Meet Wallace, the producer making nature-inspired house and hosting DIY pub raves

“The best music of mine has come out when you I don’t know where the hell I’m going,” Jimmy Wallace tells Rolling Stone UK.

In the few years he has been making music under his surname, the Shrewsbury-based DJ and producer has released an increasingly eclectic mix of house music and become one of the most exciting DJs on the circuit. He’s also become a favourite at Berlin’s Berghain, and will close Panorama Bar’s famous New Year’s Eve party this year.

Inspired by the nature of his hometown and childhood trips with his nature documentary creator father, Wallace draws from his surroundings on music that feels airy and natural, despite also packing a hell of a punch in a nightclub.

In our interview, he discusses throwing much-needed free raves in his hometown, the initial sparks that bring a song to life, and hopes for the greater democratisation of both creating and promoting your music.

Listen to new track ‘Cravings’, featuring Love Letters, below and read our Play Next interview with Wallace.

Your new single ‘Cravings’, released on Erol Alkan’s Phantasy, is the first Wallace music to feature a guest vocalist – what made you want to make that step with this release?

Dance music often removes the voice, and by doing that you’re invited to explore meaning through the sounds, rather than just being explicitly told by a vocalist how or what to feel. That’s kind of ironic, because my new record is a collaboration with a vocalist, but it was actually the timbre of his voice that really drew me to Maxime, aka Love Letters.

It was really interesting working with a vocalist and circling back to exploring the new and the unfamiliar and doing something different. ‘Cravings’ being the name of the song gives it such a subject, but the subject is different for everyone. Despite his inspiration for the lyrics being about intimacy, sex, love and desire, he very much wanted everyone to find their own meaning in cravings as a subject.

You’ve put out releases on Phantasy, On Loop, Rhythm Section and more – how do you go about tailoring certain songs for certain labels?

I write music with spaces in mind – everything has to make sense. That’s the same for labels. I’ll write music and then when I’m sending it, it’s like, ‘I think that this makes sense for you guys’, for a certain label. I’m not going to release music just because I love a label or want to be on a label, it has to, first and foremost, sound like it’s in that label’s world and make sense to their ethos. The Phantasy record very much makes sense on their label. The more ambient album I wrote for Mule Musiq last year, that nature-led sound made sense in their world. I make the music and then conceptualise where I think it would fit.

A lot has been made of the connection between your music and nature – where does that stem from?

All artists are just products of their environment. I moved back to my hometown at the point of starting to learn to make music, I was surrounded by nature, and it was a lot more peaceful than a city. Having nature at the core of a lot of my work was a product of being in my hometown. When I was growing up, my mum was a music teacher and my dad made nature documentaries, so these things were infused from childhood.

I’ll often go out for walks with a field recording device, and start a song with just that playing, so I’m in a headspace of that particular moment. Alot of the sounds from my Red, Yellow, Black album are from time spent in Tokyo. To then have [that album] coming out on a Japanese label made total sense.

The best music of mine has come out when you I don’t know where the hell I’m going. That naivety and that playfulness of just exploring often leads you to a sound or a little moment or an idea: ‘God, that reminds me of when I was on that street in Tokyo, or when I was on that mountain.’ Once you’ve got that idea that, you’re flying and you roll with it. The music’s written itself in a way.

And your recent EP ‘Tanzanite’ is inspired by a childhood trip to Africa…

I didn’t go in with the idea of writing something about my childhood. When my dad would make those animal programmes, we’d often tag along on his trips. It’s quite nice to have these little diary entries when you’re not making the music for anyone else – you’re just writing these experiences and creating a song about something that has happened in your life. I remember playing it to my dad, and he was like, ‘I don’t quite see how that’s got anything to do with our time in Africa’, so it means something completely different to him as it does to me, but you can’t control that. There’s no point in worrying too much about what other people think about your art – it’s just first and foremost got to come from your authentic self.

You’ve also started putting on parties in Shrewsbury and other small towns – can you tell us a little bit about them and the idea behind them?

The idea was driven by two parties that I went to in pubs at the start of this year. I like the atmosphere of throwing a party in a pub. It feels a bit less formal than a club. Obviously want people to dance, but it doesn’t seem as forced. Pubs are quite familiar places that we’ve all spent thousands of hours since our teens dicking around in. It feels a bit more charming and a bit less forced. Those kinds of experiences, and the fact that nothing ever happens in Shrewsbury, led me and a few mates to formulating this idea of throwing a party in a pub.

Shrewsbury has the most pubs per square mile on the whole planet, so we weren’t short of places, but finding one that was stupid enough to let us in was a bit harder! We found one that has emotional attachment for us, and it felt like a really nice gathering of people. It’s a different offering for Shrewsbury, and good for the town to have something to come together for. It’s also very important to us that it’s free – it’s not about money, just putting smiles on faces.

Do you think these kinds of parties – in less-travelled areas or with less budget – are places that every established DJ should play more?

I was listening to a DJ Bone thing last week, where he was saying that it’s so important when you are in those positions of power to be prepared to play those smaller venues for less money in more remote places, because beyond just helping the venue, often the people that go to that will have never have had those experiences, and that can spark the next generation of artists. Without you going and playing those small places, that never happens, it doesn’t foster these smaller venues.

It’s clear the democratisation of music discovery, creation and performance is very important to you – how do you feel able to manifest it in your small way?

So often, music is viewed as this competition. From the minute people were pushing me to share my music and supporting me, I’ve always thought that same thing when people send me music. I’m always trying to push them or inspire them, or fill them with a little bit of confidence. The only competition should be you individually pushing yourself to be better, rather than obsessing over why others are successful rather than them. Lagely, that’s the fault of Instagram and Spotify and big business and money. For me, it’s always been: ‘How can we how can we support and share and build the community, rather than of me against me against you.’