N A T  J A Y

"Sleep" music video out now! A message from Nat:

"One day my producer, Ovi described to me this insomniac world he lives in where it's just him against the night, and I tried to create that nighttime world through this song. It was amazing to see this angst come alive through Billy Mustapha's incredible dancing and the artistry of Mike Southworth (Director/Editor) and Byron Kopman's (DOP) imagination. Thank you to all those who helped make this video happen!" 

Supported by Creative BC and City of Vancouver through the Vancouver Music Fund.

Nat Jay is incredibly excited to share with you her new album, The Flash of a Fight, out TODAY on all digital platforms. Click here to listen

Read on to hear a message from Nat about the creation of the album...

Creating The Flash of a Fight was a learning experience for me. It was a lesson in the practical (songwriting), but also in trust; trust in the people around me and trust in my ability. These are a few things I discovered about myself during this process: 

I thrive with the right team. I’m that person who likes to do it all on my own. I like things a certain way and I know I can rely on myself. But that’s also a lot of pressure and can make for a lonely work life. On The Flash of a Fight I decided to let down that wall and invite some team members into the mix. Co-writers Mary Ancheta, Luca Fogale, and of course my producer Ovi all brought a new flavour to my songs. At the same time they allowed me to be myself and gave me the freedom to write how I write. Finding the right collaborators made all the difference, not changing what I do, but nurturing and enhancing my vision to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. 

I can adapt. I’m a creature of comfort. I like what I know, and once I’ve found it, it’s a tug-of-war to wrestle it away from me. I’ve written 95% of my songs with a guitar in hand and a full band recording in mind. The Flash of a Fight brought me a new challenge as a songwriter: write a modern pop song. Put down the guitar and write to a track. I had to shift my focus from the vast expanse of an acoustic folk song to the succinct, rhythmic bubble of the current pop trends. Often using the same musical sample throughout the whole song, I had to find new ways to create movement and separation between the different sections, using more dramatic changes in melody and rhythm. Outside my comfort zone, I was able to take the familiar, push it to grow, and trust it to take on new life. 

I found my strength. When we are so focused on doing what we’ve always done, we can get stuck in the limits of our ability. Bringing on collaborators to take off some of the weight and challenging myself with a new way of songwriting highlighted a skill set I hadn’t been aware of previously: I’m a topline writer. In the pop/EDM/urban music world, this is a legitimate role, meaning a songwriter who writes only the melody and lyrics. It is the most important role in a conventional pop song, since without a topline, it isn’t a song. While I can write the other parts, having another writer working on the chords and the track allowed my ability as a topline writer to shine, as I zoned in on creating thoughtful lyrics, innovative melodies, and unique hooks for my listeners to take in more than ever before. Narrowing down this skill set so specifically not only refreshed my love for what I do, but also gave new direction to my career. 

I hope you enjoy listening to The Flash of a Fight as much as I enjoyed making it. If you do, please share it with everyone you know, as this is what helps us indie artists the most! I would also love your feedback—let me know your favourite songs and how they are meaningful in your life. As I have learned through this process, music at its best is a collaborative experience, and I’m honoured and thrilled to be sharing this experience with you. 

With love + music, 

Nat Jay 

Nat Jay is excited to announce the release of her new full-length album, The Flash of a Fight, out worldwide on November 22. Read on for the story behind the album...

This album almost didn’t happen. After a serious car accident and two abdominal surgeries, one of which led to life-threatening complications, I didn’t know whether I had the energy or the passion for creating music anymore, let alone whether I could sing properly. I envisaged the car accident daily. I could feel my scars every time I tightened my abdomen to sing. I thought if I opened my mouth to sing, I would just cry.

I put off the album and didn’t write for almost a year and a half. During that time, I was lucky enough to receive grant funding for the recording of the album from both Creative BC and the Foundation Assisting Canadian Talent on Recordings (FACTOR). I honestly thought about giving all the grant money back and walking away.

But then, I didn’t. And what resulted are the songs on The Flash of a Fight.

I started writing on my own at first, and then decided I wanted to take a more collaborative approach to my writing, and engaged some friends. A couple of the songs stuck: “Déjà Vu,” written with Cookie Cartel’s Mary Ancheta, and “Quiet,” written with artist Luca Fogale. The rest came to life in the studio after finding the right partner in my producer (and neighbour), Ovidiu “Ovi” Bistriceanu.

Ovi and I took a huge risk, as I threw away most of what I’d been working on, and we arrived at the studio each day starting a song from scratch. After hours of talking, we would sit for several more hours in silence, Ovi building a track and me writing the topline (melody + lyrics). We had a mic next to the console, and every once in a while, I would pipe up: “I’ve got a verse!” – at which point I would stand up and record the part I’d written for safe keeping. We found it difficult to recapture the excitement and magic of some newly written lines when we tried to replace the vocal later on, so we ended up using most of those “first take” vocals on the record.

