_SAM is a six-track record by JacksorJacksor.
It is the culmination of a year of songwriting, recording and producing.

About

Work began on _SAM on 1st January 2024 as a New Year's resolution and it was released on 31st December 2024 - New Year's Eve.

The original idea for this release was a Song A Month project, where I'd write, record and release a song each month. I wanted to dedicate focussed effort on improving my recording and production skills, so each month could serve as a snapshot of progress, the most honest artistic diary I could keep.

January, February and March all went to plan, but when I got to April, things fell apart a little. I'd written my song for that month but I just couldn't find the time or space to record it properly. I ended up taking a short break from recording, which became a long break, which became considerably longer than I'd planned. I essentially fell into an artistic paralysis over the recording of this one song.

In November, with the end of the year in sight, I took a week off work and focused on re-recording April's song, alongside recording two other songs I'd written since then.

Unintentionally splitting the creative year has resulted in _SAM being something of a two-act release. Personally, I found some odd symmetries between the two halves, so reordered the track list away from being directly chronological to compliment the overall musical shape shape, built around the abstract pairings of tracks 1-6, 2-5 and 3-4.

It makes me happy to think of them like that anyway.

Tracks

• 01 Peacock Vow
• 02 Scuttle
• 03 Colour Me In
• 04 Wine-dark
• 05 Backbone
• 06 Boundless

01 Peacock Vow

Written in January | Recorded in January

• Peacock Vow started off as a Monday Music Making track that I wrote on 1st January 2024. Monday Music Making is a weekly project where I take about an hour to write and release something - it's essentially a living sketchbook. Here's the full YouTube playlist.
• My understanding of a Peacock Vow primarily comes from this article - "medieval knights had their own version of the New Year’s resolution". The article also finishes with one of my favourite sentiments: "In our culture of relentless self-perfection, we could use the reminder that sometimes graciousness beats out flawlessness." Thank you Katy Waldman.
• The song's lyrics are greatly inspired by the sentiments within Essentialism by Greg McKeown. For me, the book largely extolls the virtues of being immensely selective by where we put our time and efforts, championing the less in favour of the more. A simplistic reduction is "Do less, better", which is honestly how I tried to approach 2024.
• Musically I wanted to keep the harmony as simply as possible, keeping a low drone throughout and focusing on a handful of chords. Gradually I built up the instrumentation around the players of the JacksorJacksor live band, which roughly works out to be two flute parts, two Bb instrumental parts (in this case played on clarinets), keyboard and rhythm section.
• The line "Don't forget your feet when ascending" is based on basic advice for learning to climb. I spent a lot of 2023 going bouldering, and one of the first things I was taught was to focus on footwork - a strong foundation leads to a higher reach.
• The piano arpeggios use patterns based around those found in Chopin's Etude Op 10 No 1 in C major.
• The drum settings kept resetting every time I opened the project. Genuinely the most annoying part about working on this song and I still don't know why. Render your VSTs, folks.

Lyrics

Video

02 Scuttle

Written in February | Recorded in February

• Written about being trapped in negative behaviour loops leading to self-destructive habits.
• Musically somewhere between Gomez and Queens of the Stone Age.
• The guitar solo is dedicated to Benicio del Toro's feelings towards his character in The Usual Suspects.
• The percussion part takes inspiratino from Outkast's Elevators.
• The line "Time tabled layers, stacking up, crunching down" was inspired by the layout of Microsoft Outlook calendars.
• The distorted piano sound is an homage to listening to in-flight entertainment on a flight to the USA when I was a teenager and the audio - specifically Saint-Saëns's The Aquarium - was so raw and distorted and I loved it. I've always wanted to put that sound somewhere.
• For making the lyric video, Matthew Creed asked if he could film me for material. That was the first time I've ever been filmed for a video, including my first-time lip syncing. Strange, strange experience, which heralded beautiful results. Nice one, Matt.

