How are you, man?
Yeah, I'm good. I'm good.
Where are you?
I'm at home in Gothenburg, Sweden. Born here and I've been living here all my life.
What got you excited about music when you were young?
There are some pictures of me with the big headphones listening to my parents' albums. Apparently I was into music pretty early. But it wasn't like a musical family only. There were some records my dad used to sing when he was younger and my mom liked music, but she was not that good at taking notes. I started playing guitar around 13. No one actually played that much at home at all, but the guitar was there, so I picked it up and started playing and that's when everything took off.
Were there certain records as you progressed through your teen years that really got you excited?
Yeah. So, the first record that me and my brother bought together was Break Machine [by Break Machine]. We were into breakdance and that was very poppy, breakdance music. I was seven, I think. But it wasn't until, I guess 13, 14, that's when I actually had my musical awakening in a way. Like being into both learning the acoustic guitar with The Beatles and bossa nova on one hand with my dad, and also starting to play in bands. Playing bass and at first with a couple of punk bands. The stuff that we were into was Misfits, Black Flag. I was never a record collector, but I would go to my friend's house and I would have tapes. I listened lots to Dead Kennedys. And then there was skateboarding… Dinosaur Jr. was a big influence. Me and our friends got into hardcore. So, it was like going from punk to metal hardcore. Our first seven inch was in ‘93 with a band called Renaissance, and it sounds pretty rough. [laughter] We did that recording with one of my sound engineers that had been recording with Junip and that I played live with.
That might surprise a lot of people to hear that was your path into music, because what you're doing now is just not anything like that. Junip has some of that feeling to it, but actually reminds me so much more of CAN and Neu! with the incessant grooves and the meditative, longer songs, and the way things progress is just very different than hardcore and punk.
Yeah, there was a transition from the loud music to a very soft music. And so late ‘90s, especially me and Elias, the drummer in Junip, we got into Songs: Ohia, Cat Power, and all these post-rock bands. So sometimes loud, and sometimes very suggestive and mellow. I think that was what propelled me into the combination of influences that led to my first album. Having the influences from home, Latin American music and Paul Simon, and later Nick Drake and Elliott Smith [Tape Op #4]. But then having these other styles that were a bit more moody and that had a bit of darkness to them that I felt was interesting to explore.
You've always helmed the recording process for yourself. I read that you pirated some software, and had some cheap gear when you made Veneer.
Yeah. I have to mention Don Alsterberg. He was the one who used to record many of the hardcore bands. Nowadays he's well known for recording Refused and Graveyard and these Swedish rock bands. Back then I asked him for tips how to record. I had my 4-track cassette tape recorder, and he helped me to record in a way where you have the EQ in a certain way, so you don't get too much hiss. He got super excited by the first two tracks when I recorded “Hints” and “Deadweight” on Velveteen, and then put out my first 7-inch in 2001. He was very excited that you could hear the tape compression, even though it was a very lo-fi recording. So since then, it's been one of my go-to things; to think lo-fi, even though many of the recordings have been just mic’ed straight into the computer. The first two tracks were on the tape, but then for the rest of the album, I was recording through tube amplifiers to get that initial distortion, the one that it's difficult to get rid of later. So, you sort of commit. [laughter] And then the guy who mixed the first album, was around the time that you got these reverb emulators, so you could get pretty nice sounding reverbs that sounded like real rooms and impulse reverbs. It's been part of my aesthetic ambition to make it sound not necessarily lo-fi, but to have character, and not go for a clean sound. So therefore, I like some distortion, and I like to use my voice for dubbing to get a bit more variation.
I was going to ask you about the distortion, because there's quite a bit of it on all the records.
