Planningtorock
Planningtorock (all one word, often just PTR) is the vehicle of expression of Jam Rostron , a musician and visual artist from Bolton, Manchester, UK who started out in 2004 and has lived in Berlin for ten years. They have released three full-lengths so far, the latest being All Love's Legal, preceded by W (2011) and their 2006 debut Have It All, which was a full-on chamber-pop romp that established Planningtorock as anything but orthodox.
A ball of energy that landed as if by happy accident in the middle of the art, fashion and music worlds, Planningtorock allowed Jam to travel the globe performing at gig venues and arts events. They built a formidable reputation with a theatrical solo show in which they performed, wearing white and sometimes donning a customised PTR helmet, in front of the mesmeric videos they’d made for each track. Multimedia and sometimes kind of multi-gender, Planningtorock seemed to raise more questions than Jam had answers for, which tickled them. And through doing the live shows, they realised that their songs took on a second life, which in turn fed back into their music.
While they are a new name to many, those who know Planningtorock tend to form a strong emotional connection with their work. No doubt about it, Jam is totally out there on their own, and with W, they have raised the bar several notches, producing a powerful soul odyssey that ravishes the listener and comfortably ranks as one of the DFA label’s finest releases.
Jam grew up near Bolton. Their darker humour comes from there. “On the album I mess around with my voice a lot and I really enjoyed that,” they say. “I’m really not precious about my voice. I do love powerful, beautiful voices but on a creative level you can do so much with your voice and I loved pulling it around on this record.
Jam composed the 12 songs that make up W over the last three and a half years, mainly recording in solitude in their Berlin studio. A gifted producer, they sing and play everything – keyboards, strings, guitar – and mixed the record in Sweden at the end of 2010 during an intense session with Christoffer Berg.
One listen to W is all it takes to realise that Planningtorock is not tethered to the facts of Jam’s everyday life or to any kind of authentic or so-called honest voice. Planningtorock is about ideas and fantasy and augmented reality. It’s about sentiments and emotion and exploring the unknown. And with Jam at the helm, it will always be a fascinating voyage.
“W” will be released on May 16th via their own Label Rostron Records and DFA records. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.
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