William Jacobs

Ah, May. After a few years of education it's all too easy to write it off as a month defined by stress: from primary school exams to GCSEs to A-levels to the place I find myself now: the dreaded dissertation.

And what a disservice that is to a beautiful month! Take away those pressures and you're greeted with a lovely optimism. The days are getting ever-longer, the sun is increasingly out (insert UK weather joke here), and everything and everyone just seems to be brightening up day by day. The best part, though, is that the whole of summer still lies ahead. Like, you know how Sundays are slightly depressing because they indicate that the weekend is almost over? In that sense, May feels like a Friday. Oh, the impending possibilities!

Plus, for me at least, the educational connotations are likely to be in the rear-view from this year onward. Yes, as indicated, this month marked the completion of my dissertation.

In most cases I'd forgive you for assuming that the end of my dissertation doesn't really affect you in any way. Indeed, you're probably still right in this case. However, because I go to a Fun University™, my dissertation has not merely taken the form of a big essay, but as a whole new album! That's right - while my second album took 3 or 4 years to complete, my third has seemingly just materialised in a matter of a few months. It's pretty different, and this time there's much more of a conceptual angle to the whole thing - watch this space for more information on that as time goes on.

Enough on that, though. Let's resist the temptation to spend the whole of May gazing ahead, and let's instead take a look at what's been going on in Will World during the first half of 2023.

Avid followers of this blog (lol) will remember the release of Robin Torbitt's Journey Songs Pt.2 back in January. I had the pleasure of recording and producing the project, immortalising Robin's earnest folk tunes with a transparent, naturalistic approach. If you haven't heard these two EPs yet, you'd be doing yourself a great favour to go and immerse yourself in their world immediately, if not sooner.

February and March then saw the rollout of some new music from yours truly! I was finally able to release my musical contribution to last year's wonderful Making Moves project performed at York Theatre Royal, and so out came my latest EP, 1510. It's a dense and eclectic project, blending the intricate textures of Mazes with the more urgent, action-oriented moods explored in some of my soundtrack work. Lead single Chop bashes an insistent piano up against swirling post-punk guitar psychedelia, while Isolator features what will hopefully be the only synth solo to ever make it onto one of my releases.

The end of April was highlighted by the long-awaited album release from fellow York students and all-round good boys Astrology for Men. While I can't take credit for this album's surreal lyrics nor its many crushing instrumental breakdowns, I can at least rest easy knowing that I played bass guitar on its opener, and performed some world-ending synth acrobatics right at the very end. I also contributed a fairly prominent spoken word passage to the project, but unfortunately you'll have to listen to the whole thing in order to find out where.

The very last thing I'd like to highlight is a series of ongoing collaborations with the eclectic pop mega-project, The Confederation. Every track from this group lives a life of its own, and utterly rejects genre conventions - don't be surprised to find head-banging hard-rock rubbing shoulders with glittery disco as you browse their discography. I've been lucky enough to produce three of their tracks so far, two of which are currently out in the world right now! Glimpse is a silky-smooth slice of nocturnal dance-pop recalling Madonna's glory days, while Gasoline is quite simply a rager, featuring none other than Aerosmith collaborator (no, really) Paul Santo on guitar. I'd highly suggest you go and check these out; it's some of my favourite production work I've done so far. (Plus, the upcoming third track is arguably the weirdest and wonderful-est of them all!)

I'll leave you with that overlong summary to assure you that I have indeed been keeping busy this year. But remember - it's still only May! The best of the year lies ahead…

Will x

The journey continues!

Following last year's thoughtful and quite simply stunning debut EP, folk singer-songwriter Robin Torbitt has returned with another batch of four tracks - and once again, I've been lucky enough to record, mix and master the whole thing.

Journey Songs Pt. 2 is just as authentic and naturalistic a recording as its predecessor: these songs are excellent at their core and simply do not need an array of studio tricks to sound great. It's a man, a guitar, and the truth ( - and three Neumann microphones).

But what a beautiful truth it is! These songs are at times, dark, intricate, even knotty - but nonetheless open up into moments of sublime, anthemic wonder. Set Me Free is a beaten-but-hopeful introduction, while Opaque somehow manages to make its bitter, betrayed subject matter sound like a comfort. Waiting is perhaps the project at its tensest, while How Strange It Is points a sharp, focused lens at humanity - before zooming out to reveal a bird's-eye view of the very odd world in which we live.

This EP is definitely worth your time, and Torbitt only has more excellent material on the way. On my part, I can only hope to be involved again in future!

It seems like, when it comes to easily-procrastinated tasks, I'm often motivated by arbitrary dates. I've been doing it for years: it's the reason that I released Mazes on my 20th birthday, and a few years before that it was the reason that I released Ozone on April 19th, just in the nick of time so that I'd be able to say I released the EP aged 16. During my school years, I would always schedule my single releases to coincide with the final day of term. Seemingly, there's nothing quite like a satisfying date to drive me to accomplish tasks that would otherwise sit neglected. 

With that in mind, I now find myself right at the end of 2022, with a website (that I'm paying for, mind) floating here dormant, un-"launched", and seemingly destined to be perpetually almost-finished. Any self-respecting musician needs a website, let alone one who is looking longingly towards the freelance world! And what better day to launch it than right at the open door of a new year? 

