This interview is with Oax, a half of the Swedish avant-garde/experimental rock combo Joxfield ProjeX, who with Yan embarked on making with music in 60`s already, though, their first releases came into the light 40 years later. Moreover, still ashamedly underrated, they have combined the elements of krautrock, space rock, progressive music, psychedelia, ambient techno and much more into an impressive world view, by the way, being co-operated by such luminaries like Pat Mastoletto, Geoff Leigh, and Kenji Siratori as well.
Hi, Oax! I wanted to ask you some questions about Joxfield ProjeX. In fact, what are you doing at the moment? Are there any new musical projects in progress waiting for to be finished off?
In autumn 2009 we did finish of a lot of music we’ve done over the last years. This music was the five Clinical Archives (CA) releases that year. During the same time the main project since 2007 had been Numbers & Letters, the 3 disc set that was released autumn 2010, also at CA. We also took the opportunity to celebrate the five years of Joxfield ProjeX with Smorgasbord also at CA, of course), a collection of tracks „without home“ + some remixes and other oddities. In later autumn 2009 we also felt it was a long time since we had our traditional, annual weeklong recording session, just the two of us. As well as we wanted to enter into some new territories. So, we met for a week, recorded something between 3 – 4 hours of basic material. About half of it is very harsh, noisy and evil, some kind of space rock from hell (whatever THAT is?). Unpolished, raw and rough, mostly very long tracks. This music will be two volumes of „21st Century Psychedelic Music“ and I guess they will be released in one way or another during 2011. Three of these tracks is right now on the myspace player. During this recording week we also did some intentional vocals based music, for the first time since 2005, but what will happen to this I yet don’t know. Joxfield has never been a pop group and every time we sing we think „Pop!“. But it isn’t, I guess.
When did you started with Joxfield ProjeX? By the way, what kind of references does have the title of the group?
To make the history short: In 1965, as very young guys, we started making some kind of music together. Already from the beginning we were very creative and productive. In 1969 we started to record the music on our reel-to-reel tape recorders. Until 1975, when me took a break, we recorded something between 50 – 100 hours of music. Mostly we organised the music into „albums“, made copies to each other, still on reel-to-reel, but the music was never properly released in any way. Despite the bad sound quality I think at least some of the music had some attraction. A lot of it was terrible. Mostly it was just Yan and me playing, but sometimes there was other guys involved. As a duo we called ourself Andersson & Ek, as a trio we were The Age. About half of the tapes, or so, is in a couple of plastic bags in the cellar. About four hours of the music is saved on cassette tapes and is playable. The rest I don’t know. The reel-to-reel tapes haven’t been played for more than 20 years (when the tape recorders broke down) and as it was very cheap tapes I don’t know if there’s any music left on them. It’s an achival project to check if any of that old music has survived, and – if so – try to digitalize it on the computer. Maybe 1 – 2 % of it could be of interest to anyone else, but Yan and me to listen to. The Joxfield connection.
The name? In 2005, after our 30 years break, when we were about to re-start our activites, we weren’t interested at all to go back to old stuff. We wanted to do new music and also with an all new name. In 1968 I wrote a real crappy, instrumental song called Uncle Joxfield’s Started Number and in 2005, when looking for a new name Yan told me that when he during our long break sometimes made some music of his own he used to label it as Joxfield ProjeX. I was pleased and a bit honored by it and we both thought it would be a great and original name. And so it was.
Your music has always been spectacular, diverse and sometimes even difficult to catch into the clearest view with only a few listen times, reminiscent of metaphysical structures, rather than pop music approach. More concretely, what does mean music for you, in principle?
