twisting, techno-infused club, sparkling breaks, and R&B groove create something
evershifting and irreplicable - an experience to catch your breath from. Born and raised
in Philadelphia, her taste crystallized through years of growth in her own DIY scene -
from Garage Band lessons in middle school to the underground ALT+ESC party series
cresting right before COVID. Her breakout as a name to remember is indivisible from
the explosive development of Philadelphia’s musical underground directly
post-pandemic, but her continuation as a figurehead of the scene comes down to a
relentless confidence in her own taste, her homegrown knowledge of where the party is,
and an empathetic understanding of how to keep it going.
Jewels’ journey to musicianship started off acoustically and academically. After
childhood guitar lessons, she was encouraged by her mother to enroll in South
Philadelphia’s Girard Academic Music Program for middle school. Her primary exposure
to electronic production began here. After multiple formative years of being exposed to
music every day, she chose to attend a non-musical high school and focus on digital
film. This transition was the impetus for her then-burgeoning aesthetic sense of story
and worldbuilding. However, the lack of a music program left her missing sonic
creativity, and she began composing soundtracks for film. The result was a now-private
first body of work, but more importantly, an instant creative fascination with the
sensation of dreaming and the understanding that sound design was what she wanted
to pursue.
She began forming lasting creative friendships in her very first year at the Film and
Media Arts program at Temple University, namely with producer BNYX. From this flowed
her initial dip into Philadelphia’s underground as a live beatmaker, keeping the pulse of
basement rap sets. Her introduction to underground dance, however, was a soul-driven
swan dive. She helped start the ALT+ESC rave series in August 2019, with their first
party cascading into her first opportunity to DJ for a dancefloor. Guided by Soundcloud
scouring to unearth funk and house edits and an internal, if-I-like-it-then-it’s-good trust,
JEWELSSEA’s immediate confidence in her own taste at the helm of the floor was
buoyed by an organic enjoyment of the unknown. This initial set combined with her
directly subsequent three months abroad experiencing the surges of Berlin dance culture
catalyzed her realization - “This is what I want to be doing.”
It was this desire for total submersion that continued to propel JEWELSSEA’s
momentum through the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This lull in shows was
accepted as an opportunity to sharpen her production prowess, resulting in August
2020’s introspective and winding first mixtape, It’s All Love. The momentum the
ALT+ESC series had swelled to pre-pandemic allowed Jewels to glide back into the
push-pull of the dancefloor in June 2021 with minimal friction. That summer, she spun
multiple raves a weekend, sometimes multiple a night, and had her first residency
booked by that fall at Philadelphia’s Silk City. By May 2022, she had two additional
residencies at The 700 and LMNO’s The Listening Room spinning under her fingertips,
an invitation from Tierra Whack’s manager to play Adult Swim Fest that August, and her
first offer to open up May’s Making Time with Overmono and HAII. Remaining at the
intersection of rave and rap, she was introduced to Zack Fox through BNYX for a songwriting session in
July 2022 after working on vocals for a piece with Swami Sound, marking the creation
of two new long-term friendships. As she got welcomed back to play The Lot Radio
stage at Making Time’s second ever full-fledged festival that September, a pattern was
shaking clear - Jewels’ genuine love for soundcraft transmuted creative partnerships
into something that leaned everlasting.
With her hand in developing the L8HOUSE dance series in October 2022 from a comic
book idea into a party, a knot was closed in a long thread stretching back to her
pre-Temple days - an orientation towards bringing story to sonic life. That fall, an
internship at Milkboy Studios finally gave Jewels access to a professional room to
experiment in. After a whirlwind year of sets and connections, she wanted a backboned
project to show for the history of work that had gotten her there. During unused
overnight timeslots, the years worth of shifting inspirations had space to solidify into a
unique sonic perspective. From basement shows and underbridge raves to the textural
fixation on dreamscapes and the emotional enthrallment with the unknown, a froth
broke. Out stepped something liquid smooth yet raw-lipped, abraded by salt and
humanity and desire itself - a honed creative focus on the relationship between water
and wanting.
May 2023’s B4 U Wake EP was the first body of work to emerge from this
concentration. Basked in sunrise and showcasing JEWELSSEA’s ability to execute
longstanding ideas, it explored the Venn diagram between love songs and dance tracks
and was paired with a visual world fleshed out through costume design and
photography. February 2024’s Dwelling was born out of the same creative focus. Written
right after B4’s photoshoot wrapped, Dwelling began as a visual world that was then
gifted a voice - a tieback to Jewels’ ground floor experiences with soundtracking after
storyboarding. Expanding on the anarchy of desire and aftermath, Dwelling is
JEWELSSEA’s debut LP and an emotional foil to B4’s tender curiosity. Fantastical,
spiraling, and dangerous like trust, this body of work illuminates JEWELSSEA’s fogging
of the boundaries between fear and excitement, dance and reflection, and sustain and
release.
Through twin currents of glowing dancefloor force and studio-based evocations,
JEWELSSEA’s intricate decision making reflects a world back on the face of the listener.
Like sunlight caught in a lover’s eye before they blink, this is a place to lose yourself in -
if you can release control.
Through sirenesque intensity, JEWELSSEA removes the question.