Rock Monsters Romania

2020 was a hard year for music and that is a known fact. Although, there were some good things that happened in 2020.

In 2020, we had the chance to hear remastered Grey Daze songs featuring the one and only Chester Bennington on their album “Amends” and to see their amazing video of “Soul Song”, directed by Jaime Bennington, Chester’s son, that already has no less than 2.2 million views on YouTube.

Moreover, in 2020, Jaime released his first EP “Then”, in which he describes himself and his life.

After such a successful year, we had the pleasure to talk to Jaime about his achievements and, of course, his future plans in an exclusive interview for our publication!

Can you describe “music” in one word? Why did you choose it?

If I had to describe the term music in one word I would use the equally ambiguous term of manipulation. I choose the word manipulation to convey the meaning of music because all music is the product of a manipulation. Of matter, of mind, of spirit. When these three elements are combined in a unique way with the precision of knowing and of the precision of intention they produce a near-perfect portrait of something unseen within the Self so that it can, in fact, be seen. Everything about the Self is manipulated in some form or fashion from the moment we are born, and more often than not, from as early on as our time in the womb. Whether that interaction (or manipulation) is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is rooted in the interpretation of that interaction by the Observer, and so, the term manipulation, as I use it to describe music, proves to be the most liberating descriptor for not just music but any art seeing as though the taste of an individual is completely relative to their experience. A constantly evolving process of data integration that never stops until you die, and even then continues.

In 2020 you released your EP, “Then”, but you also collaborated with Grey Daze on “Amends”. How were these projects influenced by the pandemic?

I wouldn’t say that the pandemic had any influence whatsoever on these two projects. Amends was a project that I helped with before the pandemic, and though, while I released my EP THEN during the pandemic, it was only a coincidence. THEN was something I had been working on for a long time. For the better half of three years. And was actually intended to be two separate albums derived from two totally unique visions I had for myself: a whimsical post-modern take on the more playful parts of my Self and the more grounded and heady recollection of my life from birth until about two years ago. It was only after I admitted to myself that producing two albums while kickstarting the film career I was working hard to kick off that I would have to combine the two projects and move on with my life. Which is not something I am particularly bothered by, because I don’t think there is such a thing as a ‘crowning achievement.’ Trust me I have plenty of ideas, more ideas than I have projects to support. As long as I am working on myself there is no shortage of content, no missed opportunities. If the motivation to make an album returns to me, which it has on multiple occasions, then that work will be there for me in the future. There is no rush whatsoever.

How did it feel to collaborate with Grey Daze? Were you proud of the final version of the EP?

Collaborating with Sean, Esjay, and the rest of the guys behind Grey Daze was a blast. It might sound cliché to say that they are all great people, but it’s true. I experienced nothing but fun while I was recording for ‘Soul Song’ and I experienced nothing but total freedom in my production of the music video for the ‘Soul Song.’ What I did with that video was kind of ridiculous if you ask me. But nobody stopped me. All I got was a thumbs up and a big Green Light. To be honest, that video was probably more satisfying to me than tracking vocals for the song because I got to work on something that brought all of my art to a single place. That is something I am extremely grateful for. I somehow managed to produce a spiritual work for a rock album. A work that received high praise from the fans, of both LP and Grey Daze, and has since reached 2.2 million views on YouTube alone, which is beyond amazing to say the least. That’s the kind of stuff that you laugh about on your own time saying, “This thing is going to do really well. Maybe like a million views.” And then let be. Mostly the comment is sarcastic and more geared towards poking fun at myself for thinking that it would ever reach that height let alone a greater height. The implication is that it wouldn’t ever happen. But it did! How great is that?

As for my EP THEN, I am exceptionally proud of the reception and the little talk there has been around it. That might sound cliché as well. After all how do you get excited about a tiny EP that nobody really knows about? Well, I never intended for the damned thing to take off. I work more like a magnet than a brand name. Meaning that I put a lot of intention into my work so that the intention draws others with similar intention. Now, that’s not a lot of people right now. To make matters less appealing, I didn’t advertise the release except on my Instagram, and even that was short lived. I didn’t tell anyone I had done it. I hype anyone up. I just did it. I put it out. That was it. It’s a known thing to me that the process of magnetization is a slow one, but it works like a tsunami does. It starts way out in the middle of the ocean where its inertia compounds on itself until it reaches critical mass, stellar heights, before breaking itself over a barrier, or as I like to think of it, an immovable object. See: my barriers are fundamental. They are the conditionings of the mind via social, political, and economic standards. These are systemic issues that have bore themselves into the genes of the modern human like an insect bores into a tree. And so, my barriers are not things that a wave like mine as it currently stands can break so easily. That’s where the intention comes in. Another word might be compatibility. My barriers are comprised of social, political, and spiritual issues all of which include, but are not limited to, racism, bigotry, equal rights, the hideous oppression of minorities and people of color, and the belief that we are all a single organism whose differences are what make us gel and are, in fact, not the thing that should divide us. A belief that our governments and societies have inverted to make us all despise each other no matter whether it is warranted or not. Those barriers take not only numbers but unification in numbers to break, and so, with that being said, I have a lot of work left to do. I have a lot to prove. I have a lot to chew. The EP seems to magnetize just enough. And that’s perfectly fine with me. I need no more, I need no less.

