[kj] article/review in german VISIONS mag

[Marcel]

  Hi there,
this is from the german alternative rock magazine VISIONS.
Sorry for the shitty translation, my english has seen better days. The 
only thing I can say in my defence is that some of it sounded already 
pretty awkward in the german original. :-)
I'll scan the thing when I get the chance...
btw, does anybody know what he got the grammys for?

Marcel

Killing Joke -- Visions 211 /10.2010

Nature has the last word

Three decades of Killing Joke -- and something special for the 
anniversary: The first album by the original members in 28 years. With 
this one the old heros are reaching new heights -- Absolute Dissent is 
the most thirring in at least a decade. In the interview band-boss Jaz 
Coleman describes the journey to a monster turned into music -- and 
explains why the world is in for apocalypse soon.

/Jaz, no matter if one likes or dislikes you (the band), no matter if 
it's a strong or a weak KJ-period, one thing's always the same: There is 
a subtle feeling of dark matter (sic) in your music, like claustrophobia 
turned into sound. Why is that?/

When we're together in a room something happens. These boys are my 
lifelong education; there is nothing in my like that's not connected to 
them. I've spent more time with these three guys then with my whole family.

All of us wouldn't exist without Killing Joke, there would be no conscience.

This is not a band, this is a way of life, a worldview/view of life. 
Everybody who has recorded an album with KJ speaks of it as a traumatic 
experience. We literally go through hell every time. And that's what you 
hear on the finished record afterwards; something that you've described 
as claustrophobia quite fittingly. It feels similar to me, however it's 
more of an inner claustrophobia than an outer claustrophobia.

/As if you'd rather run away from yourself?/

Not run away, but to gain more distance. It's such an inner pain to go 
through it every time, you'd rather be an observer of the process and 
not a person concerned. At the same time I know: It's only because I go 
through it the music that we're looking for can be created. But it fucks 
us up every time.

/No idea how to change that?/

No idea, no. We don't know how it evolves, but it's there. We're 
shouting at each other until we lose our voices, throw around stuff and 
get to the borders of our capacities. With this comes what we call the 
"unforeseeable". Not one KJ album even begins to come close to the 
concept I thought about beforehand. Obviously this band is also about 
the constant destruction of all of your beliefs and ideas.

/No way to compromise without intern struggling?/

No, that doesn't work for us. Especially this time I wanted to focus on 
- and follow a few things, to stick to some ideas. One had been to have 
the better part of the album with precomposed structures. I had written 
about ten of those as a basis beforehand. Now there are two structured 
songs left on the album. The rest of them are jams. The unforeseeable 
has occurred once again. As a matter of fact all the songs that we think 
of as being the strongest in our career have been the result of such 
jams. It seems that we are on top of our game when we achieve a 
collective spontaneous combustion (sic) of our egos and personalities. 
Into disaster without preparation: That's the way KJ-music emerges.

/Desaster is pure chaos. Your music on the other hand brings structure 
to chaos -- where does the structure come from?/

We have two antipodes whenever we work creatively: At least one of us 
takes the revolutionary point of view, another one the reactionary one. 
That's not planned or a conscious decision, these parts aren't always 
assigned in the same way. But there are always these two points of view 
about a piece of of music. When we manage to combine them we get a song. 
When we don't - we get noise, nobody has uses for. The structure comes 
from these contrasting opinions that we have to find a common ground for.

/Well, it remains amazing, how stabilized you keep your agressions even 
beyond the age of 50. So you're not getting milder?/

Not with KJ. It's the audible face of all that is evil and dissatisfied 
within me. It's the channel that allows me to get rid of my demons, 
without having to hurt others.

/What exactly is pissing you off, that it brings out your pure aggression./

There are a lot of battlegrounds /unnerving topics for me. It only takes 
a picture of the Rockefeller family in a boulevard magazine to ruin my 
mood in a catastrophic way for days. Or the profit report in the 
quarterly period of one of these banks, that have just cost us billions. 
Or a picture of african landscapes that have been contaminated by 
Oil-barons. Hardly a day passes without me coming across something that 
drives me crazy. It's this unbearable injustice of the distribution of 
chances within the human race.

And this mindless destruction of the basic fundamentals that's growing 
faster and faster.