I don’t think that we ever have tried to make music that sound like this or that intentional. Of course, as always being interested in music and also been listening to a lot of other artist’s music over the years, it’s unavoidable not being inspired by others. Since 2005 there has been some very basic principles though: The music must be interesting for both of us. If not we reject it or re-do it. This also means we are very critical to what we do, a bit dis-respectful to each other, all for the best of the music. We do very quick get bored and re-make stuff. Yan once said the wise words: „If we don’t like the music we do, who else would? If we like to listen to it at least we do have two listeners“. When we play and record music we just do what we want for the moment, just follows our hearts. This means that during our recording sessions we could record a beat-less noise improvisation followed by an ambient tune or a strict composed song-based thing. Just what we want there and then. I think both of our minds are vivid and whimsically and that’s why the music is so diverse. I think we demand as much from our listeners than we demands from ourself. Maybe that’s why we do have so few listeners. Maybe, if we really worked on it, we could make a couple of high potential hit songs. But, we would also probably hate them and never want to listen to them. Then better to make some odd music we at least like ourself.
You mentioned once an interesting fact that you and Yan are living apart from each other approximately 500 km. Can you describe your way of working process?
Yeah, Yan lives in Stockholm on the east coast and I live in Gothenburg on the west coast. 500 kms. All, but our first, weeklong recording sessions has been situated in a very, very small village, Kolpebo, about 200 kms from Stockholm. It’s a very well kept summer house owned by a friend to Yan’s wife and we have borrowed it for our sessions. It’s by a lake and with no close neighbours. Just Yan and me, our gear, some booze and beer. About 10 kms from there there’s a very small city and that’s where we buy our daily food.
A week-long session does mean about 2 – 4 hours of basic music, depending of how finished we want it to be. For every time the music gets less and less finished. Then, afterwards, we treat, edit and add whatever we want to it at each and everyone’s home. Numbers & Letters was treated extremely much, the forthcoming two volumes of 21st Century Psychedelic Music almost none. It varies depending on what want with the music. We do send files to and for to each other a lot. The music changes constantly. I guess it’s like with some paintings, it’s not about when it’s finished, because it will never be, it’s more about a decission that NOW it’s finished and the songs are the final ones and if we do anything more with them it’s a re-mix or something. But, when a tune is decided to be finished it’s very seldom we come back to it. Some of the music we’ve made comes from non-basic recording weeks, it’s the result of ideas from one of us and the other one contributes to the music. In these situations one of us can dominate very much, but it’s never a solo project, it’s always with the Joxfield ProjeX’ mind.
I can only suppose that the end of 60`s were great time as lots of important and influential rock-oriented experimental groups (CAN, Silver Apples, Faust, King Crimson, Gong etc) surfaced then. Concerning on this list - how much inspiration have you dug out of them?
Even though we’re two different persons I think a lot of our music references/inspirations are about the same, especially in the 60’s and 70’s. I think there is a huge difference between what inspires you and what you – as a music maker – tries to sound like. I think one of our first, biggest and major influences are The Beatles, but, there’s not one single Joxfield tune that even try to sound like them. But, the openmindness of, let’s say, The White Album, you find all over us. The mix of high and low, simplicity and difficulties on the same album. Etc. It’s a brave album. Stones` late 60’s did of course mean a lot, not to mention the early 70’s Hawkwind, Iggy’s Fun House and Raw Power, the amazing electric 1968-1975 Miles Davis, King Crimson, Fripp, Eno and – more than many – Soft Machine as well as everything that connects Robert Wyatt. One of the most inspiring persons I guess is Daevid Allen (and, of course, Gong), who, as an artist, always has walked his own way, always has followed his heart, always been opened for new stuff, etc, etc. He specifically has shown that you can combine artistic integrity, lust, variety and quality without ever selling out. At 73 he’s still aiming for new peaks. Me and Yan met him in Amsterdam 2006, during the Gong Unconvent, had a chat for half an hour, exchanged music. A great moment. Bands like CAN at least I heard very little during the days. About five or ten years ago I really went into a lot of krautish music and especially when hearing them today I realise how much of our own music that have connections with their, unintentional. And when I read about their instant composing I also realised that’s what we’re also doing most of the time. One of our main inspiration the last years has been Acid Mothers Temple and even though they tour a lot – we not at all – I also by reading an interview with Kawabata Makoto on their web realised that their ways of making studio albums was really connected with ours. Basic tracks – then add, edit, treat.
Thanks a lot, Oax.
