Emerging Producer Jaacobi Celebrates EP Release at Over Under

Jaacobi was barely a teenager when his parents surprised him with a copy of Logic Pro.

"I got Garage Band when I was 12, and a year later, my parents got me Logic Pro as a holiday gift," says the Boca Raton native. "I was a big fan of Odd Future at the time, and I had seen in an interview with Tyler, the Creator that he had started young. I had played drums since I was a little kid, and I saw the interview with Tyler saying he got into it really early on and taught himself how to do it, and I thought, I could do that."

After graduating high school and feeling trapped in South Florida, Jaacobi decided to attend Indiana University Bloomington for college. Unfortunately, he didn't find life alluring in a small college town.

"I was in Indiana for the first semester, and there was literally nothing going on," he says. "I came back home for winter break that year, and I was like, I cannot go back to Indiana and sit around and just fuck off with my friends in school."

During that winter break, he drove south to Miami every chance he got, hoping to score an internship at a recording studio and finish his degree online — something the pandemic lockdown had made possible. While not exactly a studio, he did land an internship at Super Music Group, a Miami-based artist management company.

While interning there, he was told to listen to all the acts the company managed and quickly found himself drawn to the music of Amtrac. "I had listened to him before, but his catalogue had really caught my ear. I felt like I could see that the influences in his music were similar to mine."

So it seems only fitting that after all these years of working at Super Music Group, Jaacobi will finally make his label debut on Amtrac's imprint, Openers. Releasing on Friday, January 10, 3 is a two-track introduction to Jaacobi's sound, which leans toward ambient and IDM. While it's definitely electronic music, you could hardly call his music "danceable," a critique Jaacobi gladly accepts.

"I love electronic music. I love house music. I love IDM stuff. I'm big into that world. But, also, in my day-to-day, I listen to a lot of shoegaze, ambient, punk, hip-hop, and R&B. So I kind of take elements from different genres — I guess a very clear takes are from ambient and jungle, but I put it through this filter because I'm always listening to very eclectic forms of music."
Jaacobi points to Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, Burial, Overmono, They Are Gutting a Body of Water, and, of course, Amtrac as some of the musicians inspiring him these days. Amtrac, in particular, has served as a mentor of sorts for the budding producer.

"Through interning and working full time at Super Music Group, Amtrac and I have struck a friendship — we play Xbox together sometimes," he says with a laugh. "I've sent him my music, and we've had conversations about the music we like. I know he's a huge trip-hop fan. He put me on to the likes of DJ Shadow and the whole Mo' Wax catalogue."

Thanks to Amtrac, 3's title track will also receive a splashy, Big Lebowski-inspired music video, which will premiere on January 10.

"Once Amtrac signed on to release these tracks, I was like, Okay, I wanna do everything I can to use the platform I have with Openers and make this cool world with it."

A fan of the 1998 Coen Brothers comedy, Jaacobi had a rough draft of what he wanted to do for the video, eventually working with director Eric Avila to bring his vision into reality.

"Eric and I hit it off and filmed the video at Bird Bowl. It worked out really well; I was really excited to work with him," he adds.

To celebrate 3's release on Friday, Jaacobi is inviting everyone to Over Under, the downtown bar where he often spins. Dubbed Openers Hotline, the party will also feature DJ sets by Mike Deuce and Troy Kurtz.

"I thought it would be cool to launch the party with people who have released stuff on Openers, too. I am a fan of them as DJs. Troy Kurtz has a track on Openers called 'Acid Rain.' It's like this insane breakbeat/acid track that I play a lot, and when I play it, all my DJ friends always come up to ask me what I'm playing."

Openers Hotline. With Jaacobi, Mike Deuce, and Troy Kurtz. 11 p.m. Friday, January 10, at Over Under, 151 E. Flagler St., Miami; overundermiami.com. Admission is free.