Local electronic musician Jayne Murray—also known as Jayne Imagination—released her new album Friends on July 27. And while the album—her second this year, following up May’s Messenger—is the latest step forward for Murray, she’s also looking back. Murray says that she had a spectacular childhood, so much so that she never wanted to stop being a child, although her imagination has only grown stronger over the years as she’s grown up.
“Yeah, I had a really awesome childhood,” says Murray. “I think something cool for me that I’ve thought about a lot recently is when I was a kid, like when I was like eight or nine, I figured it out that I didn’t want to be an adult, I wanted to be a kid forever. And I’ve said this before that I feel like where I’m at now, I feel like my imagination is much larger and stronger than that of when I was eight or nine years old. So, I feel very honouring of that younger version of myself in that way.”
Murray realized that she wanted to make music while she was exploring other artistic endeavours like painting and drawing. She recognized that having music playing in the background was one of the best parts of creating.
“When I first started getting into art, I started painting and drawing first, that was like, ‘Oh, this is it, this is what I need, I need to draw and paint because I love it,” she says. “But there was always [music playing] in the background and that was like, the best part, and playing it loud and playing it loud in my car. And then it finally clicked for me: ‘Oh, I could make music,’ and it just kind of all came together that way.”
While Murray has goals for her future, she’s trying to enjoy the process between achieving her dreams and where she is now in her music career.
“I think the ultimate [goal] would be at Wembley Stadium with like, my performance and my stuff that I want to bring on stage with me, which isn’t necessarily music,” she says. “And there’s a whole vision attached to what the end goal is, but, especially now, I’m definitely really appreciating the sort of slow climb or the process. There’s lots of cool stuff that hopefully will happen in between the time now and the end goal. So, I’m just trying to enjoy it.”
Besides music, Murray’s family and friends—both real and imaginary—are the most important things to her.
“I feel like I can’t get enough friends… It’s not the amount of friends, just having those really strong bonds that are really important to me,” she says. “I think also within my imagination, I feel like I have friends in my imagination that I also feel very strongly towards. So, it’s a good balance of, you know, imaginary friends, but also, you know, friends that I talk to and see.”
Murray allows her curiosity to take over when she is creating music. Instead of sitting down and writing songs, she draws inspiration from different sounds on her computer.
“I don’t really write music, I just make it because it’s all in the computer, like, it’s electronic,” says Murray. “I either am attracted to sounds that I like or sounds that inspire me in some way and then I try and be open-minded to different sounds. And being curious about, ‘Well, I wonder what would happen here?’ Being curious about if I did that or this. Curiosity is really important, I think.”