BAND OF THE WEEK: JAAW
Old kids on the (chopping) block!
Right, that’s as much as I can keep it quiet. You see, I’m enough of a lucky bastard to have had access to JAAW’s debut album ‘Supercluster’ for a little while already. It’s only out on May 26th, so my intention was to hold on until that release date was a lot closer, so that this wouldn’t be a douchey kind of “just wait until you poor plebs get more than a song” kind of post, but what the hell, I can’t pretend the thing doesn’t exist anymore since I’ve been listening to it every day, several times a day. Try to be excited anyway, yes? You have every reason to. It’s a mindblowing album-of-the-year contender - and yes, I’m aware I’m saying this in March -, an effervescent melting pot of all the best things heavy music has thrown at us over the years, and a potentially unifying point for several branches of the mindfuck tree to converge their growth to. Although, as the band members themselves admit, no one song really qualifies as a full album representative due to the exploratory, restless nature of the music, first single ‘Rot’ does a pretty good job of it. Here:
It’s hard to pinpoint what’s so great about it, isn’t it? There’s a sort of jazzy, Deafkids-esque free-formness to the structure (or lack of it), a Voivodian angularity to the riffs, a slathering of industrial grime covering it from head to toe, a sort of old school metal latent aggression, and at its very heart, a quite kraut kind of percussive pulse driving everything along, no matter how slow the tempo might get. There’s enough melody to keep you hooked though it’ll never be something you sing in the shower (not without risking seriously fatal injuries at least), enough darkness to keep the extremity ghouls satisfied, sufficient rock’n’roll energy to bring in some normies, and the exact amount of lyrical bite and conceptual depth to keep us nerds sharing bits of lyrics in our social media stories as if they’re being sung to us, and us alone.
And hey, this is just one song! Imagine when you hear the rest! Sorry, just kidding, but it’s kinda inevitable we reach this point. Without going into too much unnecessary detail about songs that you can’t listen to yet, let me just say that the novelty does not wear off in any way after ‘Rot’ (which is, incidentally, the third song on the album). Though there is a very clear musical red thread connecting all of these pieces as part of the same whole, they all seem to shoot into different directions, which after listening to the various influences these musicians brought to the table, makes absolute sense. The record revolves around a fucking ice giant of a song, track #5 of a total eight, called ‘Bring Home The Motherlode, Barry’, an almost nine minute poisoned swamp that you’ll gladly get lost in at every possible opportunity, but each of them has a particular hook, a general tone and groove, that will make you forget the skip button ever existed. “Celtic Frost playing Neu!” was apparently an early descriptor used by the band itself for this music, and let’s just say that they totally nailed it.
The musicians, then. I left this part for last, simply because it’s the one thing everyone else will focus on first. While the line-up is relevant, given the people involved, I think it’s important that you realise how great ‘Supercluster’ is before, or at least as early as possible, you get excited by the names, and that you don’t create any good or bad pre-conceived notions of what this or any other “supergroup” should sound like. So anyway, yeah, JAAW is a quartet formed by Andy Cairns (Therapy?), Jason Stoll (Mugstar, KLÄMP, Sex Swing, Dømes, plus owner of God Unknown Records), Wayne Adams (Death Pedals, Big Lad, Petbrick, Wasted Death) and Adam Betts (Three Trapped Tigers, Goldie, Squarepusher), and if you’re not excited by any of that, maybe your record collection needs a little revamp. And for the intent of enjoying the music, that’s really all you need to know. I mean, I could give you a bullshit cop out and tell you that yeah, this sounds like all of those bands put in a blender with a bucket of cocaine, a couple of Kurt Vonnegut novels and a mashed bit of Justin K. Broadrick’s brain stolen from him in his sleep. But I’d rather that you wait, listen to ‘Rot’ (and any other advance songs that might surface soon) a few more hundred times, and in late May come back to me and say cheers for the heads up. Deal?
Hang around for the full interview with three of the band members right below.
Find JAAW on Bandcamp, Spotify and Instagram.
’Supercluster’ is out on May 26th via Svart Records, and you can pre-order it here.
INTERVIEW
I think we have only just scratched the surface of what this can be!
- Wayne Adams
So, first things first! What was the starting point for JAAW, when did the very first spark of an idea began that ended up with the four of you together making noise?
Andy Cairns: I heard from Jason Stoll (God Unknown Records) via Instagram. He noticed I liked a lot of releases on his label and wanted to say hi. After a few conversations he also mentioned that a lot of the albums I had been listening to were recorded at Bear Bites Horse Studio in London which was owned by Wayne Adams from Petbrick and Big Lad. A further message then asked if I would be interested in a project with himself and Wayne making industrial/noise music. After I confirmed my interest I started to get sent various ideas from Wayne and Jason and started working on them at home. Needing a drummer, Wayne suggested Adam Betts. Once Adam was on board we had more wonderful ideas coming in.
