PREMIERE: Jack Rua and Saint Taint join forces on hyper-pop track 'Contact'

Irish glam-pop artist Jack Rua and US hyper-pop artist Saint Taint have teamed up for a scintillating, entire self-made EP, with Hot Press now premiering the project's bouncy electro-pop track 'Contact'.

The flirtatious, high-energy number juxtaposes Jack’s soft vocals with Saint Taint’s vibrant and innovative 100 gecs inspired production, with captivating results.

Rua previously performed on the Hot Press Lockdown Sessions Y&E Series last July, bring his trademark club sound to his livestream audience. The David Bowie-inspired BIMM Dublin graduate released his debut album Narcissus last summer, after sharing previous singles 'Curious', 'Rise', 'Ego' and 'Scarlet A'. Jack is carving a space for himself in the music industry, "one where authenticity and depth can go hand in hand with artificiality and excess".

On 'Contact', the duo trade verses to fantasise about escaping the COVID reality through sexual connection.

“I wrote this song about wanting, needing, craving physical intimacy,” said Jack, who wrote the bulk of the lyrics.

“We wanted to capture the feeling of being alone in your bedroom all night and aimlessly scrolling social media and dating apps, so the verses kind of echo that quiet moment of intimacy before the chorus lets you in to see the internal frenetic desperation of desiring something that you can’t have”.

Saint Taint, who produced the track, added, “The chorus drop was pretty instant and didn’t change much from the first demo, but the verses took a lot of different versions to get right. The surprising sparseness in the final version really drew us both in.”

‘Contact’ was the first song that Rua and Saint Taint made together and was chosen the opening track to the EP. It's undeniably a fitting introduction to the two innovative queer artists’ collaboration.

On the four-track project, I Don’t Party Enough Anymore, Rua and Saint Taint warp and contort the traditional pop soundscape to deliver a colourful and often dizzying presentation of 2020’s feelings of frustration, loneliness and anxiety. After meeting online and deciding they wanted to work together; the whole EP was written and created by the two artists alone.

“This project was born from both of us being trapped inside and trying to process the complicated emotions and frustrations we were both feeling, sometimes with idealisation and sometimes by confronting it head on,” Jack explains.

Saint Taint added their uniquely American viewpoint, taking inspiration from the “American dumpster fire of the pandemic and police aggression, as well as the general political landscape”.

The title EP track 'I Don't Party Enough Anymore' aches for a time of reduced general anxiety and chaos, remembering past eras of release.

Describing the song as a ‘quarter-life crisis swan-song’, Jack said, “Early on in the lockdown I was spending my days watching TV and playing video-games, then at night I would get drunk and dance around my room. Then I’d wake up, mourn how far my life had fallen from the excitement and freedom of the previous years, and repeat the process.”

Saint Taint offers a diametric opposite to Jack’s intimate expression of isolation.

They explain,“I’m notoriously hermit-ish and boring most days, so I decided to add this kind of funny counterpoint where I’m discussing how I’ll probably just make a bunch of excuses as to why I can’t make it to some party and then just go make music in my basement”.

With this project, Jack Rua and Saint Taint parallel frank lyricism with rich, otherworldly sounds; perfectly capturing the feelings of so many people during this pandemic society.

Listen to 'Contact', premiered exclusively on Hot Press, below: