How Jim-E Stack turns the studio into a sandbox: “I’m not trying to push anyone through a certain mould”As 2025 comes to an end and the music world begins taking stock, it’s clear producer Jim-E Stack has had a transformative year.
The 33-year-old produced two of the year’s key records alongside their respective artists, amping up the beautiful catharsis of Lorde’s Virgin and lending his ear for pristine, unpredictable sounds to Bon Iver’s Sable, Fable. On both projects, the artists’ voices and vulnerable lyrics are front and center, underscoring what the producer does best: centering openness, collaboration and experimentation.
Jim-E Stack is on the MusicTech Cover. Image: David Milan Kelly for MusicTech
They also mark Stack out as a prominent producer today. He’s helping bring left-field electronic sensibilities and experimentation into pop music, and it’s sounding better for it. The production and pop worlds have been abuzz about Stack, who has been featured by Universal Audio and the deep-diving Tape Notes podcast – as well as Billboard and GQ. A first-time Grammy nomination for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical could be imminent.
“It’s such an amazing moment, and I’m so grateful for it – to have such a fulfilling year of catharsis with these albums coming out with two artists who I really believe in to their cores,” Stack says in a recent chat from his Los Angeles home. He sits on his couch – his favoured spot for solo jam sessions – flanked by two guitars, and is open and thoughtful in conversation.
“It has certainly set a standard for the kind of work I want to do and what I want to put in… That’s something I want to bring forward from it, really investing my time and creative energy with amazing people that inspire me as individuals.”
“The less tightly you’re grasping onto something, the more room something has to grow”
Born James Horton Stack in San Francisco, music has been core to his life from a young age, drumming in hard rock cover bands in middle school and moving onto jazz bands afterwards. He started to make beats as a teen after having his mind blown listening to the enigmatic British post-dubstep producer Burial. 2007’s Archangel inspired Stack to produce: “If I had never heard Burial and learned this guy was making heartbreaking music just out of samples on Sony Acid Pro, I don’t think I ever would have pursued it myself.”
Soon, he began touring as a DJ, releasing (bootleg) remixes on SoundCloud, and, in 2012, a groovy debut EP on London indie label Good Years. A few years in, though, he desperately missed the collaborative environment bands provided and began to pursue producing and songwriting with artists, bolstered by a move to Los Angeles.
Image: David Milan Kelly for MusicTech
“I really wanted an outlet where I could get my voice across. It taught me that you can make something alone and find your voice that way. Oddly, through doing that and having the room to do it alone, when I got back into making music collaboratively, songwriting and producing with people, I had more of a voice and a language to bring to other people,” he explains.
Now, he thrives in the balance of both working with artists (the list has included Kylie Minogue, Sia, Lola Young, Hayley Williams and Charli XCX) and working on beats and solo music, the latest being his 2020 sophomore album Ephemera. Drums and collaboration have remained essential to his artistry; Lorde says “there’s no better drum programmer than Jim-E.”
Image: David Milan Kelly for MusicTech
The artist’s way
Jim-E Stack has a distinguishable sound: layered, decidedly electronic music with jagged edges and lush (often live) instrumentation. His affinity for somewhat lo-fi tools, including his favourite synths, the Moog Rogue and Korg Polysix, adds a DIY flavour and keeps his productions from sounding overly polished. Most importantly, he preserves space for the artists’ sound and vision to shine through.
“I have a very open approach to making music these days. I’ve found the less tightly you’re grasping onto something, the more room something has to grow and the more room there is for magic to come in,” Stack says.
“A lot of us producers are perfectionists by nature. The more I push back on that, not necessarily in the details, but in the big picture of not trying to bend a song or production to my will and leave things a bit more natural, all the work just always feels weightier.”
“There’s just something very pure and raw to what comes out of an artist on an SM7”
Much of that comes down to having time to experiment and slowly uncover what sounds best, as well as to give each other ample space.
“You just have to try stuff and be willing to get things wrong,” Stack posits, pointing to the SABLE, fABLE track If Only I Could Wait, featuring Danielle Haim, as an example.
“I was really hearing this live drum thing and spent a whole fucking day recording all this shit. And it was just wrong. Justin [Vernon, Bon Iver] and I have this dynamic where I had the space to do my thing with it, and he had the space to say, ‘This isn’t right.’ That exchange is really important.”
Image: David Milan Kelly for MusicTech
Back to basics
Stack’s home studio in his converted garage reflects his desire for music-making to be open, experimental and collaborative. “For me, it’s about having an environment that isn’t too intimidating gear-wise to myself or artists, where it’s like, ‘Whoa, all this shit’, but something where we can make a pretty raw and pure idea without having too many things to jump over. [I want it to] feel good and informal and open, like you can approach any instrument,” he notes.
