Jay-Jay Johanson

Swedish singer/songwriter Jäje Johanson, performing under the name Jay-Jay Johanson, merges the deliberate pacing and restrained atmosphere of downbeat and trip-hop with the steely rhythms of electro-pop to produce a personal strain of shadowy, electronics-driven wistfulness. Raised in Trollhättan after his birth there, he issued his first album, Whiskey, in 1996 and issued Tattoo two years later. Poison, his third album from 2000, incorporated work by Cocteau Twins founder/guitarist Robin Guthrie and reached the number four spot on the French pop charts. Antenna, released in 2002, was shaped through sessions with German IDM group Funkstörung, and 2005’s Rush drew on input from French producer/multi-instrumentalist Jean-Pierre Ensuque. The next year Johanson co-wrote and appeared on the track “Marble House” for the Knife’s Silent Shout LP while starting work on 2007’s The Long Term Physical Effects Are Not Yet Known. Spellbound, his eighth studio album, arrived in 2012.