[tw/ s*xual assault, r*pe]

Producer JEZTLS shares a powerful message on his first track from his self-produced EP El Paradiso.

Release Date: 23rd July.

Affair sees the producer take the spotlight, providing his own vocals for the first time in his career. The lyrics tackle his experience of sexual assault whilst studying abroad in France for the past 6 months.

In just over 2 minutes the track deals with the trauma head-on, he glides through vocal styles of singing and rapping, taking influence from the alternative R&B world of James Blake and the grime music he encountered growing up in England. 

Speaking on the track he says: 

“Affair to me is such a representative song. I dealt with so much hurt after being assaulted, I spent two weeks stuck in a tiny room in student accommodation in a foreign country. I was so stunned after it happened, it felt like it took a lifetime to fully process – so when I finally got out of bed and pulled up this beat I’d made for another artists session, the truth all fell out.

I’d previously planned to release a collaboration album, it was all set for the end of April, but after the assault it just fell apart and I realised I was the only person that could speak my own truth. It’s funny producing and writing for other people all your life, then one day something clicked and I realised as much as I hate my own voice – singing these songs myself is the most courageous and honest thing I can do as an artist. The structure of Affair fully allowed me to channel the different notions I went through: Denial, Pain and Anger. I’m not a rapper but I knew that I had so much to address in the final verse – it just came out like that. 

The music video was directed by Luc Chief of Sprayfilms. 

The video came around so organically, I reached out to Luc by chance – he was in Rennes where I was studying at the time and we had one meeting before the shoot. I knew I wanted something simplistic to focus the narrative of the song. I got some of my friends to be in the video too – to kind of represent how overseen assault is and its universal victims. It was so disheartening to go through it myself, but also to have so many people come forward sharing their own experience of sexual assault and rape was even more heart-breaking. All my queer friends were really my support system during the healing process. As a gay man it was always a horror story I’d ruled out of being able to experience. In my opinion we really need to open up the discussion around sexual assault in our community.

The main thing I want people to take away from the song is that there is power in owning our own narrative. For all those suffering from sexual assault related trauma there is a vast network of resources out there – it took me weeks to fully process the events and I’m still very much dealing with the aftereffects psychologically. I’m going to be donating all of the royalties from the song to Galop, an LGBTQ+ anti-abuse and violence charity. 

For more info please feel free to drop me an email at jeztls.info@gmail.com or a dm on insta @jeztls! My EP is still a work in progress but if you’d like to hear the unmixed demos feel free to hit me up :)

 

[Official Cover Art]