John Lemke - The World in a Suitcase
interview by
Matteo Meda
At least once a year, Denovali Records decides to launch a brand-new name through its catalogue. Among this year's best discoveries is undoubtedly John Lemke, who, truth be told, is hardly a newcomer, given his substantial background at the BBC as a sound designer for advertising spots and as a composer of soundtracks. Born in Glasgow and musically raised working for theatre and ballet, a champion of interdisciplinary art, Lemke debuted last year with a curious full-length and a splendid short-form gem, "Walizka", which followed it this year. All of this breathes new life into a constantly expanding universe (though lately increasingly and dangerously close to cliché) like that of so-called modern classical. Contamination is the keyword of his blend, which draws in equal measure from dub, downtempo electronica, folk tradition and jazz. To get to know his not-too-well-known story better, we reached out directly to John, who tried to sum it up by answering our questions.
The first time I heard something of yours – it was "People Do", last year – I immediately realized how hard it was to pin down your sound. That's why I found it surprising to discover it was your debut work! If you'll forgive the pun, how "old" is your music?
It's actually quite strange. I've spent much of my life making music in various fields, and I've always thought I wanted to develop my sound through one or more records. I started thinking about it seriously some three or four years ago, and I carried the "dream" forward until I realized I could actually make it happen. For much of those years I imagined the sonic world my music would inhabit, but I only truly understood what it was once I started working on the tracks for "People Do". In the end it wasn't particularly surprising, also because I've always been a bit of a late bloomer.
What are the sources you draw inspiration from for your sound?
Sound design has always been incredibly important to my work, on a par with the fascinating world of acousmatic music. Whether it's field recordings or particularly unusual instruments and objects, it's this kind of thing that has always inspired me. I record a lot of sounds, outside and inside the studio, so when I start working with some of them I never quite know where they came from originally, and that's very exciting. I equally enjoy looking for unusual sounds within typical instruments, like piano and guitar. My mantra follows a single rule: if I've already heard a sound somewhere, I generally won't be interested in working with it. The same goes if a sound doesn't stir some kind of emotion in me. There are plenty of new sounds out there, everywhere, and I don't understand why, despite that, so many people keep going back and reusing the musical repertoire of the past, especially when it comes to electronic music. A huge part of my musical identity comes precisely from this idiosyncratic way of viewing sound.
How close do you feel to the so-called modern classical scene, and how much instead to the world of experimental electronics? Are they both components that shape your sound regardless?
I don't think I can say there's any particular genre that's part of what I do, to a greater or lesser extent. Modern classical is a label attached to a huge variety of artists, often simply because they work with piano, so it's a rather questionable classification, in my opinion. I don't listen to that kind of music anyway, nor do I see myself in it: not having had a classical musical education, and not being a particularly brilliant instrumentalist, I've always wanted to focus on intuition and exploration on my path as a musician. In that sense I feel closer to experimental composers working with electronics – although, fortunately, we're living in an era where these labels lose meaning more and more every day, increasingly looking like purely linguistic distinctions that dissolve once put into practice.
I've also noticed that you use electronics sparingly, almost solely to build rhythm, but in a way that never lets it overshadow the melodic element. Is that a deliberate stylistic choice?
I'd say so, yes. I've always wanted my work to have a meaningful rhythmic side, perhaps as a reaction to the fact that in the past – in my compositions for theatre and television – I dealt almost exclusively with ambient music. That said, context is also fundamental to me: I like the rhythmic element in my music to have an organic basis, to stem from my acoustic perception and be built from sounds coming from the real world. So even when the sounds are handled electronically, they manage to retain their vital nature. If I could make the electronic side of my music sound exactly as if it were performed by an ensemble of acoustic instruments, I'd be absolutely thrilled. The meeting of these two worlds is, in any case, perhaps the core around which my musical interest revolves.
On "Walizka", on the other hand, the piano takes on the guiding role almost everywhere... Do you see it as your main instrument?
The sonic immediacy of the piano thrills me a great deal, along with the sheer amount of unusual sounds you can pull out of it. The piano I used on "Walizka" is a relic that belonged to my grandfather and is probably more than a hundred years old. It simply has a gorgeous tone and is fairly easy to play. I suppose my obsession with that instrument has lately put the piano ahead of everything else, but it's likely that things will change fairly regularly.
So, what instruments did you use?
For now, mainly piano, as you said. My first instrument, the one I started out with, is the electric guitar, although lately I've hardly used it at all. Then all sorts of analog synthesizers, electric bass, strings, percussion, and a large selection of contact microphones and effects units, which I used to create the rhythmic sounds.
"People Do", your debut album, came out a few months before "Walizka", whose first pressing actually dates back some time earlier. These are, moreover, two works that bring together stylistically quite different compositions. What changed in your music between these two releases?
"Walizka" originally came out as a teaser for "People Do", so it precedes it chronologically, but it's actually made up of newer material, which is why I wanted to reissue it with Denovali along with a few remixes. To me it's nothing more than a natural evolution of the sound of "People Do": I wanted to approach the compositions in a more direct, immediate way, so that the tracks would also be more direct, while at the same time denser in terms of atmosphere. I also changed something in terms of production: while for the album I opted for an extremely meticulous method, on the EP I wanted to use only the sounds I had collected and processed, and mainly analog sound sources, so as to make everything more organic. That's the direction I intend to keep following in the near future too – I suppose it's because as you get older you become more and more orthodox about how you do things!
