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But here’s the kicker: she hasn’t even released her own album. “I’m happy to say ‘I’m finished!’” JES exclaims of her forthcoming solo release. “You have to let it go and move on. You have to let it live, and see what people think of it.” If the reaction to Disconnect (US release date: August 7) is anything like the response to her previous noteworthy collaborations, then dance fans will give the album an enthusiastic thumbs up. Indeed, even with her solo debut a month away, JES has already garnered herself an adoring fan base through her work with other artists: Gabriel & Dresden, D:Fuse, Deepsky and more. In each match-up, JES’ provided the breathy, emotive vocals that turned complex, electronic productions into trance-pop hits. Her humanness has warmed a genre known for coldness, and her collaborations have made for some of the most memorable dance songs of recent memory. “I love collaborations,” she says. “I love working with everybody I’ve worked with. I’ve learned so much. Everyone works differently, and everyone has something different to say. I’m not the kind of person who says, ‘I have to do this all by myself!’” But for Disconnect, JES did just that. The album is a seamless blend of fourteen killer tracks. It synthesizes the artists’ complementary loves of rock music and rave music, and melds introspective songwriting with unabashed club-floor anthems. And JES couldn’t be more excited about the world finally getting to hear it: “I always envision singing to large crowds,” she explains of her writing and recording process. “And I always feel, even though I’m singing to a computer or a CD at times, that I’m singing with a band. I made this album and its songs so that when I perform them they’re a little more edgy, rock-oriented, with guitars and quirky beats. But it’s still dance!”
Though she was always writing songs on her guitar or piano, it wasn’t until JES moved to Los Angeles that she started to make sound waves with a rock band of her own. Next, she joined the rave project Guardians of the Earth: “I was working in a studio, and I got into dance music because one of the guys who worked there was really into the rave scene. We used to go out a lot. We did a track called ‘Star Children,’ which was really underground during the mp3.com days.” At that point, success came as a domino effect with major DJs and producers slowly discovering JES’ talent. First, she got a call from D:Fuse. “We did a couple of songs together,” she says. “I was doing some shows with him, and one night Dave Dresden was there.” As one half of the production team Gabriel & Dresden, Dave was a good person to know. “He’s a really funny and wonderful character,” JES says. “We had a lot of things in common, hung out that weekend, and the next weekend I wound up in San Francisco with him and Josh [Gabriel]. We began to write songs that weekend!” It was a productive workshop, and it led to the breakthrough smash that catapulted all of their careers: “As the Rush Comes,” released under the moniker Motorcycle. The song dominated dance charts around the globe throughout 2004, though it never resulted in a full-length album from the trio. “Believe me, there was nothing that I wanted more than a Motorcycle album,” JES admits. “I worked so hard and put so many years into it, touring on it and believing in it. But the success took us by surprise, and the pressure of writing the right next song with your record company saying, ‘do something exactly like it!’ We’re all very artistic and stubborn people and we want something to be really great. We definitely had a wonderful chemistry together, but you definitely need a pillar, somebody who brings you together and keeps you together through the mayhem of success. I don’t think that we necessarily had that. We all have been doing our own things.” For JES, that meant additional collaborations with Deepsky, Solarstone and her current touring partner, Tiesto. But it also allowed her the opportunity to finallyfocus on her solo work, prepare for a worldwide tour, and – at long last - Disconnect from the stress around her. “It’s not a negative thing,” JES says of the album title’s origins. “When you disconnect from yourself you can welcome things into your life. It’s also about disconnecting from where I came from and going somewhere else… the music business is a very hard world. You get so much joy from it, but it’s also very complicated. If you’re a sensitive person it can be hard. You have to have leather skin and let things roll off your back in order to be creative and take on being an artist… I found myself saying, ‘Okay, JES… disconnect!’”
Diva Divo • copyright 2007 • kurtmalecdesigns.com  |
It’s been only three years since JES first came to the attention of dance fans with 2004’s mammoth hit “As the Rush Comes.” Since then, she’s unleashed enough club singles to fill a Greatest Hits package. Pretty impressive.
It certainly is, and it’s also the culmination of years of hard work in the music industry. Born and raised in New York City, JES always knew that music – in some form or another – was her calling. “My mom was an actress, a painter and an artist,” she says. “She played guitar and she taught us a lot of songs as kids. She did musicals so I was always in the theatre with her for rehearsals and stuff. It [music] was always in the air.”