Yeah, it's something that I at the start commit to. On this album, I decided to go back to how I used to record my albums, because I skipped that first tube amplifier on some records, and I felt like, no, I need to go back to that. It also functions as a limiter, so you commit to the distortion and you commit to getting a pretty… It sounds pretty done, if you have that. But then the choices come later when I start mixing. On this album, I decided to have a stereo mic on all the time. I have my [Neumann] U 67, where I can do vocals and guitar at the same time. So, I did that for many tracks. And just like 30 centimeters behind, I have my stereo mic, so U 67 and [Neumann] SM 69, both with tubes. The U 67 goes through a tube amplifier, the ART Tube MP Project Series. By having that setup, and also a [Shure SM]57 by the foot, so I can get my foot tapping, I can play very soft, and I just put the mic closer to my face, or play very loud and just mix later with a stereo mic. So, it was a good way to capture the dynamics. I think that was one of the new things that I sort of feel like I got it. I was able to capture the dynamics of especially “A Perfect Storm,” which has this start that is pretty mellow the way I play, but the end is very, very loud. By having the stereo mic a bit further away, I could capture that. Maybe I can talk to you about the saturation and distortion, because there's so many things to say there.
The saturation and distortion is an element that has become like a new instrument in a way. It's a layer of dynamics that happens within the music.
Yeah, I mean, for me, coming from a punk and hardcore background, I feel like I can't only do songs that sound nice. So there needs to be a bit of tension somewhere. In “Heartbeats”, it's that slight distortion towards the third, fourth part of the song. So, you have that golden ratio where you have something that happens towards the later part of the song. That's been a guideline for me, like how to push the demo so it becomes not only good sounding or nice sounding, but to make it interesting. That's where I try to push in different directions, but it's always on a subtle level. So, there's always bringing people back to safety in one or other way. Because it's partly my persona, but also having a bit of trying to use the ear of the listener once in a while. And so, I never push into sort of noise category or into very loud and disturbing category. It's always in the safe zone. But once in a while, just to have a bit of tension. One of the things on this album was to use echo for that. The “Losing Game (Sick)” was a track that sounded good, but it was too monotonous. It needed some more variations. From the start, I knew I was going to use echo on one or two songs, because we did that live and felt like this is an element that needs to be there, like the sound engineers doing the dub part. So, I did that with “Losing Game.” That was really fun to do with the [Universal Audio] EP-34 [Tape Echo] plugin, and just mixing and doing a couple of takes, and I couldn't choose, so I ended up choosing two, and panning them right and left. So that's why you get the sweeping.
If you just parachute it in very quickly to some of your records, it could be perceived as “nice sounding” or “nice music.” But the lyrics, especially on this new record, are very current, and topical about what's going on in the world and the state of things.
Yeah, I've been doing this for a while now, and I have a couple of songs on each album, where I'm pushing things, talking or mentioning stuff that can be provocative, depending on your worldview. But on this album, it's clearer than ever that I'm being a bit more open, more direct, especially if you read the translations. There's one song where I was inspired by murder ballads. One time I was thinking I was going to make a whole album of these type of songs where you have historical events, and you write just in a Bob Dylan-type of way, just write lots of describing lyrics. But I ended up with one song, So “U / Rawls Slöja” is in Swedish, and I have four verses with four different stories from reality, all of them disturbing in different ways. There's a fifth verse where you have someone who's a moral relativist, someone who says that you can't criticize other cultures. So that person starts doing mental gymnastics, and is able to land the conclusion that is basically impossible to land.
Where did you record Against The Dying of the Light?
Yeah, so it's recorded in my studio. My studio is just 20 minutes from home, and it’s basically just a soundproof room in wooden plywood. Very nice sounding, and there's no speakers. I don't actually think of it as a studio. It's more like a soundproof room where I have my mics set up. I can take recordings from two different days, edit them and they sound very similar. Because also the tube amplifier, I've been recording with the same gain on it, so it's been very easy to record this time. Sometimes difficult to mix because of phase problems… I call it Studio Koltrast Guldheden, which means blackbird in Swedish.
And are you working alone or do you have someone there with you?
Yeah, by now it's what I do. I record on my own, and I think that adds to the “mid-fi.” It's a term I use, the “mid-fi” sound.
