Mondo Bizarre Magazine: May 2021

Guilherme Lucas interviewed J.P. Shilo and we couldn't pass the opportunity of publishing it. It is a very personal interview, a technical talk between two musicians. A little off our usual style, but worthy reading. This is the last part of a three part instalment. This is the last part of a three part instalment. It also includes a couple of questions about Jubjoté, J.P. Shilo’s upcoming album, out June 25, on Heavy Machinery Records, along with a film by L.J. Spruyt Photography.

Part one : https://mondobizarremagazine.blogspot.com/2020/09/jp-shilo-interview-part-i.html

Part two : https://mondobizarremagazine.blogspot.com/2020/10/jp-shilo-interview-part-ii.html

J.P. Shilo © L.J.Spruyt Photography

I've just realized that the two times I saw you in concert (both with Mick Harvey, in Portugal), maybe a little more than half of your performance was on keyboards. It is interesting to notice it since my first impression of you as an artist is that of a string musician. However, I consider you a very discreet keyboardist, who correctly fills the spaces of the songs, with enormous efficiency, and without great ramblings, which is, for my parameters, something praiseworthy. How important are keyboards in your music and composition?

For me, efficiency and proficiency go hand in hand. In that regard, having rudimentary skills probably works in my favour! I rarely make flourishes or embellishments because I wouldn’t know how to. In any ensemble/band setting though, serving the song & being “economical” is key; just because you CAN play all of the parts, don’t think the rest of the band is going to thank you! 😊
I do marvel at players who are more dexterous, and I’d like to become more proficient, but I also like the idea that the piano, (or any instrument for that matter), is full of potential beyond my capabilities, that it all remains a mystery somehow. I had some accordion students a few years back who were at beginner level, and they kept getting frustrated at their inadequacies and lack of technique. I remembered feeling like that too when I first started, but through hindsight, I reassured them and reminded them to relish that feeling, inside that is the drive to express. Once you learn something, you can’t unlearn it, and then the risk is once you do advance, boredom can sneak in, and perfecting techniques takes over from the initial wish to express something. The formative years of Hungry Ghosts would be an example of that expression, we played as minimally as possible to divine as much feeling out of a single note. I think we came to have an unspoken understanding that that was what we were aiming to achieve. Hopefully that comes through. All that said, my allegiance is to expression through Sound generally, not to any one particular instrument specifically. Instruments and equipment are the tools. Though I actually really enjoy playing the piano and have been composing much more on it lately. The piano is possibly the most perfect instrument; so complete.

J.P. Shilo © L.J.Spruyt Photography

There are moments of yours (on video), where we can see unorthodox instrumental approaches to the piano. Do you use personal piano techniques as you do with the electric guitar?

I can’t help it! I love to explore and play things differently than how they are expected to be played, the piano being both a percussion and string instrument allows for much more scope beyond the piano stool and pressing the keys. I like to have fun with it (though I’d probably be the nemesis of piano tuners). On this track - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnvpT4MVxkQ the screeching ghostly sound is me playing the strings on the piano internally with a metal piece.

J.P. Shilo © Mick Harvey

You have already mentioned, in comments on your Facebook, about the use of the Reuss RSH-03 pedal on your piano accordion. Can you tell a little more about the results you have obtained in terms of sound, using that guitar pedal?

Not really, I still use the RSH-02 during the Pop Crimes shows. I used the RSH-03 on an accordion in the studio once for a session with a very "heavy" band who asked me in to play some traditional sounding accordion, which I did. Then, I said keep the tape rolling on one of their more sludgy numbers, and I sprayed it with some hellishhly thick chords running throught that pedal which sounded frightning. Ahaha I'm not sure if that's what they expected, but it is the Devil's instrument after all. 😉

J.P. Shilo © L.J.Spruyt Photography

You also play the accordion. Did you start playing this instrument before or after learning to play the piano/organ?

I “borrowed” my first accordion off my aunt when I was 19. (She’ll say “stole”, but it was just a loan 😉 ) Anyway, she said if you can play a tune on it, it’s yours. I kept it for the night, when she returned the following day, I played her the Title Theme from The Elephant Man soundtrack. She was impressed, and said “Happy Birthday” 😊 Within 6 months I had written a handful of pieces on it for Hungry Ghosts “Three Sisters” - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7D8beHGGQs

“Trying To Lift a Rock with a Bottle on Your Head” - https://jpshilo.bandcamp.com/track/trying-to-lift-a-rock-with-a-bottle-on-your-head

And of course, our “hit single” 😉 - “I Don’t Think of You Anymore, But I Don’t Think About You Anyless” - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS9SUmAyKWM

