Photo by Em Moss.
Reeling off the energy of my debut album release and a brand new sci-fi for Audio Flux.
Doing more DJ sets around Brooklyn.
Getting my first set of box braids.
Highlighting every page of bell hooks’ Rock My Soul.
Behind the scenes of the press shoot for As A…
Preparing for the album release of As A…
Reading Rock My Soul, Kids These Days, Saving Time, and Detransition, Baby (for the second time)
Writing a sci-fi about transhumanism and the connected self
running again, with a goal of a 12 minute mile by June 1st
reading Kids These Days, Saving Time, and Detransition, Baby (for the second time)
revisiting a love for leeks
locking in the production elements for my debut record
fear of what’s to come, JT Green, 2023
Building some new drum sounds and trying to improve my mixing skills.
Watching the latest season of Married at First Sight.
Writing new additions and continued edits to SHADOWBOXER.
Re-learning manual photography.
Mixing and mastering my latest single
Preparing for the last performance of SHADOWBOXER in Richmond, Virginia for RESONATE FEST
Getting really into food plating
Giving a guest lecture at Parsons
Learning how to DJ
Making progress on an yearslong audio fiction project
Spending time at The Dream House
What does Metro Boomin and a sound healer have in common? Muxture.
Muxture [muhks-chr] is a portmanteau of MUX –– the script abbreviation of music —– and structure. It’s what I consider the scaffolding that music and sound can provide, and the structure that a story can live within. Where someone delivering information in real life can rely on things such as body language to determine tone, in audio works, where sound is (arguably) the only sense actively engaged, muxture provides the body language.
The folks over at Transom invited me to write a manifesto where I coined this term and explored how radio makers can implement it in their own work. Through breaking down one of my favorite YouTube videos of Metro Boomin and Young Thug, speaking to both a sound healer about their practice and a DJ who's wordless mixes move bodies like I've never seen, this essay was a thrill to report and write.
Take a read and let me know what you think. In the essay, I built an accompanied sound work that you can hit play and listen to as you read. I also curated a seven-track playlist that demonstrates muxture in musical forms. You can listen to that on Apple Music and Spotify.
Back in 2012, I left a career of visual design and web development to take a chance on the Pre-Serial world of audio storytelling. I was a couple years out of school, and doing what people that went to school for art did (hopped from residency to residency, balanced a day job at a media organization, and tried to get placement in galleries). When I was in my studio, or driving the two hour round trip to my day job, I listened to a lot of independent podcasts (shout out to The Black Guy Who Tips), and dreamt of finding a way to make a living through my interest in music and sound.
Thanks to my partner’s health insurance, I put in my notice, and went all in on a dream.
I used my design skills to build websites and identity systems for clients that funded my first collection of audio equipment. I learned the craft from YouTube and trading favors with new friends at WBEZ. Myself, and other friends, were pissed that the doors were being closed for people like us, so we built an audio collective and piloting program for BIPOC creators. Educators in Chicago took notice, and tapped me to create a brand new, graduate-level curriculum for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Cities outside of Chicago took notice, and an email in my spam folder led to being moved out to New York to launch a few shows, and tell a ton of stories for a variety of companies, stations, and organizations. I didn’t know the “right way” of telling audio stories, and I’m better for it.
Sometimes, I look at myself in the mirror, and I imagine that person in 2012 looking past the windshield, driving home from work and watching the sunset crest over I-55, longing for more.
Since 2012, I’ve seen the industry change. Hobbyists have been replaced by six-figure RFPs. My parents know what I do now.
A lot of organizations see dollar signs, and its reflective in their practices. So many living fossils, depleting themselves for bottomless bottom lines. I was one of them. For every award, was another blood pressure cuff.
Plenty of digital ink in group chats and Slacks have been spilled among friends, struggling to figure out if there’s a better way to build something that doesn’t scale––a place that not only respects their collaborators, but at the end of the day, just wants to make art for people willing to pay for it.
So, in September of 2021, I took another leap.
Welcome to Molten Heart, a creative studio featuring an ensemble cast of artists––taking a medium-agnostic, conceptual art approach to projects.
The phrase “molten heart” popped up in a group chat with three dear friends. I can’t remember the origin, but the image the phrase evoked became the name of our group chat, and later, the name of my first record. Looking back, I must have connected with the phrase, because of a recent heart surgery. A small ember molting faulty hardware. Thankfully, no one else in the State of New York had a similar connection, and I still knew how to use Adobe Illustrator (the logo is both a Tiger’s Eye that I keep on my desk, and a symbol in honor of my best friend who passed away suddenly).
