Jay-Jay Johanson, one of the last truly modern crooners for our time, is doing a short North American tour. I don't know if he's promoting a new release, from what I can tell his most recent release was a 'best of' compilation called "Prologue". I do hope he's been working on new material.
Jay-Jay is a Swedish singer after the moody Scott Walker style. His songs reference Burt Bacharach and thriller soundtracks. Its not particularly easy for me to characterize his sound, it is equal parts contemporary jazz, electro, and hip-hop in arrangement. He has sampled from Michael Nyman and Francoise Hardy. He is a truly original performer. Strangely though, despite the fact that he sings in English, he is only really loved and respected by the French. I first noticed him whilst leafing through an issue of TECHNIKART back in 1995, in a year when I thought Pulp's "Different Class" was the number one album, they had Jay-Jay Johanson's "Whiskey" topping their best of list. At that point I decided, this matter had to be investigated. Sadly, the label he records for, BMG SWEDEN, doesn't distribute here in the USA so it took some doing to track his music down. His last album, "Antenna" has been distributed here luckily.
Tonight and the following Friday I will play quite a bit of his music on my radio show in preparation for his live concert in New York City.
http://www.aboutglitz.com/
on the glitz productions site:
JAY-JAY JOHANSON
Jay-Jay Johanson is coming to play a concert in Toronto at The Opera House.
The show will be July 1, 2005.
Jay-Jay Johanson is an internationally renowned musician and singer. Johanson has released four albums with BMG Sweden, each selling over 100,000 copies in Europe and North America and garnering tremendous critical acclaim. Recognized for his unique sound, lush melodies and progressive rhythms, Jay-Jay Johanson has performed around the world including the Montreal Jazz Festival and the SonArt electronic music festival in Barcelona .
la Tulipe, Montreal - July 3 www.latulipe.ca
Mercury Lounge, NYC – July 4
for more information:
www.jayjayjohanson.com
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