What pushed you to release “Then” in 2020?

The release of THEN was not related to any one thing. It just kind of happened. I had been writing some songs for my partner separate from the EP for our one year anniversary and it just so happened that I got wrapped up in the whole process of crafting a song and found myself motivated to look back on the work I had already done. When I did look back it was kind of like opening a time capsule. I could see all of my progression as a singer-songwriter from as far back as probably three to four years. At first it was a bit overwhelming for me to meticulously pick through old stems or songs that started off really good but ultimately fell flat. In fact, there are probably a dozen or so stems that had immense promise that I stored away for future work. So, maybe those will find their way back to the light in time. Who knows? But what happened was totally unintentional. I did not set out to sequence and produce an EP, which is exactly where the title for the EP THEN came from. I always loved the concept of ‘now’ versus ‘then.’ The act of thinking about the future. All of things you could be and all of the things you could do. Equally so, I was fascinated with things that could never happen or had a very low chance of happening. At the point in my life, when I started to put the EP together, I was at THE POINT I had consider to be ‘then’ (future tense) so many years ago, which of course also happened to be ‘now.’ And so, the whole thing took on the quality of being something I had worked towards and was something I could build off of yet was only possible because I had seen it take shape by accident in the present not in the past or the future. Now became then and then became the past and Time seemed to take on a different quality. Those designators of past, present, future, now, and then suddenly became a singular ever-flowing now. Because that is what time is. It is only now. There really isn’t a then in past or future tense. The only reason we experience breaks in the ever-present now is because our highly efficient immune systems need a second to catch up every once in a while. This isn’t to say that the EP spurred on changes in my philosophy on time but that it happened to be a product of those philosophies taking shape during the COVID-19 pandemic at a time when I was asking massive questions with massive answers. So maybe it was the pandemic that motivated me to release the EP. I don’t know. Things with intention have a way of moving out of sight and out of mind just to circle back around in the most unpredictable ways. This particular happening was 50/50 in terms of it being predictable or unpredictable. Either way there is no better time than the present.

Can you tell us more about your message from it?

My goal with the EP was to present my Self to an audience that would see me for exactly what I am. I am someone who loves life. I love language. I love art. I love the way all of these things can combine to create dimensions of expression for the Self. I’ve always been a very honest person. My desire to be factual is paramount to my art and my conversation in private and in public settings. I don’t believe in hiding things away, especially if they are so awful they cannot be spoken because they still exist even if you don’t intend to believe they do. Reality can be suppressed but it cannot be made to not-exist. It’ll catch up at some point and rear its head, which I’ve found is only ugly if you make it ugly. The entire EP is a kind of stream of consciousness, a record of my growth as a musician, a songwriter, a philosopher, and a human being from the ages of 20 to 24 years. I talk about my undiagnosed Borderline Personality Disorder, my tumultuous childhood, my tortured relationships with my own self and those closest to me, my nightmares, my schizophrenic tendencies, my thoughts on concepts like love, possession, conditioning of the human mind, and generic form and literature during a span of four years. In that time I finished college, I lost my father, I found myself, I fell in love, I changed my area of expertise something like three or four times, and I was exposed to any number of things that would make a person wish they were dead. It’s a lot to take in if you really settle into. I did a song by song dissection with Diana Ciobotea on her show Backstagers and I didn’t even get to all of the details though I did manage to get quite a bit out with the time that we had. So, the message of THEN is probably to not take things so seriously. To not take things so seriously and to think deeply about the things that you do. I just wanted to show you all the many faces I have, have had, and potentially might have. Talk about some shit that people don’t like talking about. Talk about some things that maybe you’ve never thought of. I wanted to have fun. Which is why Post-Mod Icon is a song composed only of Tweets that I made to my own page over the span of a single year. Maybe there is no point at all. Context maybe. There is a whole lot of context. But maybe there is no central point. I didn’t have a game plan when I started. It just turned out the way that it did because it did and that’s perfectly fine with me.

Do you have more songs that did not make it to this EP? Are you planning to release another one soon?

