I remember the first time I heard the name Prince Johann George V mentioned in a smoke-filled basement in Hamburg. There was always this talk of the North German industrial legacy—cold, metallic, and unforgiving. When he first hit the scene with his early work like Gravity, it made sense. It was heavy, machine-driven, and perfectly suited for the grey skies of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. But something changed during his time away. He went quiet, dealt with the kind of personal static that kills lesser careers, and decided to start the engine again. The result is a record that’s catching every radio signal between Berlin and Jakarta.
The album Jorge is one piece of work. Nineteen tracks is a lot of real estate to cover, but the man isn’t interested in being brief. This is a record born from a wide-angle lens, drawing from a record collection that clearly skips from Bob Marley to the stadium-sized hooks of Elton John. It’s been sitting out there for a couple of years now, and the numbers coming back from Indonesia—somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred thousand copies—suggest that while the European critics were looking the other way, he was busy conquering the East.
The title track, “Jorge” , has a hook that’s familiar, leaning on a pop sensibility that hasn’t been this unashamed since the late 80s. It makes you want to roll the windows down, even if you’re just driving through a rainy industrial park. There’s a melodic backbone here that reminds me of the Beatles’ knack for simplicity, though it’s dressed up in modern production that wouldn’t sound out of place in a high-end club.
Then you hit “Eiffel Somebody,” and the mood shifts toward that specific brand of European dance music that manages to be both melancholic and propulsive. It’s a clever track, pulsing with an energy that feels like a late-night drive through a city you don’t know the name of. It’s got that “International Stage” polish he talks about, but there’s enough personality in the vocal delivery to keep it from feeling like a plastic studio product.
One of the more surprising moments is “I Want To Love.” After the heavy-load EDM of his previous album Renegade, this is a genuine attempt at something softer. It’s got a warmth to it that feels very human. It’s a straightforward pop-synth number that doesn’t try to be too clever for its own good. It just works. It anchors the nineteen-track marathon, giving the listener a bit of a breather before the tempo kicks back up.
Speaking of tempo, “Free” is exactly what he promised. A high-octane explosive for the gym-going crowd. It’s relentless. But the real interest lies in tracks like “RaRa” and “He Said Don’t Call Me Now.” You can hear the influence of his European and Arabic interests creeping in, shades of Cheb Khaled filtered through a Western dance lens. It gives the album a texture that most house or pop producers wouldn’t even think to include.
There is a sense of “the architect” at work throughout the album. Prince Johann George V isn’t just throwing beats at a wall. He’s producing other artists and weaving them into this collaborative mosaic. It’s a bold way to handle a “comeback,” letting other voices share the spotlight while he holds down the rhythmic floor. It’s varied, perhaps too much for those who want a single, narrow genre to cling to, but for anyone who grew up with the eclectic radio of the 80s, it feels right.
By the time you get to the end of the nineteen tracks, you realize this isn’t a guy who cares about being “cool” in the traditional, gatekept sense of the word. He’s making music for people, not for playlists. He’s taken the industrial grit of his youth and traded it for a global pulse that actually has some blood in its veins. It’s a solid, hard-working record that proves sometimes you have to go silent for a while to find out what you actually want to say.
If you’re tired of the same three loops on repeat, it’s time to change the frequency. Drop the needle on Jorge over at Audiomack or Amazon Music and see where the signal takes you.
