Jack Jamison, the mind behind Relativity Lounge, is a visionary producer based out of Chicago with a proclivity for creating adventurous musical concoctions. Plunging into the Relativity Lounge discography is akin to plunging into a vast expanse of creativity and euphonious low end vibrations. Time seems to slow while gravity stretches and contracts as one digs deeper and deeper into his oeuvre.

Released throughout late 2020, the Paroxysm and Omission EP’s flaunt the range of the Relativity Lounge project. Unsurprisingly, his music has been featured through a range of platforms and labels, some of which include Oddio.Files, Good Morning Collective, Black Moon Syndicate, and Lysergia Collective. In just a week from today, Relativity Lounge is set to make his debut on the highly coveted stage at The Black Box in Denver on July 2, and will be pairing up with Fowl Play, Danny Grooves, and pheel. for what will undoubtedly be an indescribable night of lusid and kaleidoscopic sound.

In order to get better acquainted with the Relativity Lounge project, Jack agreed to sit down with The Rust and discuss his boundless respect for music, the culture he is helping to create, and the reasons behind his creative drive.

Alyssa Barnhill: Where are you from originally?

Jack Jamison: I am a Chicago suburbs kid [primarily]. I was born in Chandler, AZ but I lived in New York for a brief spell.

Alyssa: How do you like Chicago?

Jack: Chicago is definitely a huge source of inspiration for me that I deliberately draw from and incorporate into my music. Living here and being able to walk, paddleboard, or take bike rides through one of the best cities in the world isn't something I take for granted.

Alyssa: I saw you’re throwing some pretty cool shows around Chi- town.

Jack: Yeah, I've recently acquired a small PA bluetooth speaker to begin throwing DIY parties around the city in different parks, boulevards, skateparks, and on the lakefront. There are so many amazing neighborhoods and so much cool art happening outside of [our scene].

Alyssa: That sounds incredible. Does that keep you sharp?

Jack: Oh yes, these kinds of shows help to keep me refreshed and consistently draw inspiration from a wide array of cultures. I'm excited to see our scene continue to grow and flourish in this city as well as experience the artistic talent bubbling up throughout every nook and cranny of this town.

Alyssa: So, when did you start making music?

Jack: I started making hip hop beats in 2016 on my own computer, after messing around on my friends' stuff and acoustically jamming for a few years before. I kept making these beats that were tough to rap over because there was too much going on. I was essentially just making electronic songs and copying my earlier influences of electronic music.

Alyssa: Who were your influences?

Jack: Man, The Chemical Brothers, Moby, Fatboy Slim, Groove Armada, Deadmau5 and so many more. I eventually dove deeper into the sonic palette of our scene after finding more shows in the Chicago area booking these ambitious underground acts. I continued to make music and go to these shows from 2016 to 2018 and they eventually shaped a lot of what I'm going for musically now.

Alyssa: What was that like? Like who did you see?

Jack: A lot of the shows included artists like Easyjack, Resonant alanguage, Kalya Scintilla, Whitebear, Bogtrotter, Dillard, Somatoast, Supertask, Alejo. All artists I really fell in love with from experiencing them live on a really proper sound system. I then met my buddy Nate Sweet, or as you may know him, BuckNasty from Black Moon Syndicate. We kicked it off at a Supertask show in July of 2018. We then headed directly to Infrasound that same year, camping and meeting the rest of the Black Moon crew. I joined them and started releasing music centered around this whole scene and experience.

Alyssa: That’s wild, I went to Infra in 2018 and also fell in love. When was your first show then?

Jack: My first show was with the Black Moon Syndicate crew in 2019 and we opened for Mt. Analogue in Kankakee, IL. Infrasound 2018 was a real eye opener. I was able to meet a good portion of the Black Moon Syndicate' crew. They’re my home collective/label who brought me into the group when I really wasn’t pushing any of my music out there, just uploading tunes to soundcloud to show my friends. I met my partner in crime Chris [Impasta] at Infrasound and we immediately kicked it off, bullshitting together, drinking rolling rocks, and cracking jokes on the hill at the main stage during the Emperor set.

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Alyssa: Love it, I think that festival is an incredible pooling of music.

