If you have been active on our page and social media, you probably seen this one coming!! We are beyond excited to have the AMAZING & TALENTED Johan Lenox, As a member of our On The Rise Series!! With his smooth voice and classical music skills, Johan is making waves in the music industry! Give a listen to his EP “cancel the party” Check out our conversation below!
For readers who aren’t familiar with your music, can you share with how you began your musical journey?
I’ve been playing piano since I was a kid. At some point I realized I didn’t like learning other people’s music note-for-note and preferred making stuff up myself. When I was a kid my parents used to take me to see composer John Williams conduct the Boston Pops orchestra. I wanted to make that type of music initially, so my parents figured out that this music school in my town offered lessons in classical music composition. That set me on that path for a long time.
As a classically trained musician, did you ever expect you’d end up in the position you are now?
I really didn’t listen to contemporary pop or hip hop music at all until after I finished college. Someone was playing me the Kanye album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy at a party. I was on acid. Needless to say it was an insane experience. I loved the music and I also just loved the fact that he had brought this maximalist symphonic aesthetic to a mainstream audience. That album really changed my life and put me on the course I’m on now. I’ve always wanted to bring classical music back into the cultural conversation in America, and have done projects around this idea my whole life. That’s still my goal but getting there partly by building a platform for myself within pop music was a new idea which I never saw coming.
Now in the realm of popular music, how to you add traditional classical music values and techniques into your music today?
I try to weave my songs together into coherent EPs and albums that flow continuously. I think classical music is really good at structuring larger amounts of time and I really try to apply that to how my projects flow together. That’s why I lean so heavily on the transition tracks and occasional fully instrumental tracks. I think they help structure the overall experience so it has a shape and isn’t just a series of equal length songs. In some of my unreleased music I’m also getting more into jarring transitions and key changes mid-song. This is something I partly learned from Kanye but which has always reminded me of the types of choices classical composers are more free to make than pop producers. Finally, I basically don’t use synths or guitars in my music at all. Everything that isn’t drums/bass or vocals is made from live orchestral instruments. Sibelius scoring software is still my first compositional tool, and while I produce a lot of my music in Logic, writing for classical instruments is the main way I know how to get interesting sounds so that’s a huge part of my production.
We are so in love with your new album “cancel their party” it’s a masterpiece. Can you take us through your creative process behind the album?
I have a two-step process. I think in the pop medium songwriting and lyrics are the most important thing so I usually begin the process focused on that. Once I have a group of songs I’m really happy with I sort of turn that part of my brain off and focus on re-producing and structuring the whole project, with the songwriting and vocals more or less a given at that point.
As a musician myself, do you ever struggle from creative blocks? And do you have any tips to give to other artists?
I think the important thing is just to not put too much pressure on anything. Writing a new song only takes a few hours and it’s usually hard to know in the moment whether what you have is good or not. So it’s important for me to finish something no matter what. I never leave a writing session without writing a full song. It doesn’t matter if it’s bad. After it’s done I add it to a playlist I have and basically forget about it until months later when it’s time to start putting together a project. Then I go through the playlist and am reminded about all the stuff I wrote–some of it’s good, some of it isn’t, but there’s no stress around it because there are so many songs to choose from. Even the songs that aren’t good often have some redeeming element which I might take and reuse for something, and it’s easier to accept that months later when I’m totally removed from the stress around writing the stuff from scratch. I actually do classical music this way too. I pour ideas out onto the score and try to revisit a few days later with totally fresh ears and grab the stuff I like, rather than attempting to get stuff right the first time.
I’ve noticed while listening to your music, that all of your records after 2019, have a distinctive similar aesthetic, with the cover art and the titles being lowercase. Is there any significance behind that?
I’m a big fan of juxtaposing messy-sounding lyrics and a broke-suburban-kid visual aesthetic with maximalist production value and symphonic sounds. Every choice I make is trying to balance both of those goals. I want to capture what it feels like to be coming of age in America right now, feeling like there isn’t a clear path forward into adulthood, but I want to paint it with the most grandiose possible brushstrokes.
I’m a music gear nerd so I have to know, as a producer what has been your favorite board and studio you’ve worked in?
I’m exactly the opposite of that! I know a ton about classical music instruments and all the details of that world, and I know how to produce in Logic enough to get by. But I couldn’t even name a brand of compressor or microphone that I like. I’m really fortunate to work with Nate Donmoyer, who mixes all of my music and helps me nail down the right vocal chain and makes sure we’re using the best gear for everything. Since I’m micromanaging every other aspect of the production I think it’s good to be able to trust other people for certain aspects of the process.
Your song “bad decisions” has been gaining lots of buzz! When in production did you have a idea for what you wanted this song to become? What was your process?
This actually started out as a beat my friend Jacob Paul sent me. Almost everything on that initial beat has been changed since then but sometimes you hear something that inspires a song and you have to run with it. I wrote the song to his beat, then got the stems from him. Then I replaced all the instruments with live orchestral parts and reworked the drums a bit with Nate. Finally, once I got wifisfuneral on the song, I really wanted to put him in a sonic environment that felt different from what he had done before, so I made the decision to strip away basically everything except the live strings under his vocal. There’s no drums at all for half of his verse. I always want my collabs with people to work in unexpected ways.
Do you see your self putting “cancel the party” to life in a tour or a few live shows?
Yea I’m very excited to get to this stage soon. I want my shows to feel different from other shows, with a heavily emphasis on live string players, playing on my songs and maybe playing some of my classical music as interludes as well. I’d also like to transform the venues I’m in as much as possible, to really make it feel like you’re in a basement or a party in the woods strewn with empty red solo cups. I want people to feel like they’re in my hometown with me.
What can we expect from you in 2020?
Tons more music mainly! Excited to continue to work on hip hop projects outside of my own. And I’ve got more some interesting classical concerts coming up in NYC as well which I can’t announce yet.
And lastly, can you share with us any upcoming projects?
I’ve got an album coming in the fall which I’m really excited for, and a classical album after that. I want to try to bring some of the values from pop music recording into the classical world, and make the best produced classical album possible out of the existing pieces I have, rather than trying to simply capture the live sound of classical music.
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