Lyrics

Video

03 Colour Me In

Written in March | Recorded in March

• This song was initially inspired by Seasonal Affective Disorder and was very much representing "how I'm feeling right now".
• The line “The dark bleaches colour from my mind” is a reference to Spike Milligan's poem My Daughter Of 5 - Jane (which is in his "Hidden Words" collection). The poem talks about the poet's daughter “colouring his tired mind” whereas this song is about the darkness stealing that colour. Having read that poem I have tried to be more aware of the colours of my own emotions, and what things might be dulling them, or helping them to shine.
• I made a YouTube video going through the Reaper DAW session where I made this song.
• The majority of the piano parts are recorded at double speed, then played back at normal speed. This means the audio is played back down an octave, but with a more drawn out, deeper texture than just pitch shifting.
• The piano trills section around the midpoint is a little nod to Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé.
• This song almost uses all 12 major chords - annoyingly I realised the G major chord is G/E, which is really closer to Em7, but I still like to think all 12 are in there. The closing "Colour Me In" section was built around the chords I hadn't used in the song yet - I specifically wrote out all 12 chords and crossed off the ones I had used, then only used the ones that were left over. Damn you, Em7 (shakes fist at chord).
• The ending ascending organ pattern uses some fun voice leading to keep the chord going up for ever. Real musical joy to work out I could do that.

Lyrics

Video

04 Wine-dark

Written in June | Recorded in November

• "Wine-dark" is a term, used in contexts such as the "Wine-dark sea", and associated with how to representation the colour "blue" by authors such as Homer in the Odyssey ("And what if one of the gods does wreck me out on the wine-dark sea?"), before there was a defined term to describe what "blue" looks like.
• To me, this song is about having time stolen by someone, acknowledging that you'll never get that back, and that you need to move on. There's also an acknowledgement that your feelings are valid, no matter how rational they may be - as Kae Tempest says in Hold Your Own, "When all there is is knowing that you feel what you are feeling".
• I wrote this song when I was ill with COVID (my first time!). Maybe a sense of being frustrated, being sick and tired of being sick and tired, crept in.
• Our last show of 2024 was at St John's Church, Canton, Cardiff on November 16th, and I realised this was the one song I'd written but hadn't performed with the band. This specific show featured a reduced JacksorJacksor line-up of me, Vicky Guise on flute and Tania Drewitt-Jones on 'cello, so I wrote the arrangement for those players, and with that performance in mind. Vicky and Tania are utterly incredible and so when it came to recording the song they had to be on it.
• The song also features a recording of the sea, recorded at Penarth seafront. As a member of Dawnstalkers I have developed a strong connection to swimming in that water, and it felt correct to include the sea as a featured artist.
• The flute part involves lots of grace notes with lots of fifths. This was an active decision to create a less harmonically defined part, aiming for more of a primitive feel. Given the sound world and imagery, Vicky said that she found herself thinking of works by Takamitsu as a tonal reference.
• The 'cello part was partly inspired by the opening of Benjamin Britten'sA Midsummer Night's Dream A Midsummer Night's Dream. Tania and I have a shared love of Britten, so I'll leap at any opportunity I can to give them little Britten references.
• The closing guitar part uses a double bass bow to bow the chords, put through my pedal board. I relearned to use my bow when playing electric double bass for Freyja Elsy's live band, and it's been a joy to start using the bow in other contexts. Thank you Mel Smith for giving me a quick double bass bow hold refresher lesson!
• The lead vocals were recorded at Musicbox Studios, Cardiff. Despite having all the equipment at home, I really wanted to dedicate focused time to the vocals, to record in a separate space to everything else. All the lead and backing vocals for Wine-dark, Backbone and Boundless were recorded in a three-hour session at Musicbox Studios, aiming to create a sense of scarcity and dedication that recording or filming to tape does. Whatever came out of that session would be the material I had to use. No round two. I took a lot from this experience and would strongly recommend it in future.
• This is the only song on _SAM which stays in the same time signature throughout.

Lyrics

Video

05 Backbone

Written in May | Recorded in November

• This song is largely based around the current climate crisis, and is somewhat indebted to ANOHNI's 4 Degrees.
• The song directly references the likes of activists such as Wynn Alan Bruce who have literally sacrificed themselves for what they believe.
• The line "As expected the world fell apart" is a direct quote from Takahiro Takayama, the Lead Physics Programmer on The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom , from the dev team's talk at GDC 2025. I find the parallels between how we create entirely new worlds with how we treat out current one to be fascinating.
• The guitar part was originally written as an homage to The Smile's Thin Thing.
• For the choruses I wanted to create a strangely artificial joy, somewhere between Porter Robinson and the NieR: Automata OST.
• The chopped vocals naturally evolved from the glitchy feel of the choruses, and then made their way throughout much of the song.
• All the flutes, clarinets and piano are sequenced digitally (i.e. not actual players) to reinforce the artificial nature of the song. The arrangement also references my earlier song Zephyr, which was a fully instrumental piece. This song helped me to bridge the gap between that world and my current production.
• The song ends by being crumbled into the bin musically. I am so proud of doing this as it feels like something I would have wanted to do when I was much younger but wouldn't have know how to do. It's honestly a gift to past me if nothing else. This section is also an homage to Severini's Mare = Ballerina, where the paint literally escapes the canvas. It's also more literally about, you know, things falling apart.