How do you maintain some perspective on what you're doing if you’re not collaborating?
By now I have some tricks. So, one is to...when I'm recording, I don't push myself more than three to five recordings per session. I do one in the morning, then I have a break, and then I do another one. I also have my listening tricks. One is to be outdoors, listening while running, and the other one is listening while on a very low volume, while doing dishes. To get different perspectives, you need to be in different mind spaces. But the thing with collaborations is that I've always noticed that it's always a compromise, and that's for good or for bad. For me, it's been, to be honest, more bad when it comes to my guitar and vocals, because there's so many minimal decisions to be made. So, when I've been working with someone, it switches really quickly to production instead of just getting the details of the guitar, getting the details of the vocals. So yeah, it's a matter of being stubborn, and being true to my initial sound. I acknowledge that it is for good or bad, but my way to look at it is I start on my own, and I try to do it as good as possible for my ears. Later I get the opportunity to go out and do versions of the songs with a band, with a five-piece band, with harmonies and more percussion. And we did some versions with the orchestra. That's when you get to sort of push the same songs, but in totally different directions sometimes, and that's amazing. Those collaborations I really look forward to.
But the song is already formed.
Yeah. As I said, I have my stubborn way of working where I feel like there's something about the story about the recording, the story about being a one-man band, and the story of or aesthetic, psychological, aesthetical detail of how you think about the icons and the simplicity. So, it has to do with that.
Do you go through a demoing process, or are you starting the recording and refining through the process and that becomes the record?
I record and record and record. I start recording many, many versions on the phone, and when that sounds good, I start recording in the studio. Usually what happens is that I start recording while also working on the lyrics, or some vocal stuff. So, there is a lot of just iteration, just a lot of back and forth of recording, and recording, and recording. At some point I stop getting annoyed by details. I reach a level where it's good enough, and I've done so much with each detail of the guitar playing, and the vocals that it's okay to move on. I've heard producers talk about goosebumps and stuff, and that part doesn't apply to me when I listen to myself. For me, it's more about reaching a level of “good enough.”
The title track on this was inspired by the Steven Pinker book Enlightenment Now. Can you tell me a little bit about how you draw from outside influences for your writing?
When I start writing the lyrics, what comes out is definitely a result of reading lots of books or actually listening to lots of books. And a theme that comes, since the second album and on, is the theme of humanism and enlightenment values and against dogmatic ideologies. And sometimes more specifically about messianic ideologies, like “Tjomme” on the last album. On this album, it's clearer than ever that I want to promote good ideas, and I want to fight bad ideas. I think it's good if humanity gets together to work for a better world. Many people have an idea of what that means, but I think there are some types of ideas that people just get attached to, and it's not always the best ones. That's the part where I'm trying to write songs where I'm trying to mention to someone who's holding very tightly to an idea to see if you can sort of let go for a bit and see how it feels.
I think that gets harder and harder, right? The internet has made access to any idea possible or so that anybody can go out and garner an audience with a totally terrible idea and gain traction with it. I saw a quote from you saying, “There's a bunch of dudes, following dudes that don't know what they're talking about.” and there's not a truer statement. It's terrifying, and a little baffling at times.
Yeah, I think one thing to notice is that it's not new with dudes that follow dudes, and this has been part of humanity. But there are, I think, things that can be self-correcting. When I think about these topics, I think about how to say stuff and mention references, or at least say that this is my opinion. We always sort of point towards your references. So, there can be some sort of self-correcting mechanism. The reason why I find it interesting to write about this is not because it's easy, it's because it's a hard problem.
I wanted to ask you about, was AI in general, but also AI in music.
Yeah, it's a topic of the day.
Yeah.
