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If anyone is truly confident to express themselves in the industry, London’s Jesse Rose is the one. 2013 was no doubt a pivotal year for the “Made to Play” imprint boss, where he found not only time for a jam packed touring schedule, but to also write a 12 track album, producing one 12-inch record every month for a whole year. The highly anticipated album, titled The Whole Twelve Inches, has been released this week, just in time for Pulse to have a little chat with Jesse about his inspirations and passion for music.
How was your 2013? 2013 was absolutely mental. If I thought it was hard work building up my career from the age of 19 to 25- breaking through and traveling around the world- 2013 made all of that look really easy. I probably made over 50 tracks: producing my own tracks for the 12x12 project, working with other people on separate projects, doing remixes for Bob Marley, Calvin Harris, Riva Starr and all that, producing new rappers and singers, doing the A&R for Play It Down, getting ready for next year, and always sort of being on tour. Yeah, it's quite a lot. It's funny because at the end of most years I think it's going to be a lot easier and I won't have to work as hard and will be able to sleep in, but I think in fairness I just really love working. I would be bored if my days weren't 18 hours long.
What was your inspiration for releasing an album in the form of 12, 12inch tracks, with one produced each month? I wanted an album of A-sides, so I thought instead of just releasing an album like normal, I’d release a single every month for a year; that way I knew each single would have to be as super hot as I could make it, and it would give me time to later re-edit and tweak all the tracks for full-album purposes. I also really liked the idea of being able to get feedback and responses for each track from fans and DJs as they came out. I find myself missing tracks on albums I really enjoy from artists I deeply respect, so by spreading things out I just really tried to make it more digestible.
Explain your mindset going into each new track… Did you find it difficult to maintain the flow of the album? To be honest, when I go into my studio, I just start writing. A lot of the time I just like to jam, and seeing as the 12x12 series were single releases, I knew for the most part they’d all have a club vibe. But I like writing deeper stuff. Other times I get into more of a techno vibe. Just depends on what side of the bed you wake up on! I consider myself extremely lucky that I’ve got the freedom to be able to be able to make and play what I’m into.
How would you define the overall theme of the album? How did the individual tracks play into the album as a whole? The album shows what and how I would DJ in a way, because its got house, techno, deeper stuff, all that. It’s about building things up to make something special, which is what I do with Made For The Night and my label Play It Down as well. Each track is just a different way for me to express my love for the underground in different ways, be it from what I listened to growing up to what I’m enjoying from new artists or sounds today.
What was the most challenging aspect of producing your album the way you did? And the most rewarding? I always come up with ideas that in my head seem much easier than they actually are. When I first came up with the idea of the 12x12 series, it seemed like something that was manageable, but then it took over my life. You know, when you put out one record and it does really well, you want your next day release to match it, which resulted in me being in the studio every day that I wasn’t on tour. But because of that, it was the most rewarding, because it forced me to make the best tunes I could possibly make at the time.
You have some great collaboration tracks on “The Whole Twelve Inches,” with the likes of Ed Weathers and Chuck Inglish from The Cool Kids. What was it like working with so many different types of artists on the album? Oliver $ was an obvious collaboration. We've been working together for so long. I brought him up through my different labels; I’ve been supporting him for like seven years. So it made a lot of sense to have him on board. He's also the funniest German I know.Brillstein is one of the funniest Americans I know, so I guess this whole thing was just collaboration of comedy. Brillstein lives in LA and has loads of great samples so it's just really good fun to work with him. Another person I had the pleasure of working with was Chuck Inglish, of The Cool Kids. He's one of the few rappers who'd actually be open to rapping on a techno beat. Arama, who sang on “Time Is But A Moment,” has written for some of America’s biggest pop stars and singers – she is also featured on a few tracks from artists like Major Lazer and Switch. She's another person I just really like working with.
Originally this 12x12 plan wasn’t necessarily supposed to have collaborations, but it ended up being that I was in the studio so much that people would come around while I was working and get involved. But I’m quite happy with the contributions; it’s been serendipitous and nice.
And finally, what have you got planned for the New Year? Any big Miami or Ibiza plans on the books? We’ve got loads of great releases coming up on my label Play It Down from our exclusive artists Dansson, Oliver $, Christian Nielsen, O&A, Lewis Boardman and Dick Johnson, as well as a mini-album from Brillstein, who co-produced a couple of tracks on my new album. We’ve also got a label compilation of exclusives from all our artists which has been in the works for a while because we wanted to make sure it was a full album of brand new content with no fillers.
On the clubs front, Made For The Night takes a new residency in London this year at Fabric, and we’ll continue our residencies at Watergate in Berlin and Razzmatazz in Barcelona, as well as one-off events around the world, one of which is our daytime event at Picnik Electronik. Other than that just continuing to make music and traveling around the world playing music I love to people who want to dance to it.
"The Whole 12 Inches" is out now on Play It Down. You can buy it here.