June McDoom Weaves Dub Bass Into Folk on Debut Album — SkimNews
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- "Follow the Light" pairs McDoom's folk intimacy with Jamaican dub's deep bass — a fusion she says she imagined before she understood what her debut album would say, calling the project "a puzzling process of me trying to put together my different influences."
- June McDoom grew up in Florida with Jamaican-American parents, where her father built oversized speaker boxes and ran DJ setups "to see how loud they could get," shaping her attraction to the textures of recording.
- McDoom and partner Evan Wright self-produce in a Greenpoint, Brooklyn studio outfitted with an eight-track reel-to-reel, Ampex preamps, a Roland Space Echo RE-201, a Sound Workshop mixing desk, and a Roland Jupiter-8.
- On "Grandpa," McDoom brings in her grandfather, who plays banjo and guitar in a mento (Jamaican folk) band; his vocal was recorded remotely on her father's iPhone.
- McDoom imposed strict lyrical discipline on the album, contrasting with her 2022 debut EP where excitement carried her past words she wasn't fully satisfied with.
- McDoom didn't recognize the record's themes until it was finished — songs like "Get Out of My Life" crystallized around releasing people who don't fully accept her, a message she says emerged organically from the songwriting.
- Judee Sill and Joni Mitchell harmonies, plus records like Alton Ellis's rock steady, anchor the project's dual folk and Jamaican lineage.
Why it matters: McDoom's self-produced fusion of hushed folk and dub bass — supported by family mento traditions and a deliberately technical home studio — positions her as a craftsperson working outside genre conventions and prioritizing sonic identity over commercial predictability for a debut long-player.
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