So, about the clause “ensemble cast of artists.” On paper, Molten Heart is me, James. But, of course, some projects are beyond my abilities. I only have six-to-eight hours a day to dedicate a focused amount of work, and collaboration is in my blood. Being an artist for nearly fifteen years, you tend to meet and work with a lot of creative people across a variety of skillsets. For example, our first project is set to be released in early 2022 and features a team of five artists. We’re working hard to build something that’s going to push the needle of audio storytelling forward.
As a model, I’m really inspired by Hanna Thomas Uose’s “Mission, Vision, Values, Metaphor.” With that in mind, Molten Heart will move at a tortoise’s pace (by design). There’s no startup capital, no funders, just me at my desk, sitting by the window gazing at helicopters that continually funnel back and forth every thirty-five minutes.
What does Molten Heart provide? I call it “conceptual storytelling.” What does that mean? It’s an extension of my art practice, so whatever it is that I’ve done there is free game under the umbrella of Molten Heart. So that means: short and long form audio stories and series development, sound design and audio mixing/mastering, musical composition, artistic commissions, sonic and visual branding, longform essays and literature, and anything under the umbrella of education and mentorship.
So now that you’ve gotten this far, I’m open to hearing your proposals, pitches, and possiblities.
Until the first project launches on Molten Heart, take a listen to a launch playlist I created on Apple Music or Spotify. It gives you an idea of our aesthetic, ear, and vibe. Imagine a world of abundance, built with collaboration, not extraction.
Say hi, xoxo: wearemolten.com.
Rows of AirPods bob in a straight line
Bluetooth enabled formicidae
Carbon-copy, head-to-toe, three-quarter zip fleece in 80 degree heat
Adults on a group field trip
Yet seeing their satisfaction, living in the slipstream, comfortable chaos
Made me crave a Harvest Bowl*
* Roasted chicken, roasted sweet potatoes, apples, goat cheese, roasted almonds, warm wild rice, shredded kale, balsamic vinaigrette 685 CALORIES // 36G PROTEIN // 59G CARBS // 31G FAT
Now listen to this playlist, either on Apple Music or Spotify.
I made you a playlist. It’s on Apple Music and Spotify.
Over the last couple of years, I've been given the opportunity to visit many classrooms and answer many emails. Mainly, these opportunities revolve around giving advice. We're consistently changing as humans with our lived experiences and influences, so advice is an interesting concept, because the minute it's given, it's immediately outdated.
Recently, I was put to this challenge while writing to a producer who was seeking advice in their field. Writing it out, I felt it immediately becoming dated, like a timer at 0:00, blinking ad nauseam. However, as I hit send, I realized that my anxiety around giving advice was completely related to my thinking around the advice-industrial complex––believing that advice is fired in stone, when in fact it's dampened clay.
I think back to the times in which I'm engaged in conversations with loved ones when I'm emotionally in need of their support. I think back to our follow up conversations, and the realization of their supposedly repetitive advice but, upon closer listen, delivered with a slight deviation. The deviation of lived experience and new influences, the water sprinkled on the drying clay to be ever so slightly remolded.
Below is the wet clay of advice I shared with that producer, in hopes that looking back, it won't be a cup as I expected, but perhaps a vase.
What's been the biggest factor that has helped you be successful in your career?
Being adaptable with the skillsets––so realizing what is needed in the market, and finding a way to provide something that no one else but myself can provide. In my case, I have a background in conceptual arts and graphic design, so I realized that my strengths are ideation, building systems (either stories, production, or both) and a fluency in sound design and music production. Realizing earlier in my career that emulating other people’s paths hinders my own growth was huge.
Are there any expectations you had about this career path that you have found differed from reality, in both a good or bad way?
When I moved into audio production is a career path, I expected it to be this complete shift in thinking from working in design for client services, but in reality it’s quite similar. Depending on the project, your client is either the production partner, the listener, or both. Working in audio production, particularly in podcasts, is more about your skills as a communicator of ideas and boundaries, and less about how you manipulate waveforms. Being able to know the chain of inspirations to explain your thinking is a greater skill than knowing Pro Tools shortcuts.
What skills are the most crucial to succeeding as a Senior Producer?
Being able to foresee production bottlenecks, building systems that externalize thought processes, and essentially creating a safe playground for producers and editors to roughhouse their ideas within.
What skillsets make an applicant stand out for you?
