JeGong on their new Album "The Complex Inbetween"
"The Forgetting of Time and Space in Favor of Depth and Intuition"
Dahm Majuri Cipolla, drummer of Mono (Japan) and Watter founded JeGong together with Reto Mäder from Sum Of R and Ural Umbo. Their debut album, "I", already caused quite a stir via The Ocean's label Pelagic Records. The new album, "The Complex Inbetween", will be released on June 9th. Now I had the chance to interview them about their music and "The Complex Inbetween".
Anne: Thank you for taking the time for this interview! I am delighted to meet you in person! How are you doing? What are you busy with at the moment?
Dahm: I am well. I just got home from a Mono 29-show tour of Europe. I am soaking up as much time with my daughter and wife as I can.
Reto: Thank you for your interest. Unlike Dahm, I've already been back for three weeks from the 23-concert UK/EU tour with Sum Of R. So, my recovery is complete, and I have recharged my batteries. The anticipation and preparations for the next musical and private adventures have begun. Thus, everything is in balance, and I'm doing well.
Anne: Congratulations on the new album! It's brilliant! From the moment I listened to it for the first time, it won't let me go. It's so strong, playful, and rhythmically genius. Overall, it pretty much reflects what I love about music—unpredictability and precision simultaneously. Overall, it sounds a bit rougher and noisier than its predecessor, "I"—without taking away the technoid side of your music. These two dark worlds fit together very well. I like the eerie undertone. What inspired you to do this?
"The recording process felt pretty organic and natural"
Dahm: So glad you have enjoyed the record. The music has arrived very much without knowing exactly what will happen or a direct plan. It has been a very organic and natural process.
Reto: For "The Complex Inbetween", there was no need for a specific or even constructed concept on the drawing board. With "I," we approached each other and found our common ground. With "The Complex Inbetween", we were able to draw on the confidence we gained to express ourselves more boldly and freely overall. In relation to the album title, I especially like that our music became more complex, not more complicated.
Anne: How long did you write "The Complex Inbetween"?
Dahm: Maybe over a year's time. It's difficult to tell time these days since it seems we are missing a year or so now.
Reto: Just from the date, it should have been about a year or two. Haha! I don't know. But I'm sure it took just as much time until we were both happy with the result. If there's one thing I particularly like about making music together, it's forgetting time and space in favor of depth and intuition.
Anne: With JeGong, you've united Mono and Sum Of R - the post-music world is pleased about that. How did your project come about, and how did you meet?
Dahm: Myself and Reto did a tour together in two separate bands several years ago. On that tour, we discussed lots of music, and JeGong was born out of our love for so many different kinds of music.
Reto: It's thanks to two promoters that we were able to meet by booking once in England and once in Belgium, both bands on separate tour routes for a common evening. Thank you!
Anne: Drone, doom, krautrock, and post-rock: the list of your influences is quite long. Which are your most important ones, or do you not dwell on genres at all?
Dahm: I really do not think about genres personally, maybe only when needing to describe something easily.
Reto: Same here, with one exception: In my record collection at home, the genres are more important to me than the names of the bands and artists. In terms of my own creative work, I appreciate the spontaneity and freedom outside of pigeonholes. At the same time, it doesn't bother me if someone assigns JeGong to a genre. We all tend to be able to grasp and explain things.
Anne: For your last album, you worked in New York with Martin Bisi, who also had Sonic Youth and Swans in his studio. Did you do "The Complex Inbetween" with him again?
"We don't care much about genres"
Dahm: No, but Martin is a very close friend, and I have participated in about 12 records with different artists with him over the years. He is an essential part of my New York City life/experience.
Reto: In my record collection, there are several albums (including Sonic Youth and Swans) that were recorded by Martin Bisi in BC Studio. And these albums stand out in terms of sound aesthetics. I like the high percentage of room recordings in the mixes. In my association, I can literally hear the long cellar room with the natural bricks and the metallic ventilation pipes on the ceilings.
When Dahm recorded the drums for the album "I" in the BC Studio, Martin sent me his personal raw mix as well as the individual tracks. Then I realized how much history can also be contained in audio recordings. I then more or less "only" added the room recordings to his raw mix. The audio recordings of the isolated, individual drum components remained untouched. If you record a drum in any studio, the opposite is usually the case.
For the recordings of "The Complex Inbetween", we chose different studio situations and locations. Everything was allowed; nothing had to be. For example, most of the drums were recorded in Shelbyville, Kentucky, by Zack Riles (Grails, Watter). On the one hand, in a classic studio setting, and on the other hand, for a split screen session for the online edition of the ArcTanGent Festival 2020. I recorded the synthesizers, mellotron, and guitars in Bern. This is also where the mix of the album was made, incorporating the sound aesthetic experiences from the debut "I".
Anne: The pieces on "The Complex Inbetween" and the names of the individual titles suggest that there could be a story behind them. Something that unites these names and makes them into an overall picture. Would you like to tell me?
Dahm: A lot of these ideas are maybe inspired by advanced science, in-the-moment experiences, dreaming, maybe some astral travel, and also words that sound good together (laughs).
Reto: I don't have anything to add to this. I just stick to sitting here, smiling.
Anne: What is the track "Night Screaming Moves" about? I really like the drone sounds and the interplay of mellotron and guitar feedback. It has something of dark Coen films. Was that your goal?
"We love good soundtracks"
Dahm: Sometimes you can be so exhausted that it's difficult to fall asleep…
Reto: ...and then you wake up and realize that you've actually been sleeping. And yes, our aim was to create a dream or nightmare scenario in the style of horror film soundtracks or film noir plots. We are both big fans of soundtracks.
Anne: Dahm, when someone asks me about the best drummers, I name you (and Paul Seidel, of course). You've always impressed me deeply at the Mono concerts I have been to so far. Those memories will last forever. No one will be able to delete them. Would you like to tell me what shaped your playing and how you became one of the best drummers of all time?
Dahm: That is an extremely kind thing to say. I am just a student of many different types of music and musicians. Sincerity is the number one ingredient in music for me.
Anne: I read that the architectural photographer Rachel Bühlmann is responsible for your album cover. The industrial-looking picture harmonizes wonderfully with your songs. It radiates this energy even though there are no people on it. Do you have any contact with the architecture scene?
Reto: I am a trained structural draughtsman and carpenter. Forms, structures, functionality, colors, and surfaces are generally also points of view for us in our music. And in the specific case of the building on the album cover, another extraordinary affinity fits well with JeGong: The same building exists in two different places and has very different purposes in both. On one, it is a meeting place within a small town; on the other, it is a waste incineration plant. The only external difference is the interior courtyard design, where the incinerator lacks a pool. This slight, ultimately bizarre difference is what supposedly makes the same things, such as in repetitions, utterly different from each other on closer inspection, with or without a smile.
Anne: For your last album, you partly worked remotely - Reto, you recorded in Switzerland, and you, Dahm, in the USA. During the pandemic, many bands learned to love to work this way. Is it the same for you or do you prefer to work together in one room? How did you handle it this time?
"When we work together things happen spontaneously"
Dahm: There are advantages to both scenarios, and we definitely used those advantages to our best abilities. Together things can happen spontaneously and instantly, separate you can take time to work things out repeatedly before presenting them to other collaborators.
Reto: I am also completely open in this respect. For me, there is no longer an actual scenario of how one should record an album in a particular place. Time and space, two essential factors for recording music, also exist outside of predetermined structures.
Anne: Thank you for the interview! It was an honor, and I hope to meet you guys again soon! Good luck with the record, and all the best!
Dahm & Reto: Thank you so very much!