[kj] article/review in german VISIONS mag

[The Stranger]

Cool. Thanks Marcel.




________________________________
From: Marcel <spooman at freenet.de>
To: gathering at misera.net
Sent: Fri, October 8, 2010 3:38:01 PM
Subject: [kj] article/review in german VISIONS mag

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 2nd WW broke out. And we all certainly don’t want a 
2nd 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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