Jason Stoll: Yeah, for me, the first spark was when Andy started buying some stuff from my label, God Unknown Records. At one point I just reached out to say hello and thanks. Not long after, I was playing a show with Wayne’s band, Wasted Death, and I said to him that he should record Therapy?, and Wayne's response was "no, you and I should do a band with Andy." So I asked Andy, and he said yes. We started sending ideas back and forth and six weeks later we were in the studio recording the album. It was pretty quick.
Wayne Adams: For me it was when I’d noticed that Andy had been listening to a lot of the albums I have produced over the last few years. Me and Jason where talking at a gig and he mentioned he’d had some contact with Andy before, so we reached out to see if he fancied doing a project with us. Also, recently I’d been working with Adam Betts on a few tracks, and he is an absolute rinser. So I put in a call and JAAW was born!
Did you have any idea of the kind of music you wanted to do, or did that just become more clear once you actually began to play together? What kind of talks did you guys have leading up to the actual moment that you started to get the music flowing?
Andy: The next step was meeting up with Wayne in his studio to play some guitar over the ideas and have a talk about musical direction, sounds, etc. Wayne and Adam had been talking about Godflesh, Ministry and Type O Negative, I was into that and mentioned nü-klē-ər blast suntan and Iggy Pop's ‘The Idiot’. Plus, we all like Lightning Bolt.
Wayne: The album was written in the studio, so it grew organically from riffs, drum loops and ideas we had popped together before the session, but things soon started to take shape and a “sound” started to form. Andy and Adam are both very unique players with very developed individual musical identities, and Jason is an absolutely killer backbone on bass. I just fumble around on guitar, but I have a knack for weird song structures and noise, so I was very keen to try and keep those individual identities in place whilst creating a cohesive sound. Hopefully we nailed that!
Jason: It was quite open when we sent tracks to each other. But I think we knew it would be quite heavy, psychedelic and industrial sounding. Wayne worked his magic in the studio and made it sound pretty unique.
The press release that we got with the initial announcement was already a true gold mine of references – 90s Ministry/Godflesh, DEAFKIDS, Lightning Bolt, nü-klē-ər blast suntan, Helios Creed, Entombed, “Celtic Frost playing NEU!”, Panos Cosmatos, ‘Midsommar’… Are these influences/references that all of you share, are they some kind of common ground? What else do each of you think you bring to JAAW that is more of your own specific sort of thing?
Jason: Yeah, it's a great list of references. I think we all have shared influences but quite varied ones too. We all bring our own experiences into the band and make it sound like it is. I had been working on a couple of tracks that I thought, well, probably wanted them to sound like "Celtic Frost playing Neu!". Not sure if we achieved that, but I like that concept!
Andy: I think those influences are common ground but personally I’ve learned a lot from being around the other guys. I have a set guitar tone and set up in Therapy? but they encouraged me to push the noise on these tracks with f/x pedals and modulation. It was like being a kid again. One of the demos Jason sent me was called ‘Neu Frost’ and I knew exactly what he meant, so I came up with a Michael Rother style guitar line and then dropped the guitar way down low for some Celtic Frost-style riffing.
Wayne: Yeah, I think with most of us being involved or very much engaged in the musical underground at the moment, these are all references that rang true for us. Also, the industrial sound is definitely popping its head above ground again, and it’s such a fun genre to explore when you’re building an album such as this, as you can go a bit nuts with the production!
I like how there is so much to unpack from the album, musically and thematically, but at the same time it feels so spontaneous. “Recorded intensely in a matter of days,” says here, and yeah, sounds like it, in the best possible sense mind you. What are your main memories of those days, how was the experience like? Did you already have most of the music written, or did you still come up with a lot of stuff during those days? And have all four of you contributed to the writing, by the way?
Andy: All four of us contributed. It was done very quickly and very intensely. I think I spent two days on guitars and maybe two on vocals for the first session. The ideas i would be sent would be maybe a bass line from Wayne and id play along with it at home until something clicked. I'd record it on my phone and send it to Wayne. By this time Adam would have laid down some drums at his studio. When I did turn up at the studio I had a pretty solid idea of what I was going to play. Wayne was brilliant in the studio and would set out guitar sounds for me to try.
Wayne: We had a few ideas down before we started, that we had all contributed to. Adam had sent over some awesome treated drum loops that we worked with to start building songs, but a lot of it was written on the spot. It’s magical when the music is flowing, and it was flowing fast! We kind of rotated through the studio, me and Andy where there for the full three days, Jason joined later on the first day, and Adam came in for the last. One of my favourite memories is the writing of ‘Hellbent On Happiness’: it was right at the end of the third day, Adam had packed up all his gear, me and Andy had been mucking about with that riff, and we knocked together a song structure in about five minutes… so just as Adam was leaving I asked him to jump on the studio kit and smash out a drum take for the track, I think he nailed it in one or two takes! It was that kind of vibe, even as people where walking out the doors the ideas where still flowing freely!