Jack: Yeah! The last day I had an incredible time experiencing music. We all were geeking out about loosing our minds over the incredible sound system with my dear friend Sarah. Sadly she’s no longer with us, but I’ll cherish the memories of us trudging our belongings to the treehouse stage, plopping down, and continuing to obsess over the sounds these artists are pushing through the speakers and projecting on the stage. We shared some ice cream that was generously being handed out, and many laughs during the sunrise set Mike Wallis performed. We discussed how this weekend had filled us with inspiration and a drive to push past any arbitrary limits we were setting for ourselves due to anxieties and depressions many of us deal with. The community at this event was so warm and inviting to get people involved, and it’s incredibly refreshing when it’s so easy to get stuck in communities that don’t share these same values in your day to day life. We then promptly got back to shaking our asses and getting ignorant when it turned into a 8:30am KLO party. I do adore the contrast of conversations and thoughts that can happen within moments at these events, it’s just important to remember the positive impacts and ideas that were shared, and try not to get too lost in the sauce. Sarah was a great friend and incredibly genuine person and I'm happy that’s one of our many memories.

Alyssa: I totally agree. I fell in love with this scene at that festival too. What is your background in music? Did you go to school for it?

Jack: I studied music most of my life. I was fortunate enough that my parents got me piano lessons when I was around 5 and continued with those until I was 12 or so. I also joined the school band when I was in 5th grade.

Alyssa: What did you play?

Jack: I started on the clarinet, so I could ultimately move onto saxophone in middle school. I ended up on the baritone saxophone and then moved to the tuba by 7th grade. My high school band teacher noticed I was a big guy and could handle the tuba. He noticed I could hop around different instruments pretty easily and groomed me to be the school’s tuba player to fill out the low end. I proceeded to play tuba in the high school band all 4 years. I ended up being in marching band, the symphonic band, the works. I unintentionally became aware of how important the low end and bass are, and how it can be the driving force of many styles of music. I also have shittily plucked around on the guitar as well since I was 12.

Alyssa: Then what happened? How did you find yourself doing this?

Jack: Before I started making beats I would pretty much just jam with my friends on the guitar while we got drunk around bonfires or in dank dingy basements. I spent around 2 years after high school not really doing anything with music besides jamming with my friends and just being an all around degenerate. That was the biggest gap I'd taken from studying any type of music. In 2016 my friend Ryan and I purchased an Ableton 9 standard license. At that time, I had 2 m-audio bx8a studio monitors my dad had bought when he was trying to record some music at the end of his life. I acquired an interface and spent the next 3 years annoying my mom and sister with low frequencies and loud drum patterns. My mom was a true saint and wouldn’t complain or even seem to notice when I'd be shaking the house until 4-5am. I'm infinitely grateful that she provided me a space to learn and begin to gain an understanding for audio. I borrowed my friend's subwoofer for a year or 2 and that was a very rumbly time in my life…. but it helped me understand sub frequencies and let me begin focusing on that.

Alyssa: Wow, your mom and dad sound incredible. Thank you for sharing that with us. Where did you get the name Relativity Lounge?

Jack: My name was actually my dad’s old screen name and the name he would use when he would make a song. I’d originally called myself “Jakal” because that’s a nickname I had amongst my crew back in the day. But it never really felt right for what I was trying to represent with the project. My dad instilled a lust for new and interesting sounds in me the entire time I knew him. He helped me understand art is expansive and unrestrictive, to look for the weird shit and relish in it. He played me Dark Side of the Moon on vinyl when I was in 6th or 7th grade. He made me sit down and close my eyes and actively listen to the LP front to back. It changed the way I perceive albums and music as a whole. He would constantly be playing cuts from Tom Waits, his favorite musician. People like John Lee Hooker, Muddy waters, who actually lived in my hometown of Westmont, Illinois. Thelonious Monk, Moby, Fatboy Slim, The Beastie Boys, The Chemical Brothers, Groove Armada, John Coltrane, and countless others.

Alyssa: Wow, what a musically inclined man. I can see where you got your inspiration. I think the name fits very well.

Jack: Thank you, Relativity Lounge is me just up front. I’m all over the place when I listen to music. When I make music, when I play shows I go through a wide range of bpms and rhythms. It can be very messy and all over the place but it's who I am and what I enjoy.

Alyssa: Be true to that! I love that about your music. So tell me about your work with other musicans/producers.