Similarly, every site needs a "news" section (at least as far as my website-building service seems to think), but how am I supposed to summon news on just any old day? It's simply not possible. Luckily, though, we find ourselves at the end of an old year and at the start of a new one - a strange transitional period that seems to bring with it a ripe harvest of deeply exciting news.

Let's first have a quick look back at what happened during 2022. The big one was the release of my second full-length album, Mazes, coming almost 5 years after my first. The restless lead single Scatter and plaintive deep cut Days managed to catch a little traction on Spotify, while the ever-shifting title track found its way onto BBC Introducing. The album as a whole represented my first LP-length dive into electronica, completing a shift into a sound that I've been courting since 2018's minimalist one-off Event Horizon. There's a whole lot more than just synths and drum samples here, though - the years between Mazes and my previous album, The Calm, saw me getting into sampling, tape, guitars and all kinds of sonic trickery, all of which have found their way onto my second album and made it something of a dense, ambitious effort. I'm overall extremely happy with the project, and am even more happy to see these songs (some of which predate The Calm) enjoying the light of day.

I should note that I finally found the time this year to get all of my music over onto Bandcamp, which means that this album - and everything else of mine - is finally out there on the single most supportive website for musicians. It's worth checking out for a couple of reasons: first, I have added completely exclusive bonus tracks to three of my older releases; and second, Bandcamp allows custom descriptions of each track - a feature which I have beaten the life out of, writing unique descriptions for every song I've released thus far. Some are sincere, some are informative, most are just a little bit silly. I had fun writing all of them, though!

Over the summer of 2022 I was lucky enough to be commissioned by York Dance Space for their "Making Moves" show, creating 20 minutes of music to accompany performances by dancers from a variety of ages and backgrounds. I was extremely pleased with the result (special thanks to Young Thugs for offering a studio day towards the project), and it was beautiful and surreal to see the tracks reframed by the dancers' interpretations during the final performance at York Theatre Royal.

2022 was a particularly exciting year for production work, too: for the first time I was able to record, produce and master two full EPs for other artists. First came Robin Torbitt's Journey Songs Pt.1 in July: a grounded, wise and humbly stunning folk project. In the vein of something like Nick Drake's legendary 1972 album Pink Moon, there is little in the way of production trickery here: just minimalist, naturalistic recordings that leave no obstacles between the listener and the pristine songwriting. It was a great learning experience to work on this project, and an honour to help realise the vision of a great talent like Robin.

The very next month saw something very different from Adam Clayton: my first ever work on a full-blown pop project with Anchor. This sprawling confessional takes notes from every pop influence under the neon sun: ambient techno-tinged I Don't Take Chemistry rubs shoulders with the nostalgic, heart-pouring title track before the project slips into a psychedelic haze with For Real, and then Drives off into the sunset. What a varied and exciting project to work on, and what an absolute pleasure Adam was to work with!

I even found time elsewhere in the year to release two vocal cover songs, both of which were totally indebted to the performances of singer supreme Roseanna Schmidt. Originally university projects, these provided great opportunities to experiment in the studio: for instance, recording the vocals for On Melancholy Hill entirely over a phone call.

There was even a little session work to keep things varied: I found myself lending some bass guitar to York-based rap-rock-metal-fusion sensation Astrology for Men, and their seething anti-LED protest anthem Diode. I also simply couldn't resist the opportunity to contribute some apocalyptic synths to Vaquelin's unique take on Stromae's modern classic, Alors on Danse.

A very busy year indeed, then - I started writing that recap an hour ago thinking it would only occupy a few lines, and here I am now with a considerably swollen ego and considerably less time remaining upon this earth. Which leads gracelessly into the big question:

What is next? What is planned for 2023?

And the answer is, honestly: a lot more than I thought there would be!

First off, the extreme kindness of York Dance Space means that I'm able to give the Making Moves soundtrack a proper release, and the logistics of making that a reality are almost all in place. I've got some particularly exciting plans for the release of these tracks, so definitely stay tuned for those to hit streaming services early on in 2023. What does the music itself sound like? Imagine a slightly more gestural and cinematic version of Mazes, add one or two comically exaggerated synth solos, and you won't be far off!

Second, did you notice the "Pt. 1" when talking about Robin Torbitt's folk project? Well - and not to spoil any announcements from the man himself - there are indeed other parts, and they will be seeing the light of day very soon indeed.

Finally - and this is by no means a promise - let's just say that I have been making exceptional progress on new original music. I've been trying to make it a bit more direct and hardware-focussed this time, which has produced some really interesting new results. I've been very tempted to experiment with something like a mini-album, and if everything keeps progressing the way it has been, then it's very possible that the wait between Mazes and Album Three will be much shorter than the wait that came before!

2023 will also be the year that I (hopefully!) graduate from the University of York's Music and Sound Recording course. Which also happens to mean that I'll likely be spending at least half of the year being particularly interested in potential freelance projects. So, if you are thinking that you might need some composition or production services next year... why not get in touch? Who knows, maybe our work will appear in a recap this time next year!

Thanks very much for reading - and of course, have a very Happy New Year.

Will :)