JORDAN RAKEI_(Credit_Hollie Fernando)_NEW LEAD

Pop CultureOctober 5, 2017

Jordan Rakei, the introverted multi-instrumentalist: ‘My only hurdle is shyness’

Contributor

Martyn Pepperell talks to New Zealand-born, Australia-raised vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and producer Jordan Rakei about his shyness and his new album Wallflower, out now on Ninja Tune.

“I have a friend who thinks that being an introvert just means you don’t need stimulation from other people,” says New Zealand-born, Australia-raised vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and producer Jordan Rakei when we meet up in central London’s artsy Lambeth district on a sunny Wednesday afternoon in August. Jordan’s talking to me about introversion because, alongside anxiety, it sits at the heart of his second, fittingly titled album, Wallflower. “That’s me, and I feel like a lot of my friends would connect with that,” he continues, soy flat white in hand. “We’re lonesome people, that’s how we develop our craft. We are by ourselves a lot, and we don’t really need external input. We make our music in our own space. That is what my whole album is about, being a loner.”

Jordan is 25, with short preppy hair, empathetic eyes, and, after close to two years living in London, an accent closer to British than anywhere in the antipodes. The night before, Jordan and his tightly-poised backing band presented music from his album inside a cramped basement club in Shoreditch. It was an industry showcase for Ninja Tune, the legendary English independent label Jordan signed to earlier in the year, and through whom he recently released Wallflower. Playing guitar and singing with ease, spirit and passion, he won over even the most jaded attendees.

“It’s seldom you come across an artist who can write, play, produce and perform to the level Jordan can,” enthuses Ninja Tune’s international manager Nicky Wain by email. “We’ve been huge fans since he started to release music and after seeing his performance at London’s esteemed Jazz Cafe, it was clear we wanted the honor of releasing his music and working to get it in front of the world.” At 25, Jordan has the skills to do everything Ninja Tune credit him with precisely because his feelings of introversion and anxiety forced him to be a loner, but we’ll get back to that later on.

They aren’t the only people within his orbit quick to praise him either. Before London, Jordan lived in Brisbane, where he regularly collaborated with a generation of newer New Zealand, Australian and American musicians, beatmakers and DJs including Noah Slee, Louis Baker, Hiatus Kaioyte, Ta-Ku, Mr. Carmack and the Soulection crew. “Jordan’s music is deep and complex,” explains Noah Slee. “I feel blessed to know Jordan and experience his gifts… It’s a truly soulful experience.”

“Seeing his rise has been a joy,” adds Louis Baker. “I’m totally stoked to see his trajectory. He is very talented, and highly driven as well.”

Endowed with a voice equally informed by Motown and New Zealand soul, hip-hop production chops cribbed from studying A Tribe Called Quest records, and a love of the simplicity vintage reggae basslines, Jordan’s had a cult following since he released his first EP Franklin’s Room in 2013. Before its release, Jordan developed his production and playing skills as a teenager.

Music was a big part of his childhood, and when he showed an interest in taking it more seriously, his family were so supportive that, when he turned 14, his father bought him an AKAI MPC sampler and a Mac. Instruments followed. “I played guitar all the time in my room, and would post Stevie Wonder covers online,” Jordan says. “I kept my headphones on, and my head down. I never went out or partied.”

“Even today, after a big night last night, I’m up early and in the studio,” he laughs. After high school, Jordan started working at a supermarket. He was living with his mother rent free, so he saved up enough money to buy more studio gear, complete his first EP, and buy flights to the UK. His father and younger brother were working in the mines in Perth at the time, and in Jordan’s words, “getting crazy money.” They told Jordan that if he quit his supermarket job, and focused on music, they’d give him half his weekly wage, and he could pay them back when he could. Jordan accepted.

In the early days, Jordan’s support mostly lived within the beats, future jazz, and experimental rap underground. Once he’d relocated to London, Jordan connected with a new generation of electronic jazz musicians and dance music DJs. They included Yussef Kamaal, United Vibrations, Tom Misch, Loyle Carner, Richard Spaven, Alfa Mist, Bradley Zero (of Rhythm Section), and even pop future garage sensations Disclosure. Bradley Zero encouraged Jordan to try his hand at dance music, and a house music side project called Dan Kye was born. “Today I’ve been making Dan Kye remixes of songs off Wallflower, which is difficult because I already know what they sound like but I have to make them danceable now,” he laughs.