The best thing is when a someone can describe a problem that came their way, describe the boundaries they had to work within, and map out the solution created within that boundary. It reminds me a lot of assignments in art school, in which we had to create a piece within a certain parameter (e.g. make a homage to abstract expressionism, in two weeks, within this spacial requirement). It’s the perfect measure of craft and complexity.
What books, podcasts, or other forms of media/art have helped you develop and grow in your work?
I’m always drawn to artworks/media in which the process is the work itself. Adrian Piper’s 1971 work Food for the Spiritis one, Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing is another, Love is the message, the message is death by Arthur Jafa is another, and Big Numbers on Here Be Monsters transformed me.
This morning, I caught up with a group of friends on Zoom. I perched my phone against a coffee container and continually removed and replaced my gloves, only exposing a thumb, in order to interact with the floating heads of my loved ones. The umbrella outside of the cafe was futile against the rain––the speed accelerating with the prescion of a shower attachment. The droplets that escaped the barrier of plastic eventually bounced onto my screen and obscured the faces of my friends shortly before rolling off onto the table––blurring their facial features into magnified RGB pixels. In my physical body, I took up public space. I gestured with the intensity that comes from talking with three friends about passionate topics, but passersby merely witnessed a solitary, masculine-presenting human gesticulating into a handheld device.
Hours later, Joelle sent me an essay in which I felt immense kinship towards. The author, Daniel, penned a letter to the joys of biking at night. To him, “pedaling felt like a celebration of kinetic energy, of blood, cartilage, and bone,” and this act brought him peace as someone who lives with a preexisting heart condition. The pleasure of movement became a way to free the body from the prison that fate constructed around it.
Reading this essay, I thought back to sitting outside during a rainstorm. I thought back to yesterday, sitting in the grass at Brower Park, resting the legs that propelled me over nine miles. I thought back to that same day, even hours earlier, where a conversation with Adriene traversed the speed of hyperobjects. Even as my body currently sits on a couch in my living room, I think about the energy it expels. Harshali, one of my friends whom I gesticulated towards this morning––referred to this idea of our bodies as “living fossils.”
Towards the end of the essay, Daniel referred to the potholes he’d hit on his bike, the “jolts in the road”, and how they reminded him that he “still existed in these streets.” I couldn’t help but reverberate that clause as I imagined my living fossil eventually depleting––the ideas I’ve shared and reverberating actions of my body during my time on Earth being the only renewable resource that outlives me. When my body eventually leaves, we’ll [sic] still be in these streets.
I came into 2021 thinking things would be fairly different, but its more of the same, while the Earth gets slightly older in age.
The end of my 2020 felt like a scramble. My blood pressure was a warning sign. My systolic pressure reminded me of my transition into my thirties––a special club for Black folks. The pace of work I chased since I was 18, working the second shift of moonlighting projects, is no longer sustainable. I needed to slow down. I decided into this year, inspired by Chiquita, to take a project sabbatical for the foreseeable future. My brain and body is worth much more than the pressures the outside world places on it.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about extraction, especially in this industry. The sneaky ways in which people, who recognize what you have, find ways to get it from you. Picking your brain. Let’s have a quick call. What are you up to? Especially Black artists, we seem to be especially expected to give this type of labor. These wolves––dressed in the clothing of modern liberalism, bangs, and a love for Run the Jewels––find ways to prop themselves on the backs of our minds.
Other than that, I recently put some thoughts to paper about the relationship between augmented reality and audio storytelling. If you have any thoughts about it, I’d love to hear from you. Also, I recently read this book, Transcendent Waves by Lavender Suarez, and it was utterly fantastic.
It’s been a particularly quiet season of reflection that is slowly building to a hum. With that, a lot of my obsessions over the year are starting to bloom.
I wrote an essay that attempted to capture the thoughts I’ve been grasping about in my journal––particularly around both the collapsing of space thanks to digital technologies and the desire of privacy in public spaces.
In the shadow of that essay, I released an album that I’ve been working on for the last seven years. It’s titled MOLTEN ♡ and captured the mania and depression I’ve experienced over that time period through voice memos, original compositions, and lyric demos from friends.
Both of these projects were reawakened from a recent trip to Vermont for my birthday. Gazing out at the Adirondacks from the kitchen table, my wife and I noticed four ravens in lockstep, gravitating towards the window. They shuffled as if they were a high school marching band, alerting us of their presence. It felt like a sign from the grave. In the last seven years, I lost four loved ones in gruesome and sudden ways. They’ve occupied permanent space in my molten heart, and I wish nothing more than to simply FaceTime them right now. Just seeing their faces move behind glass in my palm would be enough for me.
