sinner-songwriter | author | intertainer

  While !JP was an ongoing transitional period in Jean’s canon, it is Man Enough To Be A Woman on which he really took control, shed his inhibitions and embraced emerging technology to craft textured, extreme albums that saw him firmly distance himself from the unfair comparisons to Michael Stipe, Kurt Cobain and Brian Molko that had appeared in reviews of his band’s earlier records. Inspired to begin working on each album as being 'a new beginning', and enlightened to the importance of production, texture and vibe, each album was written and recorded in, usually, an 11-month, multiple-studio gestation period during which Jean throws himself wholeheartedly into each project, writing and producing them entirely solo to ensure his ideas are completely realised in their purest form without compromise. The result is an ongoing, everchanging abstract sonic tapestry on which traditional instrumentation battle with synthesised soundscapes, sampled effects and vocal loops, which reve...

“From The Hermit's Bedroom marks Jean Koning’s songwriting coming-of-age” Observer Music Monthly “dense and intense…beauty and passion unravels with repeated plays” 4* Heat “without question his finest [album] since the scorching ‘theLOTUStape’” The Times It’s been five years since the release of FROM THE HERMIT’S BEDROOM—an album based on experiences of total lockdown. A self-imposed lockdown, that is. After years of premiers, openings, and high-class parties, #JK choose to retreat from public-life. However, experience proved, when there’s less white noise coming from the outside, the inner workings tend to seek them in news clippings, rumors, and fantasies. In the wake of such an epiphany, #JK wrote the stories for his fifth solo album. Inspired by books, news events and the outside world—which found a way to seep in through the doors and windows—and on a daily dose of hallucinogenic mushrooms, he fought against the thought of being imprisoned by his own echoes. During the record...

The Twentieth Anniversary Edition of !JP’s “A SINGER MUST DIE” marks the second occasion to self-proclaim the label “Classic” to one of their─frequently overlooked─extremely artistic efforts in the form of an album. Heavily influenced by William S. Burroughs, maleficent hallucinogens, The War On Terror and visions of an apocalyptic landscape, the dystopian─and often dense─material makes sense even now, twenty years later. The songs are constructed from a distorted mindset, effected by a downward spiral, which in turn is caused by a chaotic, egocentric society─easily retraceable to that one point in history, where hijacked planes flew into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. The War On Terror, initiated by the Bush administration in means of retaliation to those─globally felt─terroristic events, is prophetically described in the songs of A SINGER MUST DIE, as a social leache, which every citizen of Planet Earth─regardless of race, identity, social or economical backgrounds, and sexual or...