Not long after Jordan arrived in London, he received an email from Disclosure. A friend of theirs had seen him play in Sydney, and suggested they check him out. They made a tune together called ‘Masterpiece,’ which served as the coda to Disclosure’s second album Caracel. ‘Masterpiece,’ didn’t blow Jordan up, but in conjunction with the release of his first album Cloak, he scored some nice opportunities. He opened up for NAO and Jamie Woon, played at Pitchfork’s Avant-Garde Block Party, and began receiving radio support from UK tastemakers like Annie Mac, and Huw Stephens at BBC Radio 1, plus Mary Anne Hobbs and Gilles Peterson from BBC Radio 6 Music.

While Jordan was writing Cloak, he began to practice meditation. It was his way of dealing with feelings of anxiety that had long plagued him. “I had all these ideas trapped in my head because I was too afraid to say them in person,” he admits. ‘When I started meditating, I could analyse my subconscious.” His thoughts began to flow out freely as music. “Music is just an easier language for me,” he admits.

If Cloak was about looking inward, Wallflower was about dealing with what Jordan found there, and finding a way out. Part of this process was the opening up of collaboration, letting musicians like Dave Okumu of The Invisible, and Ahmad Dayes and Wayne Francis II from United Vibrations play on the record. Another part was verbalising his anxieties and fears in a suite of songs which interlace modern soul and jazz with touches of dark psychedelica and shimmering electronics. In the process, Jordan referenced every stage of his musical development. Stuttering MPC grooves borrowed from ’90s rap. Lush chords that riffed on the work of Robert Glasper and D’Angelo. Fading childhood memories of dub reggae. His love of, and affinity with, New Zealand-based hi-tek soul bands Fat Freddy’s Drop and Electric Wire Hustle, and the studied emptiness of mediation. All of these things coalesced into what is fast becoming his high watermark moment.

Jordan knew everything was on track for Wallflower when he stumbled across the photograph that serves as the album cover. Twenty-one years old, the image depicts a four-year-old Jordan holding an inverted umbrella. “It encapsulates the beginning of the anxiety,” Jordan reflects. “The story is my dad was taking the photo, and I was worried people were looking at me. When he told me that, I thought, ‘Yes!’ That’s exactly it. I’ve only realised now, but music was the only way to work with it.”

That same year, Jordan’s Cook Islands Māori father and New Zealand mother relocated the family from a small North Island town to Brisbane, Australia. Jordan doesn’t specify which country the photo was taken in, and maybe it doesn’t matter. They came in pursuit of a better life for the family, but Jordan’s father never let Jordan or his brother forget where they were from. “It was important to him that we were New Zealanders in Australia,” Jordan recalls. “It was a big thing, even with basic stuff like sports, dad would always make sure we supported New Zealand teams. It’s a weird one, I was raised in Australia, but I am the product of New Zealand culture. I was raised by Kiwis.”

Thinking back to his performance the night before, I ask Jordan how he feels on stage. “I always judge myself by this standard: Am I the same on stage as I am around my parents?” he says. “I think I’m getting there. Do you know that rapper Anderson Paak? He has an amazing show, but I’m sure that around his mum he is very different. I just want to be able to go on stage and play my songs with no bravado. My only hurdle is shyness. When I can open up, say jokes, and be cheeky, I’ll know I’m there. I’m close.”

Here’s the thing though Jordan, you’re far closer than you think.

We’re giving away one copy of Jordan Rakei’s album Wallflower on LP. To win it, be the first person to politely email info@thespinoff.co.nz asking for it.

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Pop CultureOctober 5, 2017

HAMLET: The Video Game is bizarre and beautiful

Eugenia Woo

Guest writer

Eugenia Woo reviews HAMLET: The Video Game, a brave attempt to bring together the disparate worlds of gaming and theatre.

