In the Studio With… G Jones

DJ Times Magazine, March 2019

G Jones has been releasing music since 2012, but the past year saw the Cali DJ/producer reach a lofty new level. His debut album, The Ineffable Truth, gained plenty of notice, and it wasn’t all from his steadily growing fanbase of bass fans.

No, he and his album were lauded by such diverse talents as Porter Robinson and DJ Shadow. In fact, it was the latter DJ-legend who said that Jones was “the most gifted Ableton beatmaker I’ve ever seen.”

Of course, a listen to The Ineffable Truth will reveal that this kind of mad respect was justly earned. The album’s a cornucopia of complex electronic sounds, rhythms and moods – a genuine journey, not just a collection of formulaic wobbles and drops, a genre classic.

So, as his March 29 performance at Miami’s Ultra Music Festival approached, we caught up with the very talented Greg Jones.

DJ Times: Why Ableton Live?

Jones: I was introduced to it by a high-school teacher who saw me making beats on Garage- Band, which was my the first DAW. He gave me a demo of Ableton 6, and I was blown away. Immediately what spoke to me was the Session View approach to making music – the ability to have a bunch of loops or clips that are triggerable in real time, as opposed to strictly working in a timeline format. Since then, I’ve just become super-comfortable with the Ableton interface and have never felt limited by what I can do with it, so I’ve never really had much of a desire to switch DAWs.

DJ Times: How did working in Ableton, in particular, inform the process for your latest album?

Jones: When I was writing The Ineffable Truth, I decided that I wanted to write in the most free, sometimes just stream-of-consciousness kind of way, and ignore any part of myself that wanted to make utilitarian decisions to format the songs in a way that would work best in a DJ set. If I felt like writing a song with no drums or a bunch of tempo changes that made it difficult to mix, I’d just do it without a second thought, and in my opinion, a lot of my best music happened because of this. I realized that I should just write whatever I want to in-the-moment, and if I later decide that I like the song enough to want to play it in a set, there are all kinds of creative solutions to playing stuff that isn’t “easy” to DJ, especially since I’m performing with Ableton Live.

DJ Times: In a world of single releases and EPs, why an album?

Jones: Everyone’s experience is different and I certainly don’t think my way is necessarily the best way, but I waited many years before attempting to write an album. It’s hard to describe why it felt right when it did, but it did. It honestly just felt like I was ready to start writing an album one day, so I did, and learned and improved as I wrote it. DJ Times: Is there a favorite track? Jones: It’s really hard to choose a singular favorite because I like each song for different reasons, but “Time” is definitely a favorite. It’s hard to say why – something about that song just resonates with me in a deep way.

DJ Times: Was it difficult curating the tracklist?

Jones: I wouldn’t exactly say it was difficult, but it was a process that unfolded over a long period of time. I had the approach that I was going to make the album the best it could be no matter how long it took. A bit over a year into writing, I had what I thought was a strong working tracklist, and six months after that, I had the final tracklist which was only about 50-percent the same. I was playing a lot of one-off shows and festivals toward the end of the writing process, so I’d sequence the tracks in Ableton to sound how they’d sound on the album, playing into one another, and put that file on my phone and listen to it and take notes about what felt right and what didn’t. Because I was patient with myself, I never really felt too stressed about choosing the tracklist, and one day it felt like the final tracklist was just so obvious it couldn’t be any other way.

DJ Times: What was your feeling when you finished the album?

Jones: I knew I’d made a body of work that I loved and would stand behind, even if my fans or the general public hated it. But I was also pretty confident that at least some people would like it because it felt like my best work and a very honest and heartfelt artistic statement.

DJ Times: Did that excitement transfer into prepping for the live show?

Jones: Getting the tour together was much more stressful because, unlike the album which I had unlimited time to write, the tour dates were set in stone, so there were firm deadlines to finish the video assets, lighting programming, arranging tracks for the live set, etc. Once all of the work was done preparing the show, though, I was so unbelievably excited to show it to the world. I think it’s exactly the right show to showcase the album, as well as a lot of new unreleased music and some remixes of older stuff I wrote years ago.

DJ Times: In making an album, is it important to mix production styles?

Jones: I don’t know if it is! I have a pretty open-ended creative vision and super-varied set of influences, so I think that is reflected in my music. But, while maybe that is a strength of my album, I wouldn’t say I think that’s necessarily a requisite feature for an album to be good. There are plenty of great albums that have less diverse approaches to production. For example, a great solo piano album or a great techno album is not necessarily less good just because it crosses less genres. Good music is good music.

DJ Times: The album got some high praise – you even got a thumbsup from Porter Robinson.

Jones: It makes me feel so deeply happy and grateful to see people enjoying the album and connecting with the music. Seeing Porter mention it as one of his favorites this year felt especially good because his work – especially his live AV sets – were a huge influence on The Ineffable Truth live show and my music generally.

DJ Times: What have you learned from making the album and doing the accompanying tour?

Jones: The more I lean into my creative and experimental impulses and write music for the sake of trying to create good music, as opposed to trying to make things that will fit well in my DJ sets, the better and more personal the music tends to feel and the happier I am with it.

DJ Times: Anything you would do differently?

Jones: With the album, probably not. I’m really quite happy with it exactly as is. With the live show, I am super-happy with it in its current touring form, but definitely plan to do more work on it to adapt it to festival stages for summer – mainly in terms of revising certain lighting and video elements to look good on whatever weird video and light configurations festivals will have for me to play on.

DJ Times: What’s next for you?

Jones: I have a ton of unreleased music I’m excited about, including new music with Eprom. Also, I’m really hoping to bring The Ineffable Truth live show to the rest of the world outside of North America, and I think we have some international dates in the works – so hopefully that works out!

DJ Times, By Brian Bonavoglia