J. Vague - SILVER (2023)

It is always about love. About relationships, romantic or not, about the space between you and me and the whole wide world. That’s what J. Vague is about, too: his debut EP "New Life" was drunk with infatuation, giddy with feelings. And it was love at first sight, for us, the audience, and J. Vague, the beautiful man with this stunningly smooth voice and mysterious air around of anonymity around him.

And now, two years later? The feelings have become, as they usually tend to in a relationship, more complex: J. Vague is not quite as vague anymore, we have learned a little more about him. The person behind the persona is Joshua Gottmanns, multidisciplinary artist, with a poppy past (he was part of the bands Beat! Beat! Beat! and Oracles), and present at home in both media art and sculpture, as well as in DJing and experimental music. And most recently: in simply being a popstar. Without the cerebral conceptual superstructure that is usually attached to contemporary art.

Or is it actually there – without pretentiously telling us how clever this work is, without flaunting its inherent coolness and simultaneously embracing kitsch and knowingly exaggerated aesthetics, sounds, and feelings?

SILVER is a dazzling piece of pop that tries on different musical styles and eras like outfits in a dressing room, with a penchant for combining Y2K quotes, contemporary sounds and grand gestures. There's the minimalist "Get More," which leads into an 80s synth elegy, or "Fire Fantasy," which recalls the best days of nineties alternative rock and grunge. What unites the various songs in all their diversity is a sense of longing: "it's about searching for a sense of belonging – no matter if it's about a place, a person, a situation or a state," J Vague tells us, "it's always about a sense of longing, a void." This motif also continues visually, from the cover, on which his face is captured Beuys- or Bowie-esque in silver paint, to the various videos, such as for the aforementioned "Fire Fantasy", the singles "nothing2hide" or "RedLight": despite J. Vague showing us his face these days, everything remains vague, like a dream or nightmare sequence between past and future. "Precisely because I deal with visual things every day, for the album I wanted to put this aspect of the record in the hands of my friends who delivered the ideas and took over the production of the music videos.“ One video, for example, was shot on a cell phone on the island of Formentera, giving it a somehow surreal immediacy; the idea for the alien-like silver mask, in turn, came from a photographer and a makeup artist.

For all its proverbial vagueness, SILVER is also a commitment to collaboration with friends and companions: the production, which was repeatedly interrupted by other projects, was a collaboration with Dennis Juengel, Alina is involved in the conceptual direction of the project. The collective creative process, marked by exchange, co-curation and openness, also creates the space for J. Vague dive wholeheartedly into pop music, into its big gestures und glittery unrestrained-ness.

SILVER is pure pop music, in every sense, yet it refrains from being overly perfectionist and pared down into mellow compliant nothingness. Instead, it’s all our favourite tunes staring back at us from a fun house mirror, so familiar, yet beautifully estranged, it is a record that tells us about yesterday and about tomorrow, it’s pop music full of nostalgia yet oh so contemporary. It’s music with a wink in its eye but it still takes itself seriously, embracing big feelings and feels almost charmingly insecure. And most importantly: it is the kind of pop music we kneed so very urgently: casual, independent, unique and full of desire. Because it was all about love, always.