Effin lets his heart do the sampling.
Three years ago, the now-30-year-old bass artist—real name JD Bowden—was struggling to find his place in electronic music. After launching his career with a slew of heavy dubstep and trap hits, the Nashville-based producer and DJ committed to a new sound: his own sample-heavy strain of bass music, splicing midcentury vocal recordings, old-school hip-hop, and decades of obscure musical references into highly engineered productions.
It failed to gain traction at first, costing him both his manager and booking agent. But now the gamble is paying off: his well-received sophomore album, Daydreams, paved the way for a sold-out headline tour and a packed festival season this summer, with milestone performances at Coachella, Bonnaroo, Electric Forest, and Lost Lands.
Today, Effin brings his penchant for musical nostalgia and artful storytelling to Heartbeats, his new concept album. Where Daydreams explored the abstract world of dreams, its successor examines love, heartbreak, and human connection through vintage samples and some of his most personal songwriting to date.
With more of his own music dreams now realized, the artist himself makes the distinction more simply: “It’s a love album instead of a dream album.”
Ahead of today’s release, EDM Maniac spoke with Effin about the setbacks behind his breakthrough, the obscure musical discoveries and personal relationships that shaped Heartbeats, and his theatrical ambitions for his biggest headline show yet at Mission Ballroom in Denver on January 16.
EDM Maniac: You’re coming off Lost Lands after what’s already been a huge year for your project. Was there a specific moment when you realized things had reached a completely different level?
Effin: I think after the Daydreams album and the following tour, everything started feeling a lot different. All the shows sold out on the tour, which I had never had before in my career.
When we finally did the last stop at the Ogden in Denver and sold out that room, it definitely felt like, “Oh, this next year is about to be completely different.” And then, obviously, I got to play something like 22 festivals this year, which is just a dream come true. I had a blast doing it the whole time.
EDM Maniac: It feels like your growth has come piece by piece rather than from one massive moment. What did you do early in the Effin project that’s paying off the most now?
Effin: I switched directions with the project around mid-2023, and it was honestly a low point. I wasn’t super happy with any of the shows I was playing, and I felt like I couldn’t really find my niche or the exact space I wanted within the EDM world. Then I went down this rabbit hole of this new sample-heavy, vintage, retro sound that I’ve been doing for the past couple of years.
Originally, it felt like a little bit more of the same. People were like, “Oh, this is new,” but didn’t know the full picture I had in mind. After the first album, things were still super slow, and I ended up getting dropped by my management and booking agent at the same time, which would feel like a death sentence for a lot of artists. But I was so deeply convinced by the style I was going for, and I felt like I had a lot more to share. I was able to do that over the next year with a new team.
That was the pivotal moment. It was a low point, but honestly, it felt like the bottom before the big climb.
EDM Maniac: You’ve described Daydreams as proving you could make a concept album, and Heartbeats as you going all-in. What does going all-in mean this time, and how does the new album build on its predecessor?
Effin: It’s me wearing my heart on my sleeve.
I don’t think there are many EDM projects that have done concept albums. Obviously, there are a few in the electronic music space, but in the EDM sphere I work in, there are very few. I thought Daydreams was an awesome way to showcase a lot of my influences through this line of dreams, and Heartbeats is just the next iteration of that. It’s a love album instead of a dream album.
It’s coded front to back in little whimsical love letters, and it’s all about love, your heart, and heartbreak. However you want to interpret that, whether that’s love for yourself, a significant other, your family, or your community, I think for me it was all of the above.
There’s a bit of a love story intertwined within the tracklist. I wanted to develop it around the emotions you experience, whether that’s the honeymoon phase, heartbreak, the high points, or the low points. There are a lot of different sides of love that you’ll receive and give in your life, and I wanted to showcase that in the music while also exploring all my favorite influences, samples, and ideas throughout the decades. It was almost an immediate idea after I finished the last album. I knew this was the album we needed to write.
EDM Maniac: With songwriting in sharper focus on Heartbeats, did you find yourself producing differently or making creative choices you wouldn’t have made previously?
Effin: Absolutely. There are so many little moments where, on your third or fourth listen, you’ll be like, “Oh my God, I didn’t hear that the first time.” There are so many tiny pieces that come together when you listen through a couple of times, and I think those moments make the entire piece feel so much more cohesive.
