Jacques Greene: "The MySpace era is on its way out"

<b>Jacques Greene</b>'s uplifting fusion of classic house and contemporary R&B is murdering dancefloors, headphones, Rupert Murdoch's assets and a few MySpace hipsters too. We had a word with LuckyMe's latest prodigy

Feature by Ray Philp | 03 Mar 2011

As a social networking phenomenon, MySpace has been dying on its arse for a while now. Old news, agreed. But, as a destratifying, democratising force for bedroom producers and singer-songwriters to get themselves 'out there', another burial song looms for Rupert Murdoch's decaying digital relic, and not only because News Corp are in the process of flogging it like David Dickinson would a puppy on Boxing Day. Jacques Greene, a 21 year old producer and DJ from Montreal, is one of a growing number for whom the MySpace approach of impersonal, scattergun self-promotion has lost its allure.

"The MySpace era is on its way out. It's tricky, because everyone is making music now, and everyone has access to the same library of cultural baggage and channels through which to put it out. The way my music has come out has been the opposite of marketing it; it was just a case of making tracks and sending it to my penpals in Glasgow. I didn't really try to put it out there."

By 'penpals', Greene is referring to LuckyMe, the label through which he released The Look EP late last year, following his debut single on Night Slugs, (Baby I Don't Know) What You Want. Greene freely admits to being a "total luddite", with a preference for vinyl and analogue synths, though his attitude to technology is not entirely abstemious. Greene has an active Twitter account, and his relationship with LuckyMe was largely facilitated by his ethernet cable.

"Myself and a few friends from Montreal, including Lunice [who, it's worth pointing out, Greene befriended on MySpace], came across them in Glasgow and they blew our minds. They were synthesising alot of American pop culture in the same way that we were. They had a really open-minded attitude about the cross-section of underground and mainstream, which is everywhere now in music. They were so far away, but so close as far as their approach and philosophy to music. We just started emailing for a long time and trading music."

On meeting Lunice, he adds: "I was promoting a night with a couple of friends in a very small club, and we booked Lunice for his first ever club show. I actually met him on MySpace, but literally the next day I ran into him at our school and it turned out that we went to the same college, Dawson. We have our own sounds, but we get along because our philosophy unifies us."

Another Girl, an EP due for release in early March, signposts yet another shift into new territory for LuckyMe's increasingly nebulous stylistic range ("When I DJ, I play a lot more house records than a lot of the other guys on LuckyMe...we did a label showcase in NY, and I felt I was boring because I was playing mostly dance records"). And yet, Greene and LuckyMe remain a natural fit. Greene's 4/4 sensibilities are skewered by his unambiguous affection for R&B and pop music, an irresistible combination that reconciles influences as dissonant as Aphex Twin and Cassie. He agitates at what he perceives to be a puritanical contempt for artists like the latter in some quarters.

"The decade of the hipster and of elitism is done. I don't think there's such a thing as a guilty pleasure, which I think was definitely a 'thing' before. You would've encountered a lot of 'either you're playing too housey, or you're playing too pop, or you're playing too underground, or not underground enough.'

"There used to be a lot more of looking down your nose at stuff, and some people still do that. At the end of the day, I'm not trying to make music for those people, I'm trying to make music for myself, and indulge in what I want to be hearing. It's not my problem if something frowns upon something I do."

Greene has recently chucked his dayjob at a large advertising firm as an art director, "handling the visual/creative side for banks and cellphones, and other horrific companies like that." I happen to be speaking to him a week before his last day in the office. "I have a pretty good job here in Montreal, but I'm taking the freefall into full-time music, and hopefully the parachute deploys."

What made him take the leap? "In life, I've often been shy of making big decisions like that and taking leaps of faith. A few things aligned in a nice way; the attention in Europe, and the tour coming along in a really nice way. I had to take my courage and realise that I'm not going to do this when I'm 32 - I kinda need to do this now. It's somethng I really want to do, and I don't want to be afraid of failure."

Now that Greene has thrust himself into the abyss, he seems to have left his inhibitions of self-expression on the ledge. In conversation, he often makes his point in definitive terms, either 'killing' or declaring dead anything he observes as such, whether it be MySpace, hipsterism or whatever. Discussion creeps towards the possibility of an album; his scythe lurches straight for it.

"I would really like to record an album. Then again, I've been wondering about the relevance of the album as a format. From a medium point of view, the album is kind of dead. Especially in dance music, it's a hard thing to pull off. I approached The Look as a very short album. I had an idea of the feel of the whole thing. I sat down with Dom [Flannigan of LuckyMe] and discussed how we wanted to sequence the entire record, so I'd like to push that approach a bit further."

He continues: "Everyone listens to music on YouTube and mp3s. I listen to albums and I know alot of other people do, but I think it might be something that we're holding onto for romantic value. I think it's something that is, sadly, something that's just not that relevant anymore. After the tour, I want to write something as long or short as it needs to be, and we'll see what happens. But I think the convention whereby 'you have to write an album', is dead."

Of his European tour, he says that he's particularly looking forward to stopping by Glasgow, a city he considers a second home: "I like how casual and down to earth it is. It seems like a very unpretentious place. The Sub Club is a good example, in that it's an amazing place to hear great music with a good sound system. There's no 'bottle service' attitude there. A lot about the city strikes me as raw and real, and that's a really comfortable place to be."

A final word on MySpace. As the old maxim goes, there's an exception to every rule, but there's also a rule to every exception. Just as Greene has nurtured his appreciation of a hitherto unexplored space between Autechre and Rihanna, so Lunice has promoted himself properly, and in a way that is identifiably his own, having managed to sidestep the temptation to dip into the hyperlink swamp. "Lunice is a good example of being able to sell yourself on the internet, through YouTube, MySpace, his Twitter account and so on. That was completely innovative. There are different approaches, but there are no rules anymore."

LuckyMe presents Jacques Greene, Glasgow School of Art, 9 Mar, 10.30pm, £5

http://www.thisisluckyme.com