ABOUT FEIGN JIMA & her newly released EP

We got the chance to chat with the lovely Feign Jima, also known as Jamie. The Naarm based singer songwriter recently released her EP Funny How Things Turned Out, a delicate and dreamy journey of “navigating relationships of all descriptions,”. We chatted about her creative process and inspiration behind her songwriting and producing. Be sure to give the EP a listen and catch her play live at The Retreat Hotel, Naarm / Melbourne on Friday 8 July.

WANDERER: So how are you feeling now that your new EP 'Funny How Things Turn Out' has been released?
FEIGN JIMA: It's very, very nice. It feels very good. It's funny, [when you're] releasing music you hold onto it and work on it for so long and there's a lot of anticipation for it. And then once you release it, it just kind of feels like a nice release really.

What was the creative process like for you from start to finish?
I started writing it at the beginning of 2021. And then we went into lockdowns again, so once I finished that creative process, it kind of got put together all through lockdown again, which was very similar to my first EP where, funnily enough, I put that together through lockdown as well. So yeah, it started in early 2021, and then I was taking a break from gigs and started writing and then it all came together through another lockdown, which was another interesting experience.

Did you find it challenging to find inspiration during that time?
I did. And I didn't, because all of my other commitments just stopped existing for a long time. I only had a little bit of work going on and then I had all this amount of time, which gave me the space to do a bit more reflection and have that extra time for myself that I might not have had if I wasn't in a lockdown. So there was obviously bad elements to it, but for the most part, it was really beneficial for me to carve out all of that time and just be dedicated to doing the writing process and all of that stuff.

Did you find that with the lockdown, you were able to delve into different elements of your music that you don't think you would have otherwise?
Totally. And there was a lot more energy spent on self reflection because you have all this extra time that you might not have if life was as it usually is. [Being able to] think a little bit deeper about motivations from the songs and being a little bit extra finicky with certain parts of the recordings just because you have that luxury of time, was something that I was really grateful for with lockdowns. Naturally, I don't really write from a place of being in a happy space most of the time, which sounds more intense than it is. So if it's a little bit stressful or a bit sad, that fuels my fire a little bit.

So if everything's all happy all the time, you might not be made to reflect as much?
I suppose. My inspiration for songs doesn't really come from a bubbly, happy place for me. If I'm going through something emotional or really challenging introspectively, that's when I write a lot of my music.

I saw that there were a few people working on the EP with you in terms of producing and collaborating with other bands from Melbourne. What was the reasoning for getting these people involved?
Yeah, so Jim Rindfleish, who is the producer on the EP, he's actually my partner and we were trapped together in lockdown and we came together and wrote the first EP. And he helped me produce this EP. He's in a band called Mildlife and he's very experienced in that area, and we obviously get along really well haha, so he was the obvious first choice. In terms of people playing on it, they're just really great friends of mine. So Francis Tate from a band called Quality Used Cars, and my friend Winnie McQuinn from Sunfruits, Hannah McKittrick and Liam Bevin as well. They're all really beautiful friends of mine. And again, it was that awkward period of time of getting them at the very out of lockdown phase, one at a time kind of thing. So we weren't all in the studio at the same time. And they all play in my live band, and I love their music in their own individual bands as well, so it was a very obvious choice, I couldn't think of anyone else to play. They're brilliant people and brilliant musicians. And the mixing side of it was with Edvard Hakansson who runs Cohort Records and he's brilliant. And Simon Lamb mastered it, who's also brilliant.

How did you get into music initially? What formed this love for music for you?
Going way back, I started off dancing for a really large portion of my life and that's where my love for music came from because I had to dance to all sorts of music when I was younger. And then it wasn't until late high school that I decided that I really wanted to take music seriosuly, because I was always singing as well. And that's when I started becoming, I suppose, a musician.

So did you get into guitar first, what was the first instrument for you to open that up?
It was actually piano, piano became the first thing that I would write on. And I wrote very different music when I was writing on piano. And then in the last five years I've moved across to guitar and then that has shaped my music in a whole different way. You just approach songwriting in a really different way when you have a different instrument, naturally.

This is a bit of a funny question, but if Feign Jimer was its own identity, what would you imagine they look like and what kind of mannerisms would they have, based off of your sound?
I think, what they would look like, maybe something very whimsical perhaps or very, floaty and dream like. The first thing I thought of, that is probably really odd haha, was: do you know that Simpsons episode where Mr. Burns becomes that glowy floaty alien? It's the kookiest episode, he's like a glowy meme and he's on a bunch of drugs and that's the first thing that, for some reason, popped into my head haha.

Perfect haha. And how would you describe your sound?
I would also describe it as dreamlike. I suppose there's a lot of lush elements to it as well, in the instrumentation. So sort of dream dreamy and lush. I describe it as dream-pop or alt-folk, because it's not quite one or the other, so somewhere in between.

And now that you've released the new EP can you see it evolving in any sense, or do you feel like you've like found your sound?
I definitely think I see it always evolving. Even just from the first EP to the second EP, like I would say the first EP was very dream pop and in that category. And then this one has a lot more folky influences. And I think continuously as I develop as an artist it'll keep evolving; most likely still within those same areas, but just probably a few more influences here and there.

Do you have anything coming up for yourself, anything exciting planned inside or outside of music?
Yeah, I'm doing an EP launch on Friday the 8th of July at The Retreat in Melbourne with good friends, Winton and ARBs. So that's gonna be really exciting. That's the biggest gig that's coming up, and there's a few smaller ones here and there as well. And I'm starting to piece together a debut album, after all of this has passed. So I'm really looking forward to starting that process for the next little while.

Do you have any travel plans or anything like that, now that you actually can?
Oh, I would absolutely love to. It's always on the cards, especially now that everything's basically back to normal. I'm dying to get to Europe, I was supposed to go in late 2020, but yeah, that never happened, so I'm desperate to go. I would love to go back to Japan again at some point. If a window of time opens up, I would definitely be taking advantage of that, for sure.