There were a lot of arrangement decisions I made based on a gut feeling. Capturing that feeling in the songwriting process was one of the most important parts for me. There’s literally a song on the album called “The Feeling,” and I wanted to capture not only the feeling of love, heartbreak, or whatever emotion, but also that first flow state when you’re writing a song. I wanted to make sure I stayed true to those moments.
Sometimes that meant making some crazy arrangement decisions. There are a lot of drops that are just instrumentation, which is a style I feel like I haven’t really heard before, not even from myself, but within the sphere we’re in.
I hope people like it and understand what I was going for.
EDM Maniac: Sampling has always been such a distinct part of your music. Is there a particular sample or reference on Heartbeats that carries a personal meaning for you?
Effin: The very last minute of the final song, the outro, is a replay of this incredible song called “Welcome to My World” by the Anita Kerr Singers.
They were actually a Nashville group from the ’50s. A lot of the time, they were doing background vocals and chorus vocals for other Nashville pop or country songs. It felt like this full-circle, coming-home moment to be able to weave that into my own project as the final closing moment.
EDM Maniac: How do you find these obscure recordings, and what music rabbit holes have you gone down lately?
Effin: I honestly spend way too much time every day in little rabbit holes, whether that’s YouTube, Spotify, different niche websites, or sometimes even finding an old mixtape that doesn’t exist anywhere else. A lot of old New York hip-hop, a lot of ’50s and ’60s music, and then new-age sound design or whatever is exciting me at the moment.
A lot of the samples just come from me being a huge music nerd and having a deep appreciation for so many different styles. I can definitely thank my parents for that. Whether it’s vinyl, Spotify, YouTube, or all these tiny little pieces of music, I can literally follow one crumb down an entire rabbit hole and explore a song, an idea, or a theme all the way through.
The last rabbit hole I went down was actually yesterday, looking at old videos of DJ Cheeba and Coldcut, two sample-driven acts working with plunderphonics. It was incredible to watch the kind of performances they were able to do even 20 years ago with samples. It gave me so many ideas for how I can incorporate my own ideas, samples, and sounds into the live show.
EDM Maniac: Was there a particular person or relationship you found yourself thinking about while making the album? How much of your personal life made its way into the record?
Effin: I think it’s all of the above. The first one I can obviously say is my girlfriend Shelby. She’s a massive part of this project. Navigating being gone half the year while having my most successful year and our relationship developing even further is a massive part of this album.
But it’s also the love I feel from fans on a day-to-day basis. Every single time I get to talk to someone at a show, every single time someone has a new story of how they discovered the project.
It’s my most personal album yet. There’s so much of my emotion tied into it, whether that’s being on the road with my busiest touring schedule yet, then coming home during the week and trying to work on this project that I knew I wanted to make before I even went on these 60 tour dates this year.
It’s been a personal battle, but also about trying to convey the love I’ve felt in my personal life and from the Effin fan base that continues to grow, and putting that into a sonic space. It’s not just a love story for myself. It’s a love story for everyone.
EDM Maniac: Your upcoming Mission Ballroom show will be your biggest headline performance yet and the first stop on the Heartbeats album tour. How are you building the show?
Effin: The first thing, and probably the only thing I’ll say, is that it’s going to be a ride. And that wording is very intentional.
That show is something we’ve been building toward for what feels like three or four years. Denver understands my project so much, and they’ve always been super supportive. We did the first Daydreams album release party there, and then the final show at the Ogden. Mission was just the next step.
I have so many fun creative ideas for how we’re going to make it almost like a theater. It’s going to be super theatrical, with production that’s off the wall. We have such an incredible team working on every little aspect, from when you enter the venue to when you leave. It’s absolutely going to be something I haven’t experienced, and the fans haven’t either. We’re going above and beyond to showcase what we can do in a live environment.
With rooms of this size, we can bring in these incredible teams where every single moment feels like an iteration of the Effin project. Every song is going to have its own specific visuals, lights, and lasers. I’ve never been able to have that for the project before. There’s also a lot more we’re going to do with the live tour, whether that’s special versions of songs, little VIPs, or visual moments you obviously can’t convey within a Spotify playlist. They’ll finally get to see the evolution of the Effin project, and I can give them the show I’ve always wanted to.
Featured image courtesy: Effin.
