What up fam and welcome back to another edition of Prim’s Plugs. This time I’ll be plugging my good friend and long-time sound engineer Jake Arvonen, who has just released his debut album titled A Solo Journey.
Jake is a multi-instrumentalist, singer/songwriter, music-lover, beat maker, producer, sound engineer and all round great guy. He produced Deconstructive Criticism, mixed both my albums and continues to teach me how to produce, make beats and mix tracks on a one-on-one basis. Big love bro.
Jake’s A Solo Journey blends rock, blues, jazz and pop to give us a fucking banger of an album. Today, I’m focusing on my favourite track off the album Break. This song has become one of my favourite songs across genres and sometimes I just listen on repeat. It’s a perfect song to me.
Without further ado, I give you Jake Arvonen.
The lone ranger
Thanks for your time bro. Tell us a bit about yourself
Only semi-recently have I started to finally enjoy cooking.
Thanks for that insight haha. Focusing on Break, what was the inspiration for this song?
I had just got my first delay pedal and was jamming around on guitar and came up with the verse riff. I remember I was listening to a heap of James Reyne at the time, and was very inspired by the driving energy of his track Fall of Rome. Also the way he sings in such an expressive & percussive way, I found myself toying with that until words started popping out.
I love how the track just ends, was this intentional?
Not at all, the bounce fucked up and cut it short! Didn’t realise till it was already on Spotify!!
Haha so the song is in the key of Am, but the Bass doesn’t ever hit the A. That’s what keeps it moving forward. Then the bridge is the big release emotionally and lyrically: It’s the moment where you finally accept & embrace the fact that you’re about to break down, and there’s no escaping it anymore. With that realisation of the imminent burst, the song builds to the climax where the Bass now finally hits the A.
Ends sharp, and you’re left with heavy breathing, just like you would be if you had cried it out.
Also I reckon I’d snap a string if I tried playing anymore than 4 bars of the riff with that energy at the end!
I fucking love this song. You recorded all the elements right?
Thank you very much mate! Yeah man, all live instruments, played them all one by one and recorded it myself. That’s the case with every track on the Album (except for ‘A Soundcheck’ which was a literal soundcheck I did with some mates at a studio back in December 2022).
if you want something done right..
Tell us about the writing process for this one.
My writing always begins at an instrument. I’ll just jam away until I find something that inspires me to start singing gibberish noises over it. In this case it was the guitar part, I was playing with my voice in a way I hadn’t tried before and became really excited by it.
Through the random stuff I was singing, the lyric ‘I wanted to break’ fell out, and it caught me off guard. I kept trying to change it and find another lyric but nothing else felt natural.
Here I was, hyped up & having a great time – singing unconsciously over an exciting guitar riff – and the words falling out of me were about wanting to cry! I wasn’t at all aware I’d been holding anything in until I wrote that song.
Writing Break, I discovered that artists can learn things about their deep rooted self, simply though the act of creating freely.
Big ups bro! Thanks so much for taking the time to share with us. You can find Jake Arvonen’s A solo Journey here:
I met Jake through Uni when I quit my job and went to study for a year. I left Uni with a diploma but regularly do one-on-one sessions with Jake using Logic. He taught me how to make beats and mix my tracks. I will be forever grateful.
That’s an awesome read… dudes got some amazing talent.
Yeah he’s the best bro. Thanks for reading!