My thing is basically being very, very excited and very, very alarmed at the same time. The topic of AI and music, I put on a very lower level of alarm and, because if you take the stuff of existential risk seriously, that sort of outshadows everything else, including job loss, which is a big one, of course. So, switching from alarmed and doomer to the interesting part about using these tools for fun, or using these tools for leisure and, and all of a sudden like noticing that, oh shit, I'm pretty sure that these AIs will be doing José González songs pretty soon. So, depending on the listener, they might ask for an album that sounds like me, but slightly more in their taste. I think that's, that's already a possibility. That part I'm more curious than alarmed, because in my case, I know I can go and play shows, and I'm pretty sure many of my fans will like to see this human more than robots. So, I'm not concerned in that sense, but it does make me ask questions of what are we doing? Like, especially for me that I'm spending so much time with each album and you can do similar type of things with just a couple of minutes. So that's an interesting question. I'm not sure. My take is to sit back, relax, do what I do, and see how it unfolds. At the same time, I’m for some sort of stamp. I'm against fooling people. I'm against having AI and pretending that it's a real human. I think that's a part where we need to stand our ground. I'm guessing that we will have different type of lists [or charts]. We have the top list that is AI generated, and you have the top list with the human vocals, and the top list with only human instruments. You will have to find a way to prove that the artist was actually playing and suffering. [laughter] Blood, sweat, and tears.
In listening to this new record, I hear so many great wisps of some of your influences that I wanted to ask you about. You already mentioned Nick Drake. There's a song, “Etyd.” I’m not sure how to pronounce it…
Yeah. It's Swedish for etude.
That reminds me so much of like Nick Drake's “Parasite.” It has just like this infusion of that in a lovely way.
It's funny, I'm going to Paris and they wanted me to pick out different songs that were influential, and I picked “Parasite” as one.
“For Every Dusk” and “Sheet” reminded me a lot of Tinariwen, and some of the music from Mali. Does that just seep in or are you consciously thinking about that when you start a track?
Well, by now I'm doing songs that have their twin songs on other albums. So, what started as a sort of unconscious imitation, has become conscious. Now when I'm writing a song, I tune in a way, or choose the guitar with older strings, and then I start jamming in a Mali-type of way. So, the references are basically the same for these latest albums. For Local Valley, I was thinking in trios. Three songs that could fit on one side. So, if we did a double LP, I could have like three songs there and have a similar style on one A, B, C, and D. I didn't do that for this album, but I was thinking similarly. Then it can only be one Sahel Sounds-type song, a couple of songs that are classical folk songs like “Pajarito." But now I'm reusing many of the influences, and many times what happens is afterwards, I remember some influences that pop up while I'm writing. So that happened with “A Perfect Storm.” I had the riff and the riff reminded me of a Battles song, I think it's called “Atlas.” So, my demo was called “Battles.” When I started doing the vocals, I was singing, I was just thinking Quicksand. This feels like Quicksand. That's the way references work out. It's not like I set out from the start to do something very similar. It's more like it comes out on its own.
I wanted to ask you about one of your initiatives called 10% Pledge.
So, in 2017, I started giving 10 percent of my disposable income to effective charities. Basically, going to a site called GiveWell <givewell.org>, and seeing what's on the top of their list. They do the research; they do the calculations to see which organizations get the most bang for the buck. I've also followed the other people that do this and the research about giving, and one of the things they noticed is that if you mention why you're giving then some people might find it interesting. Of course there's already many artists that are giving a lot, but I think what's new with this is that they're using tools from economics to have the most impact. Many times, what's highest up on the list is [medicine for…] Malaria, but once you have saturation in that organization, then it falls down because then another organization can have more impact for each new dollar. I think it's good for me to mention, especially when I have an album like this with so many topics, and so many accusations [laughter], that I don't want to be someone who only has words and sits on my couch, and retweets stuff. I also want to do stuff in the world that actually has an impact. People can learn more about that at <givewithjose.com>, and that site is basically <givingwhatwecan.org>, which is the mother site, but it's got this personal vibe to it where they can read more about it and learn more.
That's great. Thanks so much for your time today.
No, thank you. It was fun.