HAMLET: The Video Game – A Shakespearean Stage Show is a mouthful. It’s also got all the earnestness of a high school production, with none of the good-natured missteps or overbearing parents being idiots in the cheap seats. Simply put, it’s a breath of fresh air from director Greg Cooper and the Court Jesters which kept both kids and their adult chaperones in stitches for most of its runtime. The production which made its way to Auckland this week is the second iteration of the stage show and was originally conceived by Simon Peacock of Assassin’s Creed fame (the game, not the film travesty). While the cast is smaller now, it packs an improbable punch and a wildness that toes the line between bravado and being rudderless.

One wouldn’t ordinarily think that Shakespeare would be a natural fit for video games, but the crew behind HAMLET: The Video Game was firing on all cylinders when it came to integrating the two. Not content with the product of the stage show itself, stepping into the foyer of the Herald Theatre was like stepping into a nicely furnished net cafe that doubles as a wine bar. Computers were dotted around the box office and while the crew could have very easily used them as empty props, each machine showcased a different game made by some first-year students from AUT. The glue that bound them all together was the fact that every single game was based off a Shakespearean work.

Whether it was a means of assuaging people’s fears or a metaphor used to bludgeon them into accepting the coupling of video games and good ol’ Billy Shakespeare, who cares? It worked. The games on display clearly whet the audience’s appetite for the actual show, and it was a surprise to see snotty ten year olds and wine mums alike get into the spirit of the main event. A standout was A Fairest Forest (the brainchild of Mary Xu, Dee Sapeta, Celine Chan and Monica Zhang) with a female protagonist and heavy RPG influences interwoven into A Midsummer Night’s Dream, while plenty of foot traffic found its way to Stegan Januszkiewicz’s King John, based on the play of the same name and built around detective work and dungeoneering.

Once the curtain (in this case, a loading screen) rose on the play, however, any preconceptions the great work outside may have created were swiftly forgotten in favour of an opening that few would have ever considered – a pun-heavy, bombastic start that established HAMLET’s gaming credentials and slotted its expectant audience right into the thick of things. The play started off mirroring the beginning of a single player RPG campaign and continued in that vein until its end, and the predictable narrative structure turned out to actually be a great fit for a classic like Hamlet. The writers clearly saw no need to reinvent the wheel when the themes of a Shakespearean tragedy were as obvious as any Final Fantasy game, and cutting out the plot tweaking that often happens with adaptations of adaptations meant that the play could focus on what it does best: mocking itself.

Every joke was delivered with slapstick precision and flair, and at times the momentum from the brilliant performances of Kathleen Burns, Jared Corbin (oscillating wildly between a Wolfenstein villain and a Goomba wrangler) and Dan Bain appeared to drive them into the territory of improvisation, which only added to the excitement. No game was spared, whether it was Angry Birds or Tomb Raider, and all references were delivered with knowing winks and jostling, only matched by audience members’ audible groaning. The stream of puns turned into a veritable torrent as the production drew on, and while originally the references were a brilliant homage, it did begin to wear a bit; it became harder to maintain immersion when Hamlet’s soliloquys would be interrupted by titles that seemed out of place. However, what could have been a drag was saved by the addition of two continuous video game parodies: a one-man orchestra riffing on some classic theme tunes, and an interactive UI that responded to the characters’ and the audience’s wishes.

The strength of HAMLET really lay in its ability to harness the energy of its incredibly broad target audience. Anyone could have enjoyed the wordplay and the satire, even without any video game exposure at all. Greg Cooper mentioned that it was hardcore game references or bust, and it was a treat to see that he stayed true to his word whilst keeping the show as accessible as possible. Audience members were pulled in by dramatic pauses and flourishes, invited to change everything down to the very costume that Hamlet was wearing (a SWAT vest was available) and encouraged to contribute to the doomed protagonist’s killing spree thanks to what seemed like Nerf guns being doled out to the willing like candy.

On top of all that organised chaos, Dan Bain was indispensable as the titular Hamlet and Kathleen Burns running the gamut of roles ranging from a black widow-esque take on Gertrude to Mario was a real scene-stealer in the best way. Cooper had some strong words for those who turn their noses up at unconventional mediums like games: “Get over yourself”. I’m pleased to report that thumbing it to traditional expectations of what theatre should be and how audiences should experience art has resulted in a one-of-a-kind production that every Aucklander should make time for.

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