced socials.
-Jimpster
Turn it up & enjoy!