Jack: My partner in crime in this edm game is my friend Chris, Impasta; we have a group together called Postal where we just try to make the most loud and obnoxious music possible. Our styles are very different, but our friendship helps us deal with each other to make some really cool stuff. We’re both some real quality scumbags who love drinking too much old style, smoking weed and making speakers. We try to do weird shit and whenever we can get the new Philadelphia resident Inspect3r in the room... It's game over. I love making and playing music with my buddy Collin [Mindtality]. We live very far away from each other, but I was able to spend some time in the studio with him back in April. We immediately started cranking out beats. Get stupid high and laughing at each other. My other friend Cephas [D3xtr] and I made some easy work of a few songs when he came and hung out at my apartment in Chicago for a few days earlier this year. Long story short, I have a lot of people I love working on beats with, it’s just tough to schedule time to work in the studio and remote collaboration. It can be very hit or miss. But I have some cool songs coming up with Fowl Play, Wessanders, pheel., Inspect3r, and Ikuma.

Alyssa: What does your music making process look like?

Jack: I generally begin the process by either making a drum beat or melodic idea that I will build sounds around and get into a solid groove. From that point I begin to start fleshing things out and dragging different elements around the timeline in my DAW [digital audio workstation]. I use Ableton and I find it’s been the easiest DAW for me to use and keep my strange workflow up. I generally try to get around 80-90% of the composition and mix-down done within the first 12 hours I start the track. I have a really hard time maintaining inspiration on most songs after that initial 12-24 hours of me starting it, due to my absolute joy of a brain that immediately will become a critic to the point of crippling the track. I still will work on the songs quite a bit after that initial 12-24 hour session, but it’s definitely focused on fine tuning and the engineering side of things. I like to keep the compositions fresh and not overworked.

Alyssa: Anyone you find inspiration from when creating?”

Jack: I take a great deal of inspiration from the beat scene on the west coast and the grind that cats like J Dilla, Madlib, Jonwayne, Daedalus, Knxwldge, and countless others have. Cranking out beats just for the love of cranking out beats. That’s what a goal of mine is to continue to do. Fire off beats for the pure love of it. I release about 10-20% of the beats I make, a large chunk end up strictly in my live sets, or sitting on my computer never to be opened again. Some beats I look at as a way to help me get through the day and enjoy life a bit which is all they need to be, and some are just plain awful. Keeping the consistent habit of beatmaking is something that’s saved my life. I wasn’t in a great place from 2012-2018. I was irresponsible, apathetic, depressed, anxious, self destructive, dependent, and just kind of a young shithead overall. I was using substances in extremely unhealthy ways and getting into lots of legal trouble. I put my family through hell, my friends, and myself. I’m no saint these days by any means, but the consistent outlet of self expression, and the amount of healing it’s provided me is unrivaled. I was lost before, bouncing around with no purpose or ambition besides working shit jobs and being a degenerate. I’m still a degenerate working shit jobs, hoping to get this thing off the ground in the next few years... I’m blown away that I have seen this much love already. I never expected to perform live or have anyone listen to me specifically. When I bought Ableton my main goal was to sell beats to rappers, but now here we are.

Alyssa: Yes, here we are.

Jack: A huge help to my workflow was building a computer in 2017 with my tax return. After working on a very mediocre old laptop the year or 2 prior, this upgrade allowed me to quickly be able to lay ideas upon ideas upon ideas down without hitting the computing threshold on my machine. I haven’t really upgraded any parts since then, and I’m generally good at keeping a clean machine, so it’s kept me cranking out beats and still performs great. I built it for around ~$800. If you’re working on a mediocre laptop, and wanted to build one today you could easily make something extremely capable for music production fairly cheap.

Alyssa: Wow, I had no idea. This whole interview has been incredible.

Jack: Thank you, I mean dedicating my life to something I'm passionate about has saved my life.

Alyssa: Thank you for sharing that with us. If we could all just see it that way, I think the world would be a much more beautiful place. But before you go, I do want to ask about your trip to Morocco.

Jack: It was an amazing experience, we got in around June 18th and were some of the only tourists in the entire country. We had an experience not many would have with Medina’s that aren’t filled to the brim with people, empty hostels, easy to eat at good cheap restaurants. Soaking in the culture over there was something that helped broaden my perspective on the world and gain a greater understanding of what I'd like to do with my life.

If a relativity lounge was a legitimate physical place, it would surely have couches of velvet, cold refreshing beverages, and constant stream of mind altering music. Signed with SwampWoofer Productions currently, Jack has clear goals and clearer intentions; to be a part of and encourage growth in the blossoming electronic music community while also collaborating with other like minded musical minds.

Be sure to check his latest EP, Feral, soon to be available across all major streaming platforms.

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