Seven Questions With Jordan Lee (of Mutual Benefit & Kassette Klub)
I’ve become pretty obsessed with the artists associated with Kassette Klub as of late. We’ve featured songs from almost every release in their discography, and are now pursuing interviews to the same effect. To complete this movement I sent Jordan Lee a few questions about Kassette Klub itself, as well as their flagship project, his own Mutual Benefit. Jordan is an incredible artist, as well as a sincere and generous person, so I just wanted to stop and say Thank You, Jordan. I hope we can work together again in the future.
1.What inspired you to start this project? What inspired the name?
Mutual Benefit started out of frustration with the pop music I had been making under my own name for years. Off of a whim, I started recording to cassette tape through this broken karaoke machine I found at a thrift store and I loved the ghostly sounds it was making. After meeting my maker whilst enjoying the company of some exceptionally potent mushrooms I decided that Mutual Benefit had a nice ring to it. Both as a utopian idea and/or a sarcastic nod to its pseudo-altruistic misuse in the business world.
2.Walk me through your songwriting process. Which element comes first? Last?
All lyrics/music/albums have to start with a flash of inspiration whether it be a line of a Walt Whitman poem I can’t get out of my head, a specific, almost mundane moment during a roadtrip, a three second backwards loop from an Ethiopian funk song, words scrawled into the glass of a bus window. Sometimes it feels painstakingly slow at first to work this way but once the thematic snowball gets rolling its easy to find connections in the most disparate of sources- from trying to recreate the chaotic yet harmonious sound of ocean waves crashing against the rocks with cut up synthesizer loops to the humble Japanese anti-philosophy of wabi-sabi.
3.Do you imagine albums as a whole, or are they more often a collection of songs written separately?
Everything is very much thematically tied. That’s crucial to me.
4. Do you record/produce the album alone, or do you have some support? If so, who, and in what capacity?
Each project works a little bit differently. Since my recording gear is very portable my songs have been recorded all over the place with lots of contributions from friends. My friend Andrew Morehart has contributed in big and small ways to about half of my songs while other friends in New York and Ohio have contributed guitar, bass, field recordings, and violin. I guess I’m pretty musically opportunistic. Through all of this I’ve discovered that Mutual Benefit is kind of the only area where I stop being easy-going and become a complete control freak when it comes to the final piece of art. I have a really distinct sound in my head that I am trying to recreate.
5.Looking forward, what do you see for this project? Touring? Recording?
Since MB is solo yet collaborative I think it will be around for a long time as I’m always trying to stay inspired and be nomadic. My goal for the year is to try and make the first full length. Touring is amazing and there are some tentative things out there but I don’t want to jinx it before its confirmed.
6.Tell me a little about Kassette Klub. How did it get started? What kind of music do you enjoy releasing? Any upcoming releases to look forward to?
Kassette Klub, like so many other tape label people you speak with, started as knee jerk reaction to trying to make things “real”. After years of being a music nerd on the internet I felt kind of numb to everything. All the experiences and interactions felt 2 dimensional. I tried to focus on the tangible, on real relationships with people in my same town and through that my life has been a lot more blessed I think. The music we release has been all over the place as far a applying a microgenre but I tend to work with people who I find personally as well as artