“It wasn’t purposeful at the time of making those tracks,” she says, “but I’m laughing because I’ve been in the studio making my album, and when you’re doing really consecutive work you start seeing your own tendencies towards certain things. Through fits of renewed laughter Guy explains the internal processes that are defining this next phase of her sound, none of which knock the shine off her sunny outlook. Diva Bitch and the 2017 cut for Geography Records, Shake It All Down, feature more pensive notes and enigmatic moods than she has revealed before. It’s tempting to draw a link between the chorus of backseat-driver DJ commentary directed at Guy, which grew to its nagging peak last year, and the more melancholic textures that have begun to creep into Guy’s productions. There is little acknowledgement within these criticisms that DJing is a term that covers a lot of stylistic ground, or that Guy’s individual taste was developed through her years spent as one of Vancouver’s foremost selectors. What appears to lurk below the surface are uglier ideas and presumptions which regularly reference Guy’s musical tastes, gender, age, and appearance. The criticisms that trail her online – her mixing style of fast cuts and volume fades supposedly fail to meet some kind of universal benchmark – have exposed pockets of resentful rigidity that speak to the electronic music community’s taste for skill-policing and gatekeeping. It’s a good moment to tackle another unpleasant topic: what it is about Jayda G that aggravate some people so bitterly. You’re like, ‘Everything sucks, the apocalypse is gonna come soon.’”Īfter we tangent off briefly into environmental issues: climate change, plastic microfibres in waterways, and the plight of whales off the coast of Vancouver (her particular area of study), the mood is temporarily dimmed. Environmental depression is actually a thing when you’re in the sciences. Music has been an outlet to get away from the heaviness of a very intensive programme. “Yes!” she answers, before my sentence is complete. I posit that her sound signatures as a DJ and producer – maximalist disco and boogie, tropical breakdowns and sing-along choruses, house jams with gospel flourishes – may provide a needed counterpoint to the grimness of her area of study, Environmental Toxicology. She is now signed to Ninja Tune, with a debut Jayda G album in the works, slated for release through their sublabel Technicolour.Īlso on her horizon for 2018 are additional transatlantic trips from her base of two years, Berlin, to her hometown, Vancouver, as she will be summoned back to Canada at some point to defend her Master’s Degree thesis.
Further along in the year Guy will embark on another project with another record label. Their collaboration promises to continue the soulful house music tradition of spoken word poetry vocals. The flipside of the record will mark the debut of Saul G, Guy’s older brother.
The first JMG record will be a close-knit affair, featuring a return pairing with Alexa Dash, a vocalist and fellow Canadian who has featured on Guy’s warehouse-indebted tracks IGA and Diva Bitch. “JMG Recordings has been in the works for a long while,” she says, “because I like being connected with all the ins and outs of the test pressing, artwork and distribution, and knowing who is actually getting the records.” It’s a separate project to Freakout Cult, the three-year-old record label that she co-runs with Sex Tags’ DJ Fett Burger, which will allow her to flex in solo mode as both an artist and a label head.
Having already unveiled her new NTS Radio show JMG Sessions earlier this year, this summer will see the debut release from Guy’s new imprint JMG Recordings. That’s makes it worth it in the end.”īeyond her innate good nature, there are plenty of things for Guy to feel giddy about. I want them to dance and have a good time and really be themselves. People can be pretentious sometimes, and I don’t want anyone to feel that way when they come to my show. “The most important thing, at least when it comes to DJ sets, is that I come across as genuine. “I try to be as much of my true self as possible,” she says one sunny afternoon in the quiet back room of a Berlin cafe. It’s apparent in the radiant joy she exudes from behind the decks as Jayda G, and the bright disposition of her cut-up disco and proto house jams. Jayda Guy describes herself as a genuinely happy person, but she doesn’t have to.
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