Jaemus
Josh Jackson came to house music the long way round, and the detour is what makes his sound. In the late 1990s he was a popper on the dance floors of the Indianapolis and Chicago underground, and the warehouse DJs, poppers, lockers and breakers of the Midwest and beyond remain the people he makes music for. Before he was a producer he was a dancer, and you can hear that in every groove.
He started producing golden-era hip-hop instrumentals in 2002 and spent more than eighteen years mixing hip-hop, downtempo and drum and bass before house finally pulled him in. When it did, it was decisive. In the summer of 2022 in Seattle he debuted as a house DJ at Monkey Loft, Timbre Room and Club Mercury, three rooms central to the city's underground.
All of this has happened alongside a 25-year military career and a family, a reminder that much of the best underground music is made by people fitting their passion around full, demanding lives. A 2025 Seattle House Mafia interview described him as a devoted father and husband who brings relentless drive, focus and passion to dance music, aiming to leave a lasting mark on the culture. That discipline shows in how quickly he has built momentum since switching to house.
Today he makes house and deep house from his home in San Diego. The sound is vibrant, funky and soulful: a dancer's house music, with underground hip-hop and drum and bass still in its bones. The drums swing, the basslines bounce, and there is always something for the body to lock onto. His records have found homes on Quantize, Kolour, Moulton Music and Robsoul, as well as Late Night Jackin, Uniting Souls Music, Piston Recordings, Groovphoria, Deep Tech Recordings, Deep Fix Recordings and Late Night Munchies, labels with a shared taste for soulful, grooving house.
That dancer's perspective is his signature. Where some producers start from chords or sound design, Jaemus starts from movement: what will make a popper hit, what will make a floor bounce, what will keep people moving at the end of the night. It gives his music a physical quality that is hard to fake, and it explains why DJs who play for dancers keep coming back to his records.
On Red Melon, Jaemus co-wrote and co-produced "Keep On" with Dano, released on June 13, 2025. Its J Stays Jackin Edit, a West Coast floor mix of around six minutes, lets a live-feeling jazz trumpet take the lead.
With both producers based in Southern California, the record is a local collaboration with a classic West Coast heart, a meeting of a dancer's instinct and a label owner's decades of groove. For Red Melon, it is also proof that the West Coast sound is still drawing in new voices, and that some of the best of them arrive by an unexpected route.