(Which you can download here - https://jpshilo.bandcamp.com/track/i-dont-think-about-you-anymore-but-i-dont-think-about-you-anyless)

J.P. Shilo © Hannah Eaves

By the time I recorded my 1st solo record, I was getting a little more dexterous, and wrote Begone Dull Care - https://jpshilo.bandcamp.com/track/begone-dull-care

I think I was actually trying to learn Billie Holiday’s “You’re My Thrill” but this tune came out instead. When I first joined The Blackeyed Susans, I was just filling in on guitar for a couple of shows for Dan Luscombe, while he was “double-booked”. After he returned, Phil Kakulas, The Susans’ chief songwriter, said, “Hmmmm, you play accordion as well don’t you? Maybe you should stick around…” That was 15 years ago! I’ve since dragged it all around the world, with The Blackeyed Susans, Hungry Ghosts, Mick (Harvey) and also with The Triffids. My original squeezebox was put into retirement by unsympathetic baggage throwers after a few world tours. A couple of years ago, the same aunt who gave me my 48 bass "Baile" accordion, brought me a new one - a 48 bass "Busilacchio" and said that she thought it was time for an update. (I think I have about 6 now, but my wife insists there are more... oops)

J.P. Shilo © L.J.Spruyt Photography

Perhaps this next question is a bit outside the scope of this interview, but because I find it relevant, I shall ask it. In your last interview to Mondo Bizarre Magazine (01/2020) you mentioned that your next album would be from a live concert, held in November 2018, commissioned by the City of Melbourne for The Melbourne Town Hall Grand Organ. I know it will be called Jubjoté. It is an interesting and disturbing piece, in an unusual musical way. It uses a dream narrative of yours, which leads us to a possible reflection on Art, with regard to its accommodation to the status quo by most artists, but also to the salvation of a few who seek in it a way to elevate their existence beyond common sense, restlessly and without concessions to vulgarity. How was that experience, say, in a more institutional and business context?

I was approached by The Melbourne City Council to create a piece for The Melbourne Town Hall Grand Organ, the largest in the Southern Hemisphere, and probably the most valuable. It is truly a magnificent Beast! There are about 10,000 pipes in it, that scale 4 storeys, with wiring that would span over 700 kilometres, the distance between Melbourne and Adelaide, (or Faro to Quintanilha), a mind-blowing masterpiece of sound and engineering! I was given complete creative freedom from The City of Melbourne to compose whatever I liked with it. It really was a treat to work in that space and to harness the full scope and potential of an instrument of that magnitude. The music for Jubjoté was composed quite quickly in the Town Hall, “After Hours” – There is obviously very tight security, but once I was inside, the organ was mine! And I naturally relished every moment, pulling out all the stops and discovering the intricacies. What does this button do?! The piece also incorporates a spoken word element. A narrative which was based on a very profound dream that I had had some time prior. I don’t want to give any spoilers, but the nature and mood of the storyline, in hindsight feels strangely pertinent to our current global state – of being in a nightmarish predicament and looking for the solution, or escape. It will be released on June 25th through Heavy Machinery Records, accompanied by a sublime film by L.J. Spruyt Photography. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvwXNaV3jSw

Jobjuté © L.J.Spruyt Photography

J.P. Shilo © L.J.Spruyt Photography

By the way ... I would like to know about your interpretation of Jubjoté, in order to compare it with my interpretation above. I am curious to know if I got close, or if I failed splendidly.

It’s a piece that is open to all interpretations, like any dream analysis that can take on a personal or societal reference. (From a solipsistic perspective, perhaps the subconscious is a mirror of society in general.) The term – Jubjoté – is a modern French term (which may or may not exist 😉)- meaning ~ To wake up from a dream, not knowing how it ends; and trying to return, to find out how it does. The piece is all about that.

When it comes to the diversity of musical instruments you play, if some Renaissance artists reincarnated today, you would certainly be one of them. We finally come to your voice. It's amazing that you also have an impressive gift here. Your voice timbre is able to reach different pitches of vocalizations very close to other artists you play (from Rowland S. Howard to David McComb). In addition to this, you have your own voice, which is very special, reflected in your solo album Invisible You, or in the live performances of The Saddests. I would like to know more about the use of your voice in your music career.