The Flash of a Fight brought out many new sides to my artistry. After everything I’d been through, I had changed, and so had my writing instincts. They were telling me to try something different, to find a collaborator that could bring out a side of me I’d been hiding: I like pop music! Though raised in a classical household, I spent my teenage years listening and dancing to pop and R&B, and I wanted to find my way back. I was so fortunate to find Ovi, one of the country’s most talented pop producers, who encouraged me and made me smile every day in the studio.

I hope my fans will like this shift in my musical aesthetic. I hope you’ll still hear the old me: just a girl trying to make sense of life through her songs. But I also hope you’ll bop your head or tap your toes to the new electro in my pop. 

Pre-save The Flash of a Fight here.

With love + music, 
Nat Jay 🖤

The second single from Nat Jay's upcoming album is here! "Bullseye" is available today on all digital platforms. Read on for the story behind the song.

Finding Synergy in Collaboration

‘Bullseye’ was the audition song for my producer Ovi and me. I wanted to take a more collaborative approach on this album, but I hadn’t decided who I was working with yet, so I had been writing with a lot of different artists and producers to see what would work best. Ovi and I had done a distance write a couple of years before, and it had gone well, so I asked him if he wanted to try doing a writing session. I went into his studio and after we talked for a while he started working on a track. We basically sat in silence for about two hours while he built the track and I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do, so I just started writing something random to go with the track. After those two hours, Ovi turned to me and asked me if I had anything, and I meekly said, “Maybe, but I’m not sure, but maybe.” I sang it to him in the most pathetic, unconfident way, and he said, “I love it. Let’s record it.” And that was the first verse of ‘Bullseye.’ We even kept those vocals. 

That day Ovi and I had been talking a lot about our health (since we both suffer from different illnesses) and about trying a whole bunch of things to help. We were saying how good it would feel to find that one thing that makes all the difference. I think that’s what infiltrated into the lyrics as I started to write. The strange thing was, that’s also what was happening for us as collaborators. After searching for the right sound and the right producer for this project, everything about this collaboration suddenly felt right. Thinking he would totally turn me down, I sent Ovi an email asking if he wanted to produce the rest of the album, and within half an hour, he sent back an unequivocal “Yes!!” Traditionally, Ovi works on his own on a track, without an artist present, but he had been feeling the same way about the ‘Bullseye’ demo, and was surprised and excited about how comfortable he felt working with me there. We had serendipitously written the song about our collaboration while it was happening! 

I hope people can relate to this feeling, whether it’s in a relationship, a job, a new home, etc. That instinctual feeling when our gut tells us, “This is the right thing.” I hope people find inspiration in ‘Bullseye’ to keep trying and believing that it’s out there waiting for them to find. I hope this song keeps reminding me of that too.

               Listen to 'Bullseye' here: bnd.lc/bullseye

With Love + Music,

Nat Jay

Nat Jay is excited to share the first single off her upcoming album! 'Sleep' is now available on all digital platforms.  Read on to hear the story behind "Sleep."  

I wrote “Sleep” with my producer Ovi on a day we were particularly tired. We both have difficulty with our health and this affects our sleep very much. "How did you sleep?" became one of the first questions we would ask each other upon arriving at the studio. 

For Ovi, his health condition has turned him into an insomniac. One day Ovi described to me how he feels like he lives in two different worlds: one in the daytime, where he has his normal family life and works on music at his studio, and one where it's just him against the night, where he is so tired and tries everything to fall asleep, but sleep doesn't come. 

On the day we wrote "Sleep," we both came into the studio exhausted, and I thought, "What could we possible produce today that is in any way good." But then Ovi started playing with those bell sounds that you can hear at the beginning, and to me they felt like "sleepy sounds," so I told Ovi I was going to write a song about sleep for him, and decided to try and create that nighttime world he had described to me. 

After writing the song, it has morphed into a bigger picture for me on how difficult it is to live with a physical illness, a mental illness, or a disability, to find an escape from it, and to try and reconcile this part of ourselves with the ambitions of our everyday lives. 

I chose this song as the first single as it always felt like the coolest track on the album. Its pentatonic-like melody gives it an eerie quality that is supported by descriptive lyrics and ghostly production, and it feels like all those elements combined to create the exact sound I wanted to introduce this album and my new, more electronic sound. 

Sleep helps our bodies and minds recover and reset, but so can listening to music, so I hope this song brings you some positive energy, as writing it did for me. 

               You can listen to "Sleep" here: bnd.lc/sleep 

I hope this finds you well, friends and I looking forward to connecting with you much more often this Fall. Your support means the world as I release my new art into the universe! 

With love + music, 
 

Nat Jay