The Juice

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If The Juice had been born a hundred years ago, he’d have kept a journal. Instead of putting pen to paper, he took advantage of a world of digital reproduction and sophisticated home recording technology to produce thunderous beats and waves of moody electronica. His music serves as an honest and captivating record of his environment, emotions and influences, simultaneously embracing the strange and familiar in a sonic self-portrait. Based out of Marin County, CA with sojourns in both San Francisco and Los Angeles, The Juice is the solo work of Jake Forsland. With a production style that incorporates a wide breadth of modern musicology from classic hip-hop to house electronica, The Juice offers up an ever-evolving catalogue of styles to match his kaleidoscope of experiences. Listening to a Juice album is like getting abducted by a hip-hop alien; he’s going to show you some phenomenal shit you’ve never seen before and he might even experiment on your brain too.
Premium, Juice’s 2006 debut, is chock full of strange tones and upright beats that resonate with his Bay Area sensibility. With aspects of neo-soul, crisp drums and pulsing synthesizer leads that sound like an Atari on Salvia, The Juice delivers forty-five minutes of unorthodox electronic rutting that simultaneously enlivens and soothes. Tracks like “Mayday” and “Crampz” model the Juice’s signature driving, electric leads that he paints over a clean and straight up low-end production style. These aggressive and hypnotic jams mingle with Juice’s more ambient moments to create a viscous and often divided sound that embodies both the extreme and accessible elements of modern electronica. “Trip” and “White Sound” both offer up Juice’s brooding and moody side while secreting an alternative to the up-tempo offerings frequent in neo hip-hop production. Within these sticky songs, ambient strings and organs play with thick beats in an enjoyable state of divided identity. The Juice’s intentional and ironic use of contrast in production is most prominent in his standout track “Vertigo”. Based on a standard ethereal cell phone ring tone, the oscillating dance of the distorted keyboard lead and sparse synth sweeps play under an iconic sample of Mike Tyson’s pre fight speech. Nowhere is The Juice’s divided and captivating musical identity more apparent than when Tyson’s words “I want your heart, I want to eat his children” grace the silky textures of the underlying synthesizer patterns.
These self-deprecating and joking themes play out most noticeably in the Juice’s 2007 collaboration with Atlanta MC Voo Da Teach. How I Spent My Summer Vacation plays like a dub expose of Juice’s finest work. With Voo Da Teach taking over the melodic responsibilities typically relegated to pixilated synthesizers, the production showcases Juice’s beats and their ability to accentuate the rapid syncopation of hip hop vocals. Beginning with the pounding pulse of synthetic snares and bass on “DNA” the five track EP journeys through every space of The Juice’s frontal lobe. On “Fistful of Dollars” an odd electric buzz gives way to a reduced drum line that sits in the pocket with a simple groove while Teach delivers his accelerated vocals. This smooth, back seat production gives way to the grandiose retro funk of “Pick Her Up” where Juice’s thick organ parts and wiry guitar lines out shadow the vocals and drive hard over his rhythmic chassis of high tempo drums. Voo Da Teach and the Juice are currently working on an outlandish full-length follow up LP due sometime later this year.
In 2008, Juice released his second solo LP, Skeletummy. Bridging the physical and musical gap between his home in the Bay and his lair in Los Angeles, the album chronicles The Juice’s disparate environments and experiences. More mature and developed than his previous albums, Skeletummy provides a greater variety of tones and an advanced display of drum beats that blend the sparse and the overwhelming. The second track “Dagger In My Back Pocket” highlights Juice’s mastery of drum tracking with an initially simplistic beat that swells to an unrelenting pattern. The Juice mixes up the traditional rhythm elements to create a kind of pitched melody out of his immense digital drum kit while toying with the track’s tempo. Immediately following “Dagger” is Juice’s urban stroll anthem “Hoover St.”. Based on his local haunt, this Soul inspired jam is a lively take on the Juice’s natural habitat. Closing the album is the title track “Skeletummy”. Opening with layered synth vocal choruses, this track explodes with the Juice’s signature rhythms and both clean and distorted keyboard parts in a busy overture of tones that summarize the breadth of the album.
With a will for reckless (and often successful) electronic exploration and a wide swath of personal influences, the Juice is an heir to the Digital Millennium. His work serves as a porthole into his realm through a synthetic and colorful musical environment. The Juice’s music is all about the man himself, when you get inside the rhythms and synthesizers you receive a glimpse of what he’s all about. Listening to any of his offerings proves that both he and his Frankenstein musical monster are enigmas that are well worth cracking.
-Dan Johnson
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