The intimate and indefinite world of Jane Remover

Jane Remover appears in our Spring 2024 Issue with cover stars Liam Gallagher/John Squire, Kevin Abstract, the Marías, and Palaye Royale. Head to the AP Shop to grab a copy. 

In fifth grade, Jane Remover stayed up late the night of March 14, checking the iTunes Store over and over, holding her breath for Recess to drop. Had she not so diligently waited to dissect Skrillex’s debut album, had she not fallen down the rabbit hole of Taio Cruz and Katy Perry mashups on YouTube — perhaps, Jane would still be sitting in a dorm, halfway through her second semester of college. Instead, those inherently post-internet sounds led her here, blinking at me through cat eye glasses on a Zoom call. In the thick of her teenage years, Jane released unique projects under a slew of aliases, coined an entirely new genre, “Dariacore,” and before the age of 18 had written and released two acclaimed albums, Frailty and Census Designated — each inherently Jane, each astoundingly unique.

Read more: Kevin Abstract’s SoCal Network

Each work, Jane tells me, is a “time capsule.” The result is a sound both intimate, and indefinite; it’s a synthesis of digicore, indie rock, EDM, hyperpop, and shoegaze, regaling stories of where, and who, Jane Remover has been — her youth notwithstanding. “Sometimes, I have to remind myself how young I am in the grand scheme of things, you know?” Jane tells me. “I turned 20 four or five months ago. A lot of the people that I’ve been working with are quite older than me, but I don’t feel out of place, so it can be hard to remember my age. And that encourages me, and reminds me, that this is only the beginning, and I have a really long career ahead of me.”

As a listener, I don’t feel like your age is “heard” or obvious at all — however, given the reality of being 20, of both growing up and growing as an artist simultaneously — do you feel like there are ways youth gets into your sound? 

When an album comes out, it’s told from the voice of the age that I was making it. It’s kind of a time capsule of what I was making at 17, 18, and 19… The music is very much a slow burn — but it doesn’t age because it just captures what I wanted to do at that time. 

What would you say is the throughline across all of the work you’ve done? 

When I listen to my music, I can tell that I made it. Being an artist is distinguishing that sound and making it your own, even if it’s, for lack of better words, a cookie-cutter type of song or album or project. There could be a hundred musicians who all make an album with just their voice and the guitar, Pink Moon-type shit. But it’s going to sound different because everybody sings differently and writes differently. 

What was it that made you want to do it? Was there a moment where you thought you could do it, or heard something and set your goal on that track? Was it even a goal?

At a very young age, music had a deep emotional impact on me. It always evoked a strong emotion out of me, and I could catch onto a melody or song really quickly when I was little, which made me want to make something for myself. Also, on YouTube in the early 2010s, I got really into the mashup rabbit hole. I remember one of my favorite mashups when I was a kid was “California Girls” and “Dynamite” by Taio Cruz.

But I didn’t start writing music as a kid. I took piano lessons for a few years. I took drum lessons for one year, but after learning, after going through it enough, I found that following instructions was stressful in the world of music, and I would prefer to just do my own thing. So when I got my first iPod, I would download all the little free music apps on the App Store and just make a bunch of little demos and stuff, but I didn’t really post ’em anywhere. I was just practicing on my little iPod, discovering music through EDM and the internet, listening to the radio — and Spotify coming out was about the same time I started posting my own stuff.

I want to talk about the last two projects that you put out. I think that there’s a really interesting development from one to the other, and I am curious to hear about the process of that and also just the process that you have, whether it’s internally and externally, going into album mode — starting with Frailty, and how from there, you found your way to the next album. 

I started making Frailty halfway through my senior year of high school. I think with the stress of applying to colleges and stuff, and I guess senior year is supposed to be serious in a way — crossing the barrier from high school to college... Frailty is a love letter to childhood and crossing the bridge between becoming an adult from being a child to an adult. It’s really video game/music-based. There’s a lot of melodies from radio pop music from the 2010s. There’s a lot of EDM influence from it. I wanted to wear my childhood music on my sleeve for that album, and I had a really big emotional tie to it.

I remember not really having an emotional connection to my own music prior to making Frailty. I was 17 making these songs and tearing up a little bit, and I was like, “This is something really special.” After it came out, the funny part is I had a huge awakening — and I didn’t like it as much as when I was making it. I thought, “This is childish, too corny. I should be making adult music.” But I had just turned 18. So the next thought was, “Why am I in a rush to be an adult all of a sudden?” It was a whirlwind of emotions and self-evaluation. And that’s what led to making Census Designated, four or five months later, with the intent of making something different from Frailty, tapping into different parts of my brain and making some of the lyrics abstract. So nobody would really know the meaning except me. 

Did you have that same whirlwind feeling after Census Designated? 

I was really doubtful for maybe the first month or two after. “What if Frailty was just this little ball of magic that dried up?” But I think what brought me back down to Earth was that I had the same emotional connection to both while making each album. The emotions were there. If the faith in the music is there pre-rollout, and for as long as the music belongs to you, I think your opinion is probably the one that matters the most. Until it’s released to the public and ready to be dissected by everyone else… But I think Census Designated also set the scene for what’s to come five, 10, 15 years into my career — where no two albums sound the same. That’s a goal for me. Obviously, I’m still in the beginning stages. I’m still at ground zero for that.

It’s a big-picture thing. 

Right now the girls that get it, get it — but for the girls that don’t get it, just come back to it in two or five years.