“This debut is special, not only is it a premiere by a new artist in our community, but it’s a premiere from Jhaye James (RIIOS) founder of Indie Bushwick. Imagine having a friend that you never knew could sing one day levitating before your eyes on a soft cloud dressed in silk! Well that’s how I totally saw it, “Frail” is an aria set in slow motion, the super high falsetto’s and arps create memory where there is void and binds synapses where there were none.
Jhaye James’s may not be connected as well to RIIOS than he is to Indie Bushwick–the one man operation dedicated to connecting locals to the flow of Bushwick’s micro-cosm of DIY’er’s,–but he deserves to be. RIIOS is so 21st century electronica in New York that it has one foot in the future. If you pushed the ‘wow’ button on my neck i’d spew out something like: “Art organizer conceals secret identity as man that oozes dreamy music while everyone is sleeping.” That’s because the overall sound and James’s verbosity (or the lack thereof) is nothing tocsin like, it’s sweet and powerful and languid for not trying hard. The effortlessness is very akin to nature, I love how every note sounds like part of one fabric that starts at his breathy vocals, like roots to stem, to the bud and flowering of something beautiful and temporal.
When I spoke to Jhaye of RIIOS, he stated, “It is part of a project I have been working over the past 8 months. The project is titled MK9 and will be release around end of summer. MK9 is a mapping of my emotional state over the last 8 months, hazy, distorted fragments of a dream, the chill zone heart breaker paradise. This is the state of mind in which RIIOS was created. MK9 is a fictional place where RIIOS lives.”
The project is a one man show in many ways just like Indie Bushwick comes from the mind and will of one person, so too does the production of this project, except for the few perusers early in attendance: here we’ll enjoy a brief snapshot of him through his singing, playing, mixing and producing.”
Things To Keep Your Eyes Open For:
- An official release date.
- A video for “Frail.”
- An Indie Bushwick Festival called The Waveform Music Series August 12th at Sunnyvale.
- Unbridled vulnerability caused by music that peels the layers of soot and ego away unveiling before you the endless abyss of connectivity and joy.