That said, there’s something specifically special about Stack’s deft drum patterns, which charge his music with a propulsive energy, often with a dose of melancholic chords to keep things interesting.
“I love programming drums so much,” he enthuses. “Anything I do always has a pretty distinct drum groove and language to it. [I can] see how my sound’s evolved from when I was making stuff on the computer mostly by myself, or collecting bits for making stuff with other people, to now, where I’m playing a lot more instruments and tracking a lot more live musicians. My stuff now has a more raw, unpolished feeling that is really reflective of who I am and the kind of creator I am, of not trying to push anyone through a certain mould.”
“I believe in taking an artist closer to themselves and their intuition”
A mutual love of Burial, Drake and percussion-centric production gave Lorde and Stack a shared musical language to converse with. The pair first worked together in 2022 while she was on her Solar Power Tour, during which Stack opened a few shows and also reworked some music for her 2023 festival trek. Afterwards, they reconnected in New York to craft new music.
“Our initial conversations were that Ella [Yelich-O’Connor, aka Lorde] really wanted space in the music for her vocal, not a lot of flourishes, not a lot of layers; to keep things pretty open in that sense. So, songs would start in a pretty raw place,” he recalls.
A happy accident while working on the single Man Of The Year marked a turning point for Virgin’s sound and demonstrates Stack’s flexibility as a producer.
“Man Of The Year was originally this bass loop I laid down. She wrote a bunch of melodies and we arranged them, did some lyrical work. There was a point where I was like, ‘OK, let’s flesh it out. I’m gonna put a smooth sub-bass under it.’ I went to the Minimoog, pressed the bass down and the filter was all the way up. It blew my head off. I went to turn it down, to make it smooth. And she was like, ‘No. That was sick, that felt awesome.’ It was not what I was imagining for the song at all. [After that, every] song had the synth filters all the way open,” Stack explains.
Image: David Milan Kelly for MusicTech
Stack has since taken Lorde’s pared-down production approach to heart, having learned “not to bring in a new sound just for the sake of it, to use your existing tools in the song you’re working on,” he says. “[It helps] you build a creative structure, and it presents you with a really distinct piece of work.”
To enhance the intimate feel of both the Lorde and Bon Iver albums, Stack wove demo vocals they recorded on a Shure SM7 mic into the final songs. “There’s just something very pure and raw to what comes out of an artist on an SM7, where you’re not trying too hard, you don’t feel like it’s a final performance, you’re just getting the idea down,” he explains.
Stack’s ability to capture and preserve those pure, off-the-cuff songwriting moments on both projects is testament to the close friendships and preexisting creative relationships in play. While not every one of his collaborators is a friend, many of them are, including Aminé and Dijon, whose most recent music he also worked on.
“When I really know the person I’m working with, I’m able to help them channel what they’re going through personally into their body of work, more than just being a sound maker,” he notes. “Friendship and personal connection are definitely an important factor in my work [that helps it] go a level deeper.”
Image: David Milan Kelly for MusicTech
Producer partnerships
Los Angeles has been a fruitful home base for Stack, who’s also found “fun camaraderie” working with fellow producers. The first one he ever worked with – back in 2015 in L.A. – was Dan Nigro, who was named Producer Of The Year at the 2025 Grammys off the strength of his work with Chappell Roan.
L.A. is also where he connected with one of his other favourite producers, Ariel Rechtshaid, who’s worked with Haim, Vampire Weekend, Arlo Parks, Carly Rae Jepsen, Adele and many others. Collaborating with Rechtshaid was pivotal in teaching Stack to ditch perfectionism and “not be scared of a mess [because] that’s where you find a lot of magic”.
“You’re both just trying to put your heads together to make this thing feel as good as possible,” Stack says of producer-to-producer collaboration. “You have to compromise in little ways; that’s a fun exercise. It’s about perspective and seeing where something should go, and we have different skills and ways of getting there.”
“Friendship and personal connection are definitely an important factor in my work”
For Stack, no matter whether he’s working with another producer or with an artist, one thing is clear: it’s about collaboration and freedom to explore – playing in a sandbox together, not toiling on an assembly line.
“I am a person by an artist’s side,” he says of his role as a producer. “They’re looking for something, and I’m there, not as a guide, but as someone to take out my machete and hack down some thick brush to get to wherever we need to go. And that might involve us taking some wrong turns together, some circling back. That’s where I do my best work.
“There is real partnership and trust together in whichever way we go. I believe in taking an artist closer to themselves and their intuition, and helping them get there.”
Words: Ana Yglesias
Photography: David Milan Kelly
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