Jonathan Fraser

Jonathan
Fraser

Bio

Jonathan Fraser is a multi-instrumentalist and composer from Huntington Beach, California. Inspired at a young age, Jonathan saw music as a way of expression that transcended language with emotionally evoking art. This led him to pick up the guitar at the age of 14 and never turn back. This drive over the past decade has led to 10 full-length albums and several EPs, Collaborations, and Singles with a noticeable diversity and evolution in style ranging from cinematic folk and ambient soundscapes to shoegaze, post-rock, and even metal. Not wanting to be limited to being just a recording artist, he has also taken his passionate and emotive sound to the stage, resulting in several captivating live shows.

Latest and
Upcoming
Shows

June 30th, 2025 show at The Wayfarer

July 6th, 2024 show at Tiki Bar

Latest album: Heaven is at a Distance

Released October 24th

For this past year and a half since my mother passed, I have been going through a time of reflection. This included grief, guilt, depression, withdrawal, rage, self-hatred, regret, apathy, and loneliness. These emotions were distinctly separate and intertwined. What I felt the most, was death. I wished most days that I was dead, that I could fade away from this pain. Nothing motivated me. I was just putting on a mask, faking my existence, wandering aimlessly day by day. Then, one day, I looked within myself and realized that I was already dead. It seemed like most of me died along with her and what was left was just a hollow shape without direction.

I’ve forgotten how to live.

With this epiphany, I now know that this isn’t how I want to be; I want to live. That is what this album encapsulates; being in a state of death and then the journey of rediscovering what it means to be alive.

I don’t know what that is yet, but I know I’ll find it.

Heaven is at a Distance

October 24, 2021

Purchase Here

Reviews

Beardman Reivews

Heaven at a Distance is not an easy album to chew, it’s long and it has a depressing athmosphere but there is moments of beauty and serenity and due to the album’s very personal and intimate nature, it will eventually reward you…I could imagine Heaven at a Distance being a mirror to a soul of a person in the middle of a process of grieving or trauma, trying to find a way forward. A katharsis in process if you will.⁣

Link

Dissection of Euphony

The emotional stress going through the loss of loved ones is made clear with abundance of feel conveyed via dynamics; one minute we listen to slow, atmospheric piano playing with voice recalling memories of the old days then one minute we get served with burst of anger of refusing to accept the tragedy symbolized by barrage of blastbeats and massive wall of sound from guitars and transitions to accoustic guitar, evidently being hopeful and trying to move on. The whole album wraps the feel of going through a loss beautifully.

Link

Metal Forge

Fraser and his group of talented [musicians] have put together a brilliant post black metal album that tehters on the precipe of hardcore, shoegaze, and post rock…A chalk full of awesome melodies and that haunting atmosphere that post black metal is known to deliver.

Link

Merchants of Air

Jonathan Fraser is one of the perfect examples of how often we are led astray by our subconscious labeling of people – one would never guess that there is a black metal soul inside this very humble and gentle person. But when listening to his music it becomes clear that there are some inner demons having taken hold of this man, who together with the help of some friends recorded some wonderful blackgaze music very much in the vein of Skyforest or Numenorean. A lot of swirling, swooshing, uplifting spherical guitar-work that is happening in these songs that are perfectly contrastingly laid upon driving drums.

Link

2020
Heaven is at a Distance

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Intimacy with the Lie
Heaven is at a Distance
Empty Prayers, Hollow Gestures
Vengeful Burden
Fire of My Resentment
What is Broken
This Gaping Hole Within
It Doesn’t Matter What Happens to Me Anymore
The Will to Exist
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2020
Mizpah (Collaboration with City of Dawn)

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Zeima
Yaphon
Orphanous
Pneuma
Raphah
Eirene
Mizpah
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2019
The Art of Apathy

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But What Happens When it’s All Over
I Only Knew You From the Surface
Living in a Void Reality
Delusionoia
The Art of Apathy
Good Son
Look at Me Now
Empty on the Inside
XXII
Clock
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2018
Stendhal: Tragedy of the Journeyman

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Apparitions of Enlightenment
You Can’t Save the Damned
Minus Amans
We Don’t Belong Here
There is Only So Much Time Before Everything Slowly Fades to White
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2016
Lost Within Your Dreams

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We Were Always Meant to Depart
Colours
Return of the Journeyman
Eyes of Heaven
When the Conflict Had Settled
I Just Want Someone to Be There
The Unexpected End
You’ll Forever Be What I’ll Never Have
Please Don’t Disappear
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Music Videos

5 Videos