But looking at the artwork of the Denovali editions, you'd say the two works also have quite a lot in common...
Even though they're two completely different releases, what they have in common is that they were conceived more or less in the same period – I started "Walizka" right after finishing "People Do". I spent most of those two years travelling around Europe: even today I carry with me the influence of those places, which are heavily present in both works, not just through the field recordings I made during my stays, but also in the mood and atmospheres. I wanted something that would capture all of this in the artwork, so together with Łukasz Bernacki (the designer who worked on it, ed.) we photographed a series of objects collected during those very travels, seen through a sheet of frosted glass. What came out of it was a set of strongly impressionistic images, which I think connect quite closely to the music, although I always hope they remain open to anyone's interpretation.
You were born and live in Scotland, and frankly I found quite a few images of Scottish landscapes in your music too – the title track of "Walizka" comes to mind, for example. Does your homeland also play an important role in shaping the atmospheres of your tracks?
I'm not so sure the Scottish landscape has a direct connection to my music, but having a direct connection with nature is definitely very important to me. I'd say I'm definitely something more than just a city person, but a lot depends on the contrasts created between forests, fields, mountains and the sea. I could say that this contrast is represented in my music by the clash-and-meeting between electronics and acoustic elements, that's about it.
You also shot a really beautiful video for that track – how does it connect to the story and title of the piece?
"Walizka" means "suitcase" in Polish. It's a beautiful word even just in its sound – when you say it, it's as if your tongue rolls along with it. The theme of the track is on one hand, obviously, about everything – a whole that can sometimes hide even inside the smallest suitcase – and on the other it ties in with the idea of sorting everything into watertight compartments, like in a suitcase. It was precisely from this latter idea that Tobias Feltus (the director, ed.) and I came up with that unsettling wooden man – a puppet created by Łukasz (the artist who also worked on the artwork, ed.) – who frees himself from the handcuffs of a suitcase to wander through the smoky little streets of Glasgow. I'm not sure this "story" comes across in full when watching the video, but the final result certainly captures our intent very well in terms of atmosphere.
Tell me about your work at the BBC. I know it was a fairly long experience, during which you mostly worked on soundtracks for documentaries... How important was that experience?
In many ways my work for television and film shaped who I am today as an independent artist, even though the kinds of sounds I deal with today couldn't be more different from what I worked on back then. On one hand, through the work I produce for the BBC I'm able to refine my compositional style and production techniques; on the other, it gives me the chance to open a window onto the sunnier, more commercial, I'd say more pop side of my music! And beyond that, I also get the freedom to take on compositional and sonic challenges whose results are very much reflected in my own independent output. There's definitely a kind of yin and yang analogy in all this!
But you've also worked in other interdisciplinary fields, haven't you?
My first love is sound theatre, and that's actually where my musical journey began, but I soon moved away towards other media, above all stop-motion animation, which has always fascinated me a great deal. But I also like putting my music at the service of theatre, dance, visual art and any other form of expression. If I like a project and I like the people working on it, the medium becomes secondary.
Why did you decide to call your website "Lost In Sounds"?
I created that website many years ago to bring together my various interests and projects, so I wanted it to be as open as possible, and to focus on what represents me most. So the recurring mental state I get when composing, of feeling "lost in sound", seemed like a nice fit for a name too, one that's ready to last for years to come.
How do you bring your music to the stage, and what does the live dimension mean to you?
Getting the tracks to work at their best live is always an experiment that involves giving them new shapes, and frankly I don't think I've found an ideal, one-size-fits-all way of doing it yet. Maybe it doesn't exist, but I'll keep trying, keep searching for it. There's truly nothing better than playing in front of an audience that's genuinely interested in the music, and there's no better way to win over new listeners. I recently played at two Denovali Swingfest dates, in Berlin and Essen, and got great feedback from the crowd that really lifted me up. That's without doubt the best kind of motivation to keep going on your musical path.
Do you prefer to call yourself a composer or a musician?
I've never felt entirely comfortable with either label, but by now I'm used to both. What I do probably sits somewhere at the intersection of the composer, the musician, the sound designer and the producer, and that's the middle ground I like to occupy.
What projects are you working on, or planning to work on, right now?
Well, it's been a pretty bizarre year so far – I had to evacuate my apartment-studio in spring because of structural problems with the building. It all happened without any warning, from one hour to the next, and ever since I've been living something like a nomad, stopping in various places between Germany and Scotland, carrying with me just a kind of survival kit. I'd only just started working on the second album, which will now be heavily shaped by this sort of limbo I'm living in. By November I hope to be back in the studio working on the recordings for the record, and I can't wait to get stuck into it. Aside from that, I'm planning a sound design installation in Portugal next year with my friend and performer Rodrigo Malvar.
Header photo by Łukasz Bernacki
Homepage photo by Markus Werne
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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Matteo Meda, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.
John Lemke on OndaRock
Discography
| CD & LP | ||
| People Do (Denovali, 2013) | 6.5 | |
| Nomad Frequencies (Denovali, 2015) | 6.5 | |
| EP | ||
| Traveller (Denovali, 2013) | ||
| Walizka (Denovali, 2014) | 7 |  |
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