On the record with Julius Black

Words by Liam Stretch.

There’s something intoxicating happening in the New Zealand music scene at the moment; it’s a renaissance of the Kiwi sound. 

There have been a few that have helped shape this: Benee, Lorde, Robinson, Mako Road, The Butlers, Riiki. Good song writing is back, and a unique, Aotearoa tone has been borne from these artists, and the world has an ear to it.

A new addition to our playlists is 19-year-old Julius Black with his new singles Mirrors and Summer. Currently based in Christchurch, he has spent some time living in Auckland and grew up in Shanghai before that – Julius Black is a lyric-meister with a finger on the pulse of the developing scene.

We had a chat about how things are shaping up since he released his first track, the New Zealand music scene, and his goals.

I remember when I first met Julius – Jonathan is his real name. It was during a variety concert at our high school. His performance blew the rest out of the water and made my lip sync of We Built This City look like a camp caricature. So, having seen him at the start of things, I was wondering how his musical journey began and how he became the artist he is now. 

“[My musical career] was pretty random. I started playing instruments after I discovered punk rock and Hip Hop. At that time, I was listening to really rebellious sounding stuff; then I started learning really basic instruments and that sort of snowballed and I started learning more and more and got into gospel music as well as R’n’B music.

“Then, after school, I started getting really serious into my song writing, because I hadn’t written that many and really wanted to be an artist and to be an artist you have to have songs. So last year I wrote about 50 songs, and I had a cool little community around me in Auckland that were a bunch of songwriters – and we were doing cowrites. That side of things just opened itself, and I learned more about language and creative writing.”

Having built up a repertoire of content, he found that the song writing process can often be an arduous one, this made when the lyrics for his first release came to him – Mirrors – the sweetest of moments.

 “It was kind of like a sky-parting moment; it was one of those rare moments of clarity for me where the song just appeared. It just felt easier – and Struan just killed the production, and we did it in basically a day. It just felt finished.”

Julius describes this track as ‘existential art pop’.

“… it sounds kind of silly, but the song is quite existential – like ‘what am I doing in life?’.”

The single, which I would put into the flourishing neo-blues pop category, is full of artistic elements thanks to the producer, Struan Finlay (Sunlayyyy), putting his aesthetically pleasing touches on it, and crisp and clean pop elements shine through as well. This pairing of producer and artist is so complementary, with the story effortlessly translated by every listeners’ eardrums, beaming reflected experiences onto the mirrors of our minds.

The next few to be released are of a similar ilk; he says the production and the writing are in the same world as Mirrors. Having personal meaning behind it, the inspiration for Mirrors stems from a difficult time in Julius’ career. 

“Mirrors comes from a time of anxiety. I put a lot of expectations on myself which almost stopped me from writing songs.

I had writers’ block; I was trying to do music; I was living in Auckland, and I was living away from my parents. There was a lot of anxiousness and nervous energy, and I think I realised the root of all of the issues I felt was just because I was comparing myself to everyone else. Julius explains that in the age of social media, Mirrors is a reminder that expectation is self-inflicted. If you can find a way to trick yourself into being more present and less existential about things, then you can overcome it.

The flat he was living in also influenced the whole idea of Mirrors; it felt really haunted in a funny way, Julius says. “It had these weird mirrors in this weird room that I was in all the time. That’s kind of how I felt – living in this haunted place, being anxious all the time, comparing myself.”

His other single, Summer, drops today and he describes it as ‘apocalyptic heartbreak’. I got a pre-release listen, and by golly gosh, has this tune come at the perfect time. The ‘thematic nostalgia’ of the vocals holds your hand, then heavy sonic bass lines hit you like a tonne of bricks… not your normal tonne of bricks, though – one that embraces you in its might like a commanding breeze on a tangerine summer dusk.  

Adding his individual sound to Aotearoa’s airwaves, he believes that the uniqueness of New Zealand music can be partly attributed to the spirit within the community. “New Zealand is popping off. There’s a lot of cool producers coming through, cowrites and more collaborations happening. I’m really excited. 

“Because we’re pretty small, everyone sort of knows each other and it is not that weird for me to message someone on Instagram and say ‘hey, I like your music, want to collab?’.”

Julius can’t tell me if we can expect an album but says he has plenty more music in the pipeline – he prefers to create music at his own speed and to finely tune a project before he releases it. 

 “In other fields, you work on your craft to get really good at it – I felt that was the same with music. I want something special, and then get it out there.” This rings true for his personal development as an artist, too. “The goal for me is to find the most honest version of what I can make. You can be metaphorical and tie it into your honesty.”

You can check Julius Black and his singles, Mirrors and Summer, on Spotify and Apple Music, and he hopes to be playing some gigs come this sunny season.