The creative and imaginative world of artist JHelix comes alive with his latest single “Baby Yellow (In A Dream),” integrated with psychedelic pop-rock sounds, and the music video for the single is even dreamier, with intoxicating and stunning visuals. JHelix’s discography includes remixing tracks by rap legends, the Sugar Hill Gang and the Furious 5, and in 2019, remixed a track by Russian singer Vitas and hip-hop and rock group, Nappy Roots. As a solo artist, he’s experimented with every aspect of electronic music from pop to rock, and in-between.
With his music video for “Baby Yellow (In A Dream)” the clip features a green screen with a variety of alluring images, including forests, oceans, and “a claustrophobic prison cell…joined by doppelgangers – masked men with strangely painted smiles, dancing skeletons, spirits of the trees, and the personification of sleep.” (Hip Video Promo) All the while, JHelix is playing all of these characters, which were also devised by him.
Your latest single “Baby Yellow (In A Dream)” is a dreamlike musical reverie of dream-pop, hallucinatory psychedelia, and electronica. What was the idea/inspiration behind this song?
J Helix: Believe it or not, the inspiration was an actual dream. A couple times a year I will have a dream where my subconscious composes a background soundtrack, or at least background ambience to whatever crazy visual I may be having. It’s always a strange experience because the riffs and sonic tapestries are usually somewhat simple, but very very nuanced. Since your brain (and whatever other forces might be at work when we are dreaming) isn’t limited by electronic circuitry etc, it’s pretty tricky to capture and recreate. You might be lucky enough to sneak a smidge of the riff or ambience back into “reality”, but it will always be through the veil, so to speak. There’s usually an emotional component to these kinds of dreams for me as well, and sometimes the power of the imagery, and the music in my head has me on the verge of tears when I wake up. A very odd experience, but quite powerful…so I basically wake up and try to sprint to my guitar or keyboard and plug out the basic notes of the riff before it all goes away. In the case of Baby Yellow it was the basic three chord riff you hear in the song, and I did my best to recreate the lushness and dreamlike feeling…building to a crescendo by the end of the last verse. The visuals in the video are based on the various emotions I deal with inside my head, set to music.
Your music blends and fuses electronic and psychedelic pop-rock. What do you enjoy most about each genre?
J Helix: I was a bit of a rave/club kid in the late 90’s and early 00’s. I was heavily influenced by the music and imagery in that movement, and it works its way into most of my compositions to this day. There was an energy that was captured in the music of those genres that just spoke to me. The dark energy, ethereal ambience, melodic riffs…I love all of it. I was also pretty into goth rock and synth pop for a while…I still listen to Type O’ Negative every Autumn, and Depeche Mode too amongst others. None of the material I’ve ever put out has fit into just one genre…what comes out of me is always a medley of everything I love about music. Keeps me pure as an artist, but also confusing to the “music industry” I’m sure… haha.
You’ve also remixed tracks by rap pioneers like Sugar Hill Gang and the Furious 5, along with Russian singer Vitas, and Southern hip-hop group Nappy Roots. What about these artists draws you to their particular style of music?
J Helix: Those were actually opportunities that arose from knowing Ford, the label owner of Monatomic Music in Atlanta. She liked my sound, and asked if I’d be interested in doing a remix for “Roll With the Beat” which was the Vitas and Nappy Roots track they were releasing. I loved the song “Aww Naw” by Nappy Roots and heard it a ton when it came out, given how huge Atlanta is in the hip hop world. I also knew Vitas from the YouTube viral sensation that was “The 7th Element”, so I was honored to do the remix. It came out pretty badass too! About a year later I was asked if I wanted to do a remix for two of Hip Hop’s pioneering acts, Sugar Hill Gang, and Furious 5, and I was once again honored to do it. These were my first experiences with being a “remixer” and I had a blast doing it!
Speaking of remixing tracks, when did you know you wanted to also produce music, along with creating it?
J Helix: Oh, I’ve always produced music as well as writing it. I started producing music back in high school actually. My mom came home one day with a program called Musicshop 2.0, I believe it was a mac based product….long before Garageband or Logic. So I self taught myself MIDI sequencing when I was 14 or 15. I would rent synth equipment, and command everything from the computer program. I had an Alesis 64key synth of some sort, and a Roland Dance box. Back then if you were on a budget, you would use a double tape deck and overdub back and forth between tape decks adding layers and re recording each time..haha. Didn’t make the highest quality sounding stuff, but it got the job done. I also played a little guitar and sang by that time too, so I would make beats and then play/sing over those. Go figure…I still do that!
With the video clip of “Baby Yellow,” you play all of the characters yourself. What was the creative vision behind the video, and what was the filming process like?
J Helix: Well I knew I was going to play every character ahead of time, and I knew I was by no means a good makeup artist…so I set out to find some cool masks that were sort of obscure, and not ones that the average shopper would come across at Halloween or something. I wanted the masks to be the Yin and Yang versions of me, to represent the duality of my personality, and of life, really. So the Japanese mask was a win as soon as I saw it….the expression is stupidly happy, to the point of being creepy. The other having that blank sort of emotionless expression spoke to me as well. I asked my sister, who is a painter and visual artist (AGCurleyArt) if she could paint a sun and moon on the masks to further emphasize the polarity, and that really set it off. The vision then was to intersperse the versions of REAL me, in with the dancing subconscious me’s, and it all fell into place on its own as I went along. The filming process took 2-3 weeks of filming every day after work. I would work sometimes 6hrs of prep/lighting/costume/camera/green screen into the night, and basically have to go right to bed afterwards. I have a decent sized master bedroom, and I was able to take 1/2 of it and set up a large green screen with defracter lights and camera tripod etc. It was pretty funny because for most of the month I was essentially sleeping on a film stage..haha. I did the Atlanta skyline scene, the “jail” scenes, and the woods scenes on location around Atlanta. Side note: The whole video was filmed using an IPhone 11pro in 4k mode!