Lyrics

Video

06 Boundless

Written in April | Recorded in November

• This song. It took many, many attempts to get this song recorded and feeling right and was the creative blocker for most of my year. It feels so good to have finally released it.
• This song started off as Monday Music Making sketch. The narration I made for the sketch talks about using mistakes, accepting what has been, and moving forward with that - building the blemishes into the work, a lesson my good friend Ceri taught me, and one that informed a lot of the lyrics in the final song. Diolch Ceri, rwyt ti’n anhygoel.
• This recording features Vicky Guise on flute and Tania Drewitt-Jones on 'cello, who are both part of the live JacksorJacksor band. This also features Annie Perry on clarinet. I've worked with Annie for years (including this cover of The Gentle Good's The Fisherman ) and was DELIGHTED that they were available for this recording.
• I ended up rewriting the second half of the 'cello's pizz section during the recording session. It was a joy to just be able to rewrite the part (on manuscript paper) and just hand it to the performer (Tania!) to sightread perfectly and use that. That truly was a fun and special moment for me.
• There's a short section of just flutes and clarinets, specifically after the line "Oh to stop for a moment, just for a moment, please". This section was inspired by Hayao Miyazaki discussing the idea of "Ma" - "a necessary stillness inserted within the action" - and how it is used in his films, such as Spirited Away.
• The key rhythms move between fours and threes (semiquavers and triplets) and transitions between staccato and legato. To me these have came to represent internal conflicts and mixed messaging within the narrative. As the song goes on, these transitions stabilise somewhat, which I'd like to think reflect a resolution of sorts (oh, and shout-outs to Ethel Merman's Something For The Boys).
• The chorus rhythm was based on a misremembering of Radiohead's Pulk / Pull Revolving Doors - specifically in Pulk / Pull (True Love Waits Version) . I have a love of going off what I remember instead of going back to actually check what was really the case (i.e. my memory had transformed the song into something new), which I found Thomas Ades did with his arrangement of Madness's Cardiac Arrest. That approach also compliments my reading of this Maya Angelou quote: "People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel".
• Much of the song is about recognising and accepting the different parts of one's self. I was introduced to this notion in counselling, specifically referencing Jung's ideas around Shadow. This is also a concept at the narrative heart of the game Celeste, a game I recommend with my whole heart.

Lyrics

Video

Credits

_SAM was written, recorded and produced by Richard Jackson

Lead vocals recorded at Musicbox Studios, Cardiff
Everything else recorded at Rich's flat, Cardiff

All instruments played or sequenced by Richard Jackson except:
Flute: Vicky Guise (Wine-dark, Boundless)
Cello: Tania Drewitt-Jones (Wine-dark, Boundless)
Clarinet: Annie Perry (Boundless)
Foley for Wine-dark recorded at Penarth Seafront

Artwork by Tom Kitchen

About this site

I put this page together as a communication exercise, to find a way to share my thoughts about my work on my own platform, outside of the confines of social media tropes and formats. I honestly just had a lot of things I wanted to share about the record! It should go without saying that what's here is in no way exhaustive, and that these are more starting points than a full picture.

I also want to work more to cultivate my own digital space in a similar way, giving extra context to the music I release in the format I feel is most appropriate for the media. I increasingly feel that artists need to have more agency and control over their pocket of the internet, so this is me starting to explore what that feels like in 2024.

This site was written as one page of HTML, one page of CSS, and uses a bit of Bootstrap 5, uploaded to a server using Filezilla. I got myself stuck overthinking tech stacks, so this version at least is just the most basic site I could possibly make. Eventually I'll refactor into into Umbraco with Astro (which, for reference, I co-wrote the documentation on), but that's not for right now - I just wanted to make something, and that is this.

Done is better than perfect - I promise you.