Part 1

Name: ZÖJ
Members: Gelareh Pour (kamancheh), Brian O’Dwyer (drums)
Interviewee: Brian O’Dwyer
Nationality: Australian
Current release: ZÖJ's Fil O Fenjoon is slated for release in November of 2023 via Bleeemo and Parenthèses (outside Australia). 
Recommendations: I’m currently on a big Chris Abrahams kick. Chris plays piano in The Necks, who’s records are sublime, but his solo records are another world, totally a must listen.
I’m also slowly working my way through Marisa Anderson records. Marisa is a Californian based guitarist who I first encountered in a collaboration with Jim White (Dirty Three/Xylouris White). If you don’t know Jim White you really need to fix that too.

[Read our Marisa Anderson interview about the guitar]
[Read our Tony Buck of The Necks interview]
[Read our Xylouris White interview]

If you enjoyed this ZÖJ interview and would like to stay up to date with the band and their music, visit Gelareh Pour's homepage or the bandcamp page of Bleeemo, Brian's label. ZÖJ also has a dedicated Facebook page.

[Read our Gelareh Pour Interview]



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

For me as a listener, music is very much the same as food or furniture. It serves a purpose in addressing a physical need or desire, has an emotional impact, provides enjoyment, sustenance, etcetera. It’s as part of my environment as the floor I walk on or the chair I sit in. In these instances, my eyes are typically open, unless I am listening to something that is putting me to sleep.

However, when I’m engaged in making music, it’s a different thing. The sound is more about communication and language, I engage with it based on subtext and intention, or narrative and imagination more than any preconceived notions of what it should be.
 
As Gelareh and I use improvisation heavily, these more conversational pathways become a crucial element in arrangements and atmosphere. In these instances, my eyes are typically closed. Most likely to focus my senses and increase my level of concentration.

What were your very first steps in music like and how would you rate the gains made through experience - can one train/learn being an artist?

My first steps in music were good and bad. I was very much encouraged by friends yet discouraged from musical education.

I guess I began as many people do, imitating things I was listening to. My formative years were heavily influenced by local punk and grindcore groups, I essentially wanted to play as fast as possible. This desire faded a bit when I discovered experimental music, then I began to focus more on textures.
 
Training is essential to growth. Without practice and an openness to learning, I don’t believe even the most talented artist would get very far. I think many true artists, no matter how accomplished, always feel as though they have more to explore and learn.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

This is quite interesting; I don’t think I actually listen to any of the music I was listening to at that age. I perhaps hold a fondness for it, or can reflect on it in a nostalgic way, but I am an active consumer of new music and I feel I’m much more influenced by things that are new to me than things I know intimately.
 
Music at that age was a direction. In many ways I could argue that it saved me, or at least gave me an unwavering path to follow when all other paths seemed to deteriorate. I don’t know if I realised that then, but on reflection it is very true, music has been the only constant for me, I owe it a lot.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and what motivates you to create?

The biggest thing for me is communication. ZÖJ is a great example here. ZÖJ took Gelareh and I many years to develop and if you were to listen to early recordings of us, you’d notice how different it is to what we do today.

I know many acts take years to develop their sound, but for ZÖJ the development has been much more about language, about how we communicate with each other, how we can use structured improvisation yet present something that appears fully composed. It’s probably important to call out trust here too, as this is an essential glue that holds everything together.
 
I don’t know why I have an urge to create. What I do know is I am much happier when I’m creating than when I’m not. I get very misshapen and anxious when I don’t have creative goals, so I always have them, it’s just easier that way.

To quote a question by the great Bruce Duffie: When you come up with a musical idea, have you created the idea or have you discovered the idea?

As an improvising musician it’s kind of a bit of both.

I create the environment, or maybe it’s better to say I create the circumstances, as in, I’ll set the instrument a certain way, I’ll choose the tools, I’ll dictate the terms. But as for what comes out, I’m hearing it for the first time along with everyone else, so I am very much a passenger in that respect. Perhaps facilitator is a better word, I create the world for the thing to exist, but what the thing chooses to become is not up to me.
 
I’ve been quoted as saying ‘my drumming is like responding to a series of mistakes’, on reflection that’s perhaps not totally fair, I am definitely responding to myself, my environment, Gela, etcetera, but perhaps ‘mistakes’ is a bit harsh. Perhaps it’s ‘responding to a series of responses’.

Paul Simon said “the way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What's your own take on that and how would you define your personal sound?

On all of my favourite records that I’ve played on there is a common theme, that is on listening back I can’t always tell exactly what it is I’ve played. As in, I couldn’t tell you how I did it or likely even play the exact same thing again.

What I take from that is that on those records I was completely ‘in the moment’. I was so engulfed by what was happening that I couldn’t waste any processing space trying to keep track of what was happening, it just was.
 
There’s a real relinquishing happening in those moments a real sense of surrender, an abandonment of restriction, consciousness, thought, anxiety, whatever. It is a moment of absolute freedom. If I was to define ‘my sound’, when it is truly mine, it would be that, freedom.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

This makes me think of one of my mentors, the incredible textural drummer and punk philosopher Sean Baxter.

I have a quote from Sean tattooed on my arm that says, ‘music can get fucked’. It may sound crass, but there is incredible depth here. Sean is saying that the rules of music aren’t finite or aren’t applicable in every situation. That what one person thinks is great music, may be utter nonsense to someone else, and both opinions are valid.

The thing that I learn from this is that sound is so much more powerful than music alone, and that music, with all its prescribed intentions, is not the sum of all sound.
 
Sean would tell a story about walking out of a venue in Melbourne and listening to the cars and trams on the street, the people walking by, the birds in the air, and realising that all of that aural information was just as affective as anything any musician created. He was right.