Coming back to Brooklyn as a 31 year old felt like dumping the water from a old vase, the roses already wilted, waiting for me to either press the flowers or throw them away. As the colder months of this extended March are creeping towards me, I wish to both capture these memories forever and also let go of the unsalvageable leaves.
Blackness, freedom, and cycling feel connected. In a country where we aren’t free, bikes allow us to take at least some of that freedom back, using our minds and bodies to take us wherever we want to go.
Yesterday, I joined a protest led by the cycling group Mind Body Results and wrote an essay about it. You can read it, view some photos taken, and listen to soundscapes from it here.
Hope you’re doing well, and staying safe out there.
-J
When I was a kid, the mall parking lot was a ski run.
After a deep snow, plows cleared the way for shoppers, and a large hill was constructed. More snow came and the piles grew. More mountains surrounded it, some larger, carrying the pressure of weeks of 40 degree baking and 25 degree freezing.
From the backseat of my parents’ car, I imagined barrel-rolling in Thinsulate boots, tackling the terrain.
As an adult, I realized this ski run was a double black diamond.
—
This is the first page of a zine I created called “debts” about taking back what’s owed. You can download it here.
—
~inputs that informed this zine~
“Why Ta-Nehisi Coates is hopeful”, an episode from The Ezra Klein show
COINTELPRO RELOADED, a music playlist by myself [Apple Music / Spotify]
—
Hope you’re staying safe,
-J
I wake up in the morning. The bird song filtered through my comforter. I cry twice, tears clouding my vision, the haze of condensation turns the bathroom into a twinkling back porch.
I wake up in the morning. My emotional BPM is no match for the coffee grinder, causing beans to spill over a counter top, scattering in a rhythm I wish I could grasp.
I start my workday. My orange jacket attracts gnats, giving me a hug as I gaze at my masked neighbors on the stoop, their eyes as downtrodden as mine. The birds are too chipper, leaking through my headphones as I offload my emotions to Moses Sumney.
I start my workday. My hands shaking over the home row, intercepting the emotions of my coworker’s digital rectangles. I feel the energy of my ancestors and my kin 1,020 miles away. Blackness unlocks a telekinetic energy.
The sun begins to set. I fall asleep to the glow of TikTok.
The sun begins to set. I fall asleep during the second Shabbat siren.
—
To aid my depressive state, I made a playlist, “lying in bed listening to birds chirp through the leakage of headphones” [Spotify / Apple Music] and a composition, “for george, breonna, ahmaud, and christian”. To fuel my anger, I made a playlist, “ANGER IS A VALID EMOTION” [Spotify / Apple Music].
I hope y’all are doing OK.
Started reading Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, as a recommendation from Zakiya. Aside from being gripping, it really has me thinking a lot about my heritage and the sacrifices my ancestors made.
I’ve been sending many of my group chats this interview with artist Rindon Johnson. It’s about the tension between digital and physical worlds. It put to words what I’ve been feeling and exploring lately about the dimensions of ourselves in non-physical spaces. After it, I ordered his zine, NOBODY SLEEPS BETTER THAN WHITE PEOPLE.
I shared an early demo of Maslow, a short documentary I composed for BBC’s Shortcuts.
I made a painting called “in need of a moment”.
Really getting into a journaling practice, a lot
Watching a ton more TV and enjoying it a lot
Also, finding so much joy in listening to music in solitude
Taking my bike out for a spin and seeing neighborhoods I haven’t seen in a while
Produced an episode of New York Times Opinion’s The Argument.
Made an incredible breakfast casserole.
Noticed the tulips and other plant life starting to sprout.
Reading Critique of Pure Reason as a homage to Food for the Spirit by Adrian Piper.
Preparing work to send for consideration for this year’s Third Coast Audio Awards.
Deleted all of my social media accounts and services with companies who’s labor, user attention, and data practices I don’t agree with.
Making collages.
Making remixes as gifts.
Taking self-portraits.
Produced an episode for the New York Times Opinion’s The Argument.
Got photos back from my performance for On Air Fest.
Nearly a month into social distancing.
No longer powerlifting, now doing a lot of body weight workouts, walks, and bike rides.
Getting really into candles.
Reading Lurking by Joanne McNeil and First we make the beast beautiful by Sarah Wilson.
Getting better at sowing and handy work by adjusting mask string lengths.
