Speed Freak

Over the last ten years, Jochem Paap, aka, Speedy J has been one of the most innovative, unpredictable electronic producers.
Never comfortable to follow trends, Speedy was one of the first European producers to release Chicago and Detroit inspired club music, with his early singles and debut album, Ginger released on Richie Hawtins Plus 8 label and Sheffield stamp Warp respectively.
Subsequently, Paap s second album, G Spot, was a catalogue of thought provoking deep ambience, a reaction to the textbook techno of the time. If G Spot was a sideways step for Paap, what followed was a leap into wildly experimental territories. Bristling with dark, sinister future funk missives, his third long player, Public Energy No. 1 marked him out as a producer operating on the very outer limits of electronic music. Energy was Jochem s farewell to the confines of conventional music. Now he s returned with his fourth album, A Shocking Hobby, a mixture of industrial acid filled darkness and blissed out electronic beauty, and a compelling progression from Energy.
Apart from reinforcing Jochem s calibre as an innovative producer, it s another addition to Holland s rich legacy of extreme electronic music: let s not forget that sulphate fuelled 180 bpm gabba and deep, abstract techno from the likes of Terrace and Sterac are of Dutch origin. I put it to Jochem that its something they put in the water.
Yeah maybe, that s the only explanation I could come up with! he replies. I ve really no idea, it s a small country and maybe it looks like there s a very tight scene, that everybody knows each other but it s not really like that, he continues. All those people you mentioned know each other but it s not like we stand for a common goal or something. Historically, the Dutch are a trading culture and I think the strong thing about the Dutch mentality is that they can put their own identity aside, take bits of other stuff from other countries and twist it a bit. In the UK or America I think that much more styles have been conceived there than compared to Holland. We just interpret it and make it something of our own.
It s a modus operandi Paap has employed since his earliest releases, taking a sound, twisting and reshaping it in his own inimitable way. Unconcerned with fads, fashions and trends, Jochem feels completely detached from mainstream club music.
I m not concerned with this sort of music, I don t really consider it as something that I need to be an agent for, he answers. I just do my own thing. I became interested in this sort of music because at the time, when I first heard it, the stuff that came from Chicago and Detroit, it was completely mind blowing and completely unlike anything I had ever heard before. That s still the way I approach things; I like music that blows my mind, which inspires me, which goes against anything you thought was possible. That s my main interest, I m not really interested in where it stands in the context of pop music or mainstream music or whatever.
It s true that with every release Speedy J moves further from the often restrictive templates of conventional dance music; though his first two albums, Ginger and G Spot had some relevance to the music of the time, Public Energy and now A Shocking Hobby are completely off the wall releases, maverick stuff that have absolutely no connection with any of the current, prevailing trends.
When I released Public Energy I thought it was time to show that side and to see what I could do with it, he explains. I thought at that time that was the most interesting thing I could do. I released Hobby because I thought that musically it was more accessible and technically more advanced. It was showing where I went from Public Energy without being too similar. I also tried not to be too inaccessible because I ve been doing some really experimental stuff recently in the last few years, but it s almost unlistenable, it s just sounds without any structure at all. So this was just a way of displaying the technical ideas I had without getting too complicated.
Another difference with Public Energy is that I tried to explore musical territory as well as sonic territory, Paap continues. The focus was on music; with the last album I deliberately forgot about the music part and just concentrated on the sound and production.
Admittedly, Hobby is more accessible than its predecessor, but it still sounds unlike anything else you ll hear this year. Ask him about the music that played a part in moulding Hobby, and it s obvious that Speedy J is in a sonic domain all his own making.
I don t really use musical influences, he says. If I get inspired by other artists, it s more by their ideas and by the way they work and their approach than the actual music they make. I also get inspired and ideas from people in other disciplines, like visual artists or people in any art really, theatre, dance, whatever. The way it sounds has more to do with my preference as to how things should sound than trying to follow in the footsteps of someone else.
Recently, Paaps interest in other art forms led him to collaborate with The Dutch Wind Ensemble. Jochem also plans to collaborate with a Japanese visual artist and work on an instalment in the harbour of Rotterdam, his hometown.
I ve worked with other musicians as well, but I found working with people from other disciplines is much more interesting, he says. It forces you to reconsider what you do yourself, because you re forced to look at your own work in a different way, you re looking through the eyes
of the collaborator. It s something you can learn about quite a lot, see your own work in a different perspective, being forced to think and decide on different levels. With The Wind Ensemble, it was all about communication because their language and my language are such completely different things.
Although he intends to keep making electronic music, branching into the world of new technology and media, Jochem Paap will always have a fresh, individualistic take on his chosen art form.
Releasing CDs is getting old, he says enthusiastically. The CD medium is probably in its last days, but the music isn t really my focus anymore, it s the sound. My music can be virtually anywhere in the digital domain, but to release a CD I need to structure my sounds into music before I can make it accessible or listenable; I could live a very happy life if that wasn t necessary
A Shocking Hobby is out now on Novamute.