For those of you not in the know, on May 13th, 2022 Justin Kniest (JUST) releases his debut album Deep Cycles, a melancholic journey through the grooves of sadness, loss and hope.

Justin Kniest (1969) is no stranger in the Dutch music scene. As producer of the Dutch Battle of the Bands, booker at Paradiso Amsterdam and founder of Fabchannel - concerts online, he dedicated a large part of his career to promoting new music. The fact that he plays multiple instruments, sings and writes songs he kept to himself. Years of exposure to quality music in Paradiso Amsterdam had raised the bar to a paralyzing level.

That all changed in 2019 when Justin wrote and performed two sad, melancholic and painfully personal songs during a songwriter bootcamp in Spain. The strong emotional reaction to his songs made him decide to take the step into the forefront. He recorded both songs in his home studio and released them under the name JUST. Both songs got airplay on Dutch national radio and amassed over 40.000 plays on Spotify.

In early 2020 Justin decided that his debut album should be produced by Minco Eggersman (UNIFONY, ME, At The Close of Every Day). Eggersman is a well-known producer and international soundtrack composer who has proved to know his way around the world of melancholic music and showing brokenness through beautiful and musical textures.

Together they started working on the first demos and after a short period of time both arranger René de Vries and engineer/mixer Theodoor Borger (UNIFONY) joined the team. JUST was beginning to find its final form. Great songs followed and the rest of 2020 and the first half of 2021 were filled with the production of JUST’s debut album Deep Cycles.

1. Dark Times
2. Walk Slow Smile More
3. Into The Fire
4. Down The River
5. Feels Like Home
6. Every Little Tear
7. Desperate Game
8. Eye Of The Storm

Transparent, heartfelt, melancholic: only a few terms that come to mind when listening to the music of JUST. One immediately recognizes the quality in songwriting as well as recording of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. The depth in both the recordings and mixes are second to none and sometimes remind you of bands like Talk Talk.

Songwise it’s a mix of the song structures used by Mike Lindup and David Sylvian, albeit way more angled toward the songwriting and vocal delivery of the late Colin Vearncombe (Black), yet these songs definitely deserve their place in between the works of more present-day songwriters like Thomas Dybdahl and Emmet Tinley.

Opening on the ethereally atmospheric, yet levelingly harmonic Dark Days - which is actually not as dark as the title suggests - and the melodic Walk Slow Smile More, up next is the breathy synth pop of Into The Fire, the sophisticated jazz-pop of Down The River, the laid back, top down, Summer’s drive of Feels Like Home, and then we get the pop-centric rhythms of Every Little Tear, the rippling gossamer of Desperate Game, the album closing all too soon on the emotive Eye Of The Storm.

In all, JUST’s music comes to life because of the excellent performances of the participating artists. Justin plays guitar, bass & piano. Minco plays the drums. Famous German session guitar-player Lothar Kosse (Nir Z., brothers Bissionette, Abraham Laborial) added his typical sounding ‘swell’ guitar sounds to the tracks to create some lovely and verby textures. Keyboard player Stephen Smith (ABC, Dire Straits) played Hammond on several tracks.

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