The voice is a very intriguing and possibly the most versatile (and portable) instrument I know. It is obviously the most intimate. You can play it anywhere and you don’t even need to take it out of its case! I have been enjoying exploring how it works lately. The projects I’ve lent my voice to have required different elements to get inside of the songs, and performing my own works naturally opens up and broadens that scope to places I don’t even know yet. For the recent Mick Harvey record “The Fall and Rise of Edgar Bourchier and the Horrors of War.” A “concept album”/ collaboration with English writer Christopher Richard Barker. I was asked to assume certain characters and perform the songs from that place. Here are two examples, where the voice inhabits different moods/personas on the same album. “This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.” “The Darkling Fields of Stowborough” - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4pl8a5kOHI “Pounding For Peace” - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkhwj5omrDk

(I also play the accordion on this one 😉) Earlier in the interviews I’ve mentioned how I’d chosen to make instrumental music in my early career because Leonard Cohen had stolen all the best words. I said this half-jokingly in the context of who I was speaking with at the time, but at the heart of that, I had very high expectations of what I would hope to achieve in a literary sense. I am relieved now that I made a concerted effort to spare people the trite clumsiness of my journal contents. I feel like I really had nothing to say that hadn’t already been articulated by poets far superior. Hungry Ghosts maybe said more by saying nothing. The titles of the pieces felt like enough to trigger an image, (for me at least). We took a more “impressionistic” approach. I like poems and lyrics to be like paintings, I prefer to be showed something, rather than told. Maybe a good song allows you to converse with it or walk around inside it somehow. The Saddests was a side project I was working on at the time, with some fellow Blackeyed Susans members. A vehicle I was able to explore my voice, and push myself in terms of being a ‘frontman’. We played a collection of songs we thought were the ‘most’ Sad (hence the band’s name) It served its purpose at the time, I quickly integrated what I learned from the few gigs we played together, which the Invisible You album was born out of. Then, the Pop Crimes shows kicked in. With regard to the dearly departed wordsmiths I have chosen to honour. The fact that they were masters at composing a well-turned phrase, takes a lot of the hard work out of it (for me). As a “sonic-manipulator” I could focus more of my attention on deciphering/analysing/replicating tones and implying their harmonic mannerisms. I’ve always held that my role in these “tributes” is to “serve the song” – and really try to embody the attitude that helped create them. That is what I meant earlier by the statement, “It’s what’s behind the fist that makes a punch…” The notes are just one element of the song. I guess my approach is that of a loving cephalopod. If at some point during one of these shows the audience closes their eyes and gets the impression or feeling that a wisp of the spirit of any of these Artists that we love is hanging in the air in the room, then I’m satisfied with that. Along with Rowland S. Howard - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcLDwYhDIQk

David McComb - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPA_700ZNSM

I’ve also been fortunate to have been offered the keys to some of Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s previously unreleased songs. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp4-MAk5y0Y

With my own “songs” – Invisible You probably feels the closest to my "natural" voice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtUtyu2gZZ0

My approach to the vocal chords is not really that different to other instruments. My ear is naturally

tuned to creating and matching tones, and I am an experimentalist. The difference is the literary element to vocals. Having something worthwhile to say, is a whole other dilemma. I greatly admire those that can use words well.

Are there any other instruments that you play that have eluded me? If so, which ones?

The sound of the vibraphone, that numb honey buzz is something I’ve always loved. I’ve been very fortunate enough to play the vibes live throughout Europe with The Triffids. They’ve always been a part of Hungry Ghosts’ sound. Unfortunately, I don’t own a set, hopefully one day some will magically appear. I really dig gamelans and gongs as well. I have an optigan at home that I drag out for its quirky sound from time to time (and inevitably construct soundscapes on tour, just using the contents of my hotel room 😉) I’ve never really had much luck with “wind” instruments. The idea of having to stick a thing inside my mouth to make music through feels somehow disturbingly invasive. I enjoy listening to others doing that though, (except flutes & bag pipes!) All that said though, I am a noise maker at heart, and like to play & extract sounds from anything really. A Cristal-Bachet or an Ondes-Martenot would be fun to mess around with. As much as I love traditional music(s) and techniques, I also get a huge kick out of watching composers like Harry Partch, Iannis Xenakis and Toru Takemitsu, even Silver Apples… I like the idea of kinetic sculptures and reactive music, and spaces that can play themselves. I once saw a Japanese group called Stringraphy that had strings fastened throughout the room that were amplified by polystyrene cups, the strings were played with cotton gloves. I think I might enjoy playing that.

We are approaching the end of this interview. I would like to expose a thought and a final request to you. During this extensive interview, I noticed that several projects and collaborations with other musicians and bands escaped me. I thought I knew you quite well when it comes to all of your projects, but I now realize I only know you reasonably well. I would like this interview to remain a recorded memory and a consultation document for the future, for new generations of fans of your music. Would it be too much to ask you to make a detailed list of all the bands that you played with, or are part of, as well as of all collaborations with other musicians/projects, carried out until October 2020?

It's a long list! I believe this is up to date and contains most things, maybe missing one or two but close ~ https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3413423762015772&type=3