I have a few songs. Some of them are nearly finished as well. One of the projects that was combined into the EP was initially supposed to be an overview of my life up to the point that I started writing. I was massively influenced by artists like Kali Uchis, Tyler the Creator, Rex Orange County, and Willow at the time. So, the harmonies were really pretty and the melodies were off-kilter but not atonal or anything aggressive like that. I would say the songwriting sat somewhere between Björk and Willow by the time I wrote the final song on the EP titled ‘EP Demo’. My goal was to write a 12 track album in the style of these artists but that didn’t pan out. I literally had an outline with all of the topics I would be writing about in what order and they were all listed in sequence. One of the B-sides for that album was a song more in the vein of lo-fi hip hop and was intended to show case my good friend Ethan Sinclair who had taken a reprieve from rap but wanted to try and make his way back to it. So there are a lot of theoretical songs out there that could find their way into a secondary release. There are definitely some alternate versions of songs that could make it out. There are some stems that are just fun to listen to. So maybe I’ll do that. Compile a record of demos for THEN or an expanded version that showcases the evolution of the music. That would be fun. The only issue is that I have personally moved on to more nuanced and concise projects that are just entering into maturity so the time I have to dedicate to something like that is very limited. By the time I could, I would probably just want to write a whole new album. I’ve grown a lot and it would be a shame to fail to reflect that growth.

Would you consider that your father influenced your music style? Of course, if it is not too personal, could you maybe describe how?’

Thank you for asking me about my comfortability level in speaking about my father. I don’t really have what might be called ‘traditional boundaries’ when it comes to that stuff because, as a I had said previously, I don’t believe in hiding things. So I’ll give you the real answer! Which is, of course, yes. My father has influenced me. Of course he has. I think he influenced me in a very interesting way because for as much as he was inspiring he was also unintentionally uninspiring. In terms of things about my father that I found inspiring. He could put on a fucking show. The showmanship was always top notch no matter whether he was sick, or tired, or emotionally ill equipped. You paid for your ticket? You got a show. You bought the album and supported the band? You got a fucking show. I knew from a very young age that I could never be like that. Endlessly energetic without hardly ever showing fatigue. I get fatigued easily. No doubt. I can’t pretend I am okay with something that is not okay. If I get sick, I need that time to recover. Now, that’s not to say that I value my audience any less because that’s not true. I would suffer for you. I just have a smaller threshold for keeping over people happy if I am not happy. There’s a balance. He taught me that balance. He also was exceptionally good at encouraging people to be their own authentic selves. It took me a while to see it, but he helped me to understand that I could be just as effective as him, maybe even more given enough time, by being myself. By finding what works for me. So, that’s great. I think everyone should have someone in their life that teaches them this lesson. On the other hand, however, one of the more uninspiring things might be his style of lyricism. I was not on the same page about the purpose of lyrics or the expression of lyrics as he was. There is very little doubt about that either. To put it in simpler terms: I am a fan of the Arctic Monkeys, he was a fan of Alice In Chains. Is one better than the other? Objectively, no. But there is something to be said about the way either artist crafts lyrics or furthermore how they apply them to any given song. I’m on the Alex Turner side of things in the same way that I am a Lynchian at heart. I’m precise in an abstract way, I try to avoid broad generalizations like ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or ‘light’ or ‘dark,’ and I don’t like mincing words. I thrive in specificity. If I said something a weird way I most likely spent six hours making sure it was perfect. Again, this isn’t to say that his lyrics are bad or that they don’t resonate with me. They do. I just have a little more whimsical in my step.

What plans do you have for 2021? Should we expect more collaborations with well-known bands?

At this point, I am working on my film career. I feel that music and film accomplish a lot of the same goals, however there is a difference between the two that allows them to stand alone. I’m a very visual person and no matter how much I fucking love albums like The Doors ‘An American Prayer’ and Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ I would much rather listen to them than watch them. Plus, they are built primarily to be experienced through the ears and the mind. Concerts are a different story. I would absolutely love to see them live. I don’t know. Movies have a special place in my heart. They were the only reason I survived my childhood, that and sugar, and so I have a particularly soft heart for them. Maybe it’s my way of paying it back. I don’t know yet. All I know is that I have always been a writer and have always been good at depicting things that can’t be seen. Film seems to be the best way for me to continue to do that on any meaningful level. I like working with symbols and that kind of work is overall much more difficult in music. It’s a lot to ask your audience to see something you can’t show them. After all, words only so far as to accurately depict an experience or an idea. Besides I have already had a decade long career in music. I’ve self-released an EP, guest-starred on a major album release with Amends, and have written an absurd amount of concert music and music for film. All of which, is available through any number of streaming platforms.

In the context of the pandemic, do you have any message for your fans and people who are going to read this interview?

Take this time to look into yourself. If I have learned anything during this pandemic it is that life is what you make it. Perspective is nothing more than the value-judgements made on data that enters into our brains at such massive speeds and quantities that we literally cannot comprehend it second to second. Not only do you have to choose your battles, but you also have to choose your perspective. Life all around you from mammals to cells to the fundamental forces of the universe are in constant flux, ever-changing, whether you want them to be or not, whether you are aware of it or not. There is no such thing as ‘normal.’ Normal is no more real than the things we call the past, future, now, or then. Normal is a prediction and all predictions are rooted in the reality that they could be false because predictions are not hard facts. Make peace with the ever-changing now. Take this time to breathe, and think, and love. Things may never go back to the ‘way they were.’ And that’s just fine. Thank you for taking the time to be still with me today.

We would like to thank Jaime for this amazing interview and to wish him all the best in the future!

Interview by Radu Mihai