Jason: It was a real fun few days for me. Probably one of the most freeing and enjoyable studio experiences I had had up to that point. It was an exciting process. We had most of the songs written but I think Andy and Wayne had come up with a couple of other tracks after we had finished the main bulk of the songs and I sent some bass and synth parts later on. Wayne is a wizard in the studio and mixed it brilliantly.
Wayne and Andy, would you like to talk a bit about your lyrics? We already know a couple of the reference points you had in mind, but would you like to talk about them a little bit, did you exchange ideas, was there a sort of common theme or at least vibe that you were going for?
Andy: The lyrics were quite often done together. We had a long day in the studio where we would go over ideas, run lines past each other to see if they would work. There was some trial and error too where we would take turns singing lines to see whose voice was best suited for the part and if we needed to edit the lyrics.
Wayne: We had both written a handful of ideas, then we kind of put them into a melting pot in the studio. Some songs are all Andy, some are more mine. Andy is a an exceptional wordsmith, so it was great to work with someone that is so good at words. My lyrics are often quite abstract, and he really helped forge a story out of a lot of them. Those days were also loads of fun, jumping back and forth from the control room and vocal booth trying ideas, tweaking and refining! I think some of the melodies we came up with are awesome as well!
Do you guys have any songs you are particularly proud of? For instance, was the choice of Rot as first advance song yours, do you think it kinda represents the record as a whole a bit more than the others? Personally I love the double punch of ‘Bring Home The Motherlode, Barry’ and ‘Hellbent On Happiness’ one right after the other – the all-consuming monster track and the quick noise-punk blast, like the two biggest extremes of the album touching each other.
Andy: From what I remember I think Svart suggested ‘Rot’ as the first single. I would be happy with any of them as it's such a unique sounding record that I don't think it can be defined by a single track. ‘Bring Home The Motherlode Barry’ is one of my favourites to play, I can get totally lost in myself when I play that.
Wayne: I really love them all. I’ve had favs come and go, I love ‘Rot’ for its simplicity and power, it’s super efficient songwriting, but I think it has one of the strongest hooks - by the time you hit that last chorus, it’s flying!
Andy, how different was it from a lifetime of writing lyrics for Therapy?, did you feel liberated, or weird, or somehow on holiday, anything like that?
Andy: I went into this project with a very open mind and it was exciting to use a completely different set up to T? There are a few cross references between both bands but there was less pressure with JAAW to write songs in the traditional sense. I was very lucky because the new Therapy? album had already been written and recorded at this point so there was no pressure on me.
I love that you already have a show booked! That begs the question, knowing of course all of you are pretty busy, but how have you envisioned the future of JAAW, do you think you will keep it going, writing and recording more music when you can, doing some shows, evolving what you started here?
Andy: I hope it’s a project that we can return to when it feels right. It's a different head space for me to be in and as a musician it's an education to be around Jason, Wayne and Adam.
Wayne: [laughs] yeah, we are all busy no doubt! But I think we have hit on an awesome combo of musicians here, so yeah, hopefully we can make the odd shows work later in the year as well! I’d definitely be up for another one as well, as I think we have only just scratched the surface of what this can be!
Jason: Yeah, we have a couple of shows booked and we are looking at a run of dates in September, and hopefully some festivals too. I think we will do more recording and more shows in the future, schedules depending. It's a really exciting project to do and it's great working together.
Do you actually think this experience will have any effects on your “main” bands? Even subconsciously, might any of this trickle down in any way to Sex Swing or Therapy? or Big Lad or Petbrick for instance?
Jason: Oh definitely. I think from the way we wrote it to the way we recorded it, it's had an influence already.
Andy: For me, I don't think it will. Both T? and JAAW have very strong identities and that, to me, is what gives the experience in each band such unique power..
Wayne: Everything I do feeds into everything else I do, no doubts whatsoever! Every record I make, and everyone I work with, teaches me something new! So yeah, absolutely this will feed into whatever I do next, it’s just one big ol’ story for me!
Wayne, I noticed Wasted Death wasn’t in the usual between-parentheses “bands he’s also in” bits on the press releases, are you still doing anything with that project? I absolutely love the two ‘Ugly As Hell’s.
Wayne: Yeah, we have been busy behind the scenes with this one! We are just about to drop a new EP and then an album later in the year, both are finished and are total face melters!
Andy, you’ll actually have both JAAW and the new Therapy? released in the same month, how weird and amazing is that?!
Andy: It's incredible! I'm really happy about this. Every now and then, like many musicians, I can get writers block so when a surge of creativity comes along its wonderful to grab it and go with it.
