Barcelona-native, 22-year-old Jay Blanes moved to London in July 2019 to become a full-time musician. Passionate about many genres, such as pop, jazz, indie, rock or R&B, Jay decided to refocus his efforts on commercial indie-folk and the result is his new E.P. ‘Fireworks’ – out now!
Jay Blanes is a multi-faceted talent: he records, programs and mixes instrumentals and vocals for all his songs and even directs, produces and edits his music videos. His biggest influences include Ed Sheeran, Kodaline, Coldplay, Pablo Alborán (Spanish), Joan Dausà (Catalan), James Blunt, Damien Rice, Shawn Mendes or Dean Lewis. In 2014, inspired by attending an Ed Sheeran concert, Jay wrote and produced what would become his debut E.P. ‘Found in April’. Although a fiercely independent artist, Jay has managed to gather +15,800 followers and +370,000 streams across all platforms (99k on Spotify, 187k on Youtube, 84k on Instagram videos ). Quite an achievement!
The ‘Fireworks’ E.P. is the result of a recent steep growth as an artist, especially over the last year. He says “When I decided to pursue music in a professional way, I started working on my first “decent” project: ‘Found in April’. That was 2017, and I didn’t know much about production or song-writing, but I managed to deliver something I was proud of. After that, I went into a phase of experimentation and constant improvement, releasing songs that went from a “cool jazzy vibe” to sad indie ballads.”
It was the experimentation on that project which spurred Jay on to push his musical boundaries further and to find his own distinct unique sound. The songs on the ‘Fireworks’ E.P. embody this personal growth and ambition with a more ‘defined’ sound. The E.P. consists of 5 songs, three of them beautiful indie-folk ballads/downtempo songs about regret, nostalgia or anger – and the rest being happy, upbeat, folk, “flirting” songs. The title comes from the first track on the E.P. and encompasses this mix of positive and negative, happy and sad, upbeat and downtempo moods.
TRACK LISTING:
1] Fireworks
2] Natalie
3]There Was A Song
4]Take You Home
5] I’m Sorry
LISTEN TO THE ‘FIREWORKS’ E.P. ON SPOTIFY