/Another fighter for these values is the writer T.C. Boyle who has 
turned to fatalism by now once said: There are simply too many people on 
this world to save it. We are bound to fall down./

That's a scenario -- it's realistic, but too hopeless for me. I 
represent the thesis that there will be apocalypse in the near future. 
Not a religious one, but a natural one, that will reduce mankind at 
least by half. That's our chance to start over, so to say the hardest 
form of a purging thunderstorm.

Off course it won't be easy to bury 3 to 4 billions of corpses at once, 
but those who will survive will come out purified -- most of all morally 
and ethically. They will then understand that you cannot force the 
existence of a race against nature. Nature always has the last word.

/Is it correct to assume that you are able to stand all of this, because 
you find your peace of mind in classical music by now?/

Yes, that is correct. It reflects the other side of my personality, it's 
the realm where I can express all the beauty and the sublime I 
experience. Just because of that it is such a very different world, that 
I can't draw any parallels to my work with KJ. Both of it is music and 
that's about it. Apart from that these two worlds have nothing in 
common. Still -- I don't necessarily need classical music as 
compensation. My compensation is the humour I find in KJ. It's the 
blackest humour you can imagine. More black than black. That's what 
builds me up.

/What advise do you have for younger people on how to create socially 
responsible art?/

I wish for more anarchy and uprising in the younger generation -- not 
only in the arts, but in general. This generation is still under the 
influence of the last effects of the blooming world economy, that 
doesn't exist anymore. This safety of wellbeing and education has made 
them sleepy -- while their chances are a lot worse than those of their 
parents. They haven't realized that yet and I wish that the young rise 
up before they are forced to do so. Because then it's usually too late, 
society is much too deep in shit. The last time the world saw a 
situation like this the 2^nd WW broke out. And we all certainly don't 
want a 2^nd Hitler as an alleged savior from the crisis, do we? So -- 
rise up and take care of yourself, before others do it. Interview: 
Sascha Krüger. Shitty translation: Marcel

A classic: Already as a teenager Jaz Coleman won numerous prizes for his 
violin-playing and enjoyed classical training. Later he studied arabian 
music and lengthily studied Klezmer- and Maori-music. Through this 
occupation with world-music he returned to classical music. At first he 
interpreted the work of the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin or 
the doors with symphonic orchestras in the nineties, before his first 
own symphony was staged with the Prague symphonic orchestra in 1999, for 
whom he remains the composer in residence and conductor until today. 
2001 saw his first Opera "The Marriage At Cana" in the Royal Opera House 
in London. By now he has received 4 grammys for his classical work and 
works with the big orchestras of the world on a regular basis as well as 
soloists like Nigel Kennedy, Sarah Brightman or the Kroke Trio. Coleman 
writes operas, symphonies, chamber music, pieces for choir and 
solo-pieces, but also filmscores.

Review:

For their 30st band anniversary KJ came together in their original 
lineup and present themselves less compromising than ever.

Mellowness due to coming of age is not Jaz Colemans kind of thing. 
Beside all his projects, the choir- and orchestra arrangements, 
compositions for others, books and soundtracks the charismatic-excentric 
fan of experimentation still has enough wrath to present an album with 
his band, that not only captures all facets of three decades of Killing 
Joke, but also displays the ongoing relevance of the Brits in a modern 
and varying way. There are influences of all periods of the band to be 
heard on Absolute Dissent: the raw Postpunk from the early days, 
Pop/Wave disco-tunes like in the late eighties, the industrial-Metal and 
Alternative-Rock, with which KJ have paved the way for countless bands 
in the nineties and that has the biggest part here, too - and with the 
final Ghosts of Ladbroke Grove there's also a Dub-song. The rich 
guitar-work of Geordie Walker, who beside Coleman has been the only 
constant member of KJ has to be stressed once again: sometimes 
extensively supporting the strong choruses like in the title-track or in 
Fresh Fever From The Skies, with simple and concise hooklines in The 
Great Cull or staccato-like monotony in Depthcharge that reminds of 
Fugazis Waiting Room. Coleman adds all kinds of singing, he sounds like 
Lemmy Kilmister or John Baizley of Baroness at times, and then comes 
across with innocent melodies and delivers some the most catchy Choruses 
of his career. Cult-status sustained -- and that with an average age of 
50. 9 of 12 possible points -- review by Arne Jamelle

The review sounds more like 10, 11 or 12 points to me, but these guys 
are known for their greediness concerning points.



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