Jason van Wyk is a composer and music producer based in Cape Town, South Africa.
Starting with his first release in 2004, producing mostly club music during this period, his productions soon found a home on the Dutch label Black Hole Recordings, where numerous singles, collaborations and remixes followed.
2013 saw the release of van Wyk’s first solo album Days You Remember. Moving away from his previously established sound, the album took on a range of influences, from abstract electronic music to post-classical and ambient.
Van Wyk’s second album Attachment was released in 2016 and his third album Opacity in 2017 on the UK label Home Normal. Both albums consisted of minimal compositions for piano, chamber strings and electronics.
In 2018, van Wyk signed to the American label n5MD. His fourth album Threads was released 23 July 2021, with its followup, Descendants, released 21 October 2022. While Threads reflects some of his previous electronic works, Descendants builds upon these production methods, taking its underlying elements further and pushing them to their extremes while diving further into abstract and ambient territory.
Besides his releases, van Wyk has composed for various film, documentary and media projects. These include the feature film Triggered (released through Samuel Goldwyn Films), brands such as The Criterion Collection, Taschen and LinkedIn, library and production music for Universal, Paramount and Netflix, as well as sound design work for Roland.
2023 saw a return to n5MD with Deepriver — a collaborative project together with Swedish, Stockholm-based Joni Ljungqvist. Working together since 2009, this new direction finds the two experimenting with atmosphere and composition to maximal effect while recalling the sounds and nostalgia of electronic music from decades past. Their first release, Volume One, was released 16 June.
Bio written by James Harris (updated June 2023)
Photo by Nanje Nowack