GJART.... A slow cooking little life less ordinary....Bands About B...

Bands About Bands S03E01

For this episode of #FTLOB I am going to start my review with a little different approach this time ...lets talk about food for a minute, ok? … what? food?...You may be asking now why would I start a review about a music project by using food as a beginning ...well... hopefully I will eventually get my point across and by the time I am finished, you probably have understand it all unless you are rushing to the fridge to scavenge anything you may get your hands on, once I aroused that huge appetite from my little food analogy here...

First of all let me tell you all, that I love to cook and enjoy well elaborated food, as a Spaniard I was brought up in an environment that food plays a great part in our cultural as well as every day to day lives. We all knew by looking at the way our parents have spent hundreds of hours in the kitchen to prepare those thousand of different tasty and mouthwatering dishes, that time takes a big role into creating something that will be enjoyed and devoured in just a matter of minutes just like a good old well crafted song.

However it wasn't until a trip to our southern neighbour, Morocco, into the Sahara desert, that I really understood the meaning of a well cooked up dish and its relation to time... during a camel trip inside the Sahara with an Amazigh (Berber) family that spent historically their time within the never ending dunes of the vast Sahara desert. In the desert the concept of time is very relative only disrupted by the arrival and departure of the sun overhead, and during the nights just by counting the endless flights of shooting stars...But within the Amazigh way of life there is one constant that makes time less relative, is the slow way of cooking Tajine, a stew well known for the Moroccan food connoisseurs and a delicatessen only found in the confines of the populated world.
The Tajine as the Amazigh knows must be left cooking very slowly for a period of more than 5 hours to be delicious and make it up to the well earned name in the culinary arts. Such slow cooking is similar to the process that went through the artist that I am going to introduce now....

Tim Godbehere aka GJART, was born into a multicultural background in Germany to and English father and a Dutch mother, but lived most of his adult life between London and Spain. As Tim suggested to me and as I tried to explained earlier, the process of creation of GJART took 30 years and it came to fruition in 2015 after a long and hard process of self discovery and above all... the will to express life through music. All this process at a time, that many of us would have never even had the thought of taking the step forward as he eventually did in 2015.

Tim's first contact with music was with the flute, that although not his first choice of instrument probably, as like me the bass guitar as a first instrument that marked a stepping stone for a love for music that will be 'slowly cooked' throughout the years...In time Tim sold his flute to buy a computer.... I sold my bass for other motives less useful than a computer...Tim also dwelled at this time over the thought of pursuing a career within creative arts or music and realized at the time, that these activities were poorly paid if paid at all, and the abyss of a gamble such as this pushed him towards academia and corporate work. Tim went on to live life according to what at the time teachers, family and society hammered in our heads...to go and find a well paid job that will solve and secure our existence and forget our dreams that will bring only misery and pain... And at the time this was certainly true as it could be said the same for today, as high unemployment ravaged the most developed economies in the world, Tim enjoyed a corporate position that left little time to dwell into more artistic endeavors in the hectic nature of a huge capital city such as London but was grateful to the fact that he had at least a well paid job unlike many other at the time.

But as with the elaboration of a well cooked dish, it comes a time that the dish have to be put away from the fire and be set to rest... The death of several family members lit a spark that led Tim to wonder and spin into a 'what is this life all about' period...that cathartic moment that can, for many, lead to greatness or... doom....Tim didn't think about it twice and decided to move to southern Spain, where the realization that he wanted to compose electronic music came with the power of a boiling pot that have been slowly building and exploded into 2015 when he started to create music using 'garage band'.

By this time the 'cooking process' have ended and GJART was born, firstly the name of his project came about, this includes Tim's name initials, and a very distinctive logo in flashing green with mountains representing another of GJARTS great passions...skiing....Between 2015 to to 2017 the creation process was furious and 10 of the best tracks were chosen to be included in GJARTS first release, what will come to be known as 'Revelation' (2017) with 10 beautifully crafted instrumental electronic masterpieces that range from ambient to synthwave, or EBM to tech-house and trance.
A good example is one of my favorites of the album, 'Deeper' :
https://open.spotify.com/track/2fdf9yprLtPWF7vZshMMUk
or if not yet convinced 'Santos' :
https://open.spotify.com/track/1uAxKAOv8J5lxUcPluizHL

GJART'S1st album cover 'Revelation'

Gjart was trying to build up a strong fanbase and 'gauge reaction' especially on soundcloud before the album was finally released in Spotify and other major streaming sites. By this time Gjart also came into contact with the fabulous independent musicians community http://www.atomcollectorrecords.com/ that as GJART's suggests 'helped him put his music out there and the music streams and followers really took off by this time...'
You can hear the full greatness of the album here:

https://choon.co/albums/0tbkmcz0maw/revelation

Around this time Gjart met Italian songwriter BetaPsi, who contacted him to make his first ever collaboration, both came to appreciate each others music and Gjart sent a demo of the track 'fireproof' and as GJART puts it 'She really added the magic to it' and this super cool song with clearly early synthpop references was born, and she created this fantastic video to top it all up...:

Gjart claims that BetaPsi was the first to actually encouraged him to start adding vocals to his tracks and that he couldn't be grateful enough and hasn't looked back since...thus the actual distinctive GJART sound was born...he even claims that a strange it may seem the video was even made without the two not having actually met in real life...these are the great little things of the times we are living in...

The summer of 2017 was particularly productive for GJART'S music creative process, 10 more singles were released, one of GJARTS tracks, 'Lost' was remixed for the first time by the producer Tobi here is the final result:
https://choon.co/tracks/0dhsju4b47y/lost-tobi-remix
Gjart completed also his first remix (Juxta's 'Peaceful Tranquility'):
https://choon.co/tracks/0zy7qmsofbj/peaceful-tranquility-by-juxta-gjart-remix
The song 'nightbirds' was the first ever self produced video that GJART is so proud of, and no wonder why!!! because it is a fantastic track that will keep your feet moving for the rest of the day, a fantastic collab work with Deggsy...:

There are so many influences that populate GJART's music from Ella Fitzgerald to Pink Floyd, the first time I heard one of his tracks reminded me clearly to 'Soft Cell' and to other masters of synthwave of the 80's... But GJART's unique voice will make his project stand out to be a total new experience on its own ...

As we have seen what is boiling slowly within a persons soul can only be appeased by actually first letting the steam out, settle and reflect and then putting slowly the fire out by realizing all the dreams that we had stored in the cupboard of wishes and making them true, maybe then we will have a closer idea of 'what this life is all about'... As Depeche Mode puts it in one of his iconic songs 'it's just a question of time...'