A career brimming with bountiful and personal artistic heights, JD. REID has long been a sought-after name in an array of UK genres. He has gifted Mahalia, Mabel and Celeste his production acumen, and also boasts as varied of an entourage as Skepta, Venna and Biig Piiig as collaborators. His ever-evolving solo endeavours have once again been augmented by the sharing of “sometimes i wonder 002”, his latest four track opus, released via BABY GRAVY.
Abstract and dynamic, the new EP sees Reid searching for uncovered sonic terrain, exploring generic tendencies of house, rap and experimental electronica. The project’s collaborators are a motley and meticulous mash-up, from avant vocalist LEILAH to Ninja Tune signee George Riley and Ezra Collective keyboardist Joe Armon-Jones.
To commemorate the release, we asked Reid to take a track-by-track deep dive into the EP’s conceptualisation and construction.
Listen to “sometimes i wonder 002”…
Reid’s thoughts below…
“what if?”
The main intention with this song was to make something with a lot of groove, using understated sounds. Traditionally I’ve always kept my drums bold but for this I wanted to make something with softer drum sounds that still knocks when you turn it up. I built this beat using samples from old drum machines like the ace tone rhythm ace and then used one synth patch for the chords. I resampled and pitched the chords around a lot and in turn that gave them a slightly grainy/wobbly tape effect that I was after. I had a rough version of the instrumental when LEILAH came to my studio and we sat down spoke on what it was going to be about then wrote the song together. It was originally arranged out in more regular song format but I wanted to make the vocal feel like a part of the beat, rather than a song on top of it. I chopped up LEILAH’s vocal and then reworked the groove some more so it was all sitting tight together. There isn’t a crazy amount of sounds in terms of instrumentation, but theres a lot of sounds occupying similar spaces, so I had to be really meticulous with the chops on this to make sure it everything was in pocket.
“feeling of seeing you”
Last summer I bought a revox reel to reel tape machine from a guy on Facebook marketplace and decided I was gonna make a lo-fi house tune using it. I brought it home set it up and started made some drums and flipped through some samples that teej had sent to me. I found the melody that worked over the drums I’d made, layered up some additional chords over that sample and added a simple bass line. I resampled some vocals from George Riley that she had freestyled over another instrumental of mine and then sang and pitched a few additional bv’s myself to tuck in alongside George’s. I wanted to make a roller, not something over complicated in terms of programming and instrumentation but something that had a lot of character in the texture of it and overall sound. So to get there I put some tape saturation processing across the whole instrumental then ran it through the revox tape machine. Ironically I didn’t end up using that tape recording as the final version as it drifted too much in timing and ended up making it a little more lo-fi than I wanted, but it was an important part of the process to do that, as the song wouldn’t have existed without that intention of using that tape machine to make this in the first place.
“too much tv”
This instrumental started from a sample loop from teej that I built the drums, bass and other melodic elements around. It was a more simplified version for quite a while as we intended on this being something for a rapper to get on. Time passed and I loved it so much I decided to make more of structured and standalone instrumental out of it. I played the chords in the intro and recorded all those vocal layers you hear and pitched everything around. I wanted to make this instrumental feel wild, I wanted it to keep shape shifting and be unpredictable but at the core of it still have a bounce that keeps you nodding throughout. The last voice you hear is my daughter’s, saying the title of the track.
“where the flowers grow”
This was one of those instrumentals that flowed out. I remember putting those strings down and playing the synth line over them and being able to see what the rest of the instrumental looked like from there. I pitched everything down, recorded vocal harmonies, pitched it back up, resampled them and then used time warping plugins to play it all back half the speed. That gave it a texture and groove that I could keep building from. Now I could add the drums and the rest of the static and textures around the groove that was already lined up for me by the melody. I added bass and played additional keys/synth parts and arranged it out then sat on the instrumental for a while. I felt like there was space for something else live feeling on it so sent it to Joe Armon-Jones who then sent me back a one take of him playing Rhodes. To me Joe plays like he’s having a conversation, so I worked on the arrangement with the parts he sent and the instrumentation I already had to give him the space to talk on it. Once I’d done that the song felt complete. With this track I wanted to set a clear mood from the start and make something that would paint a picture for people listening to it. With every song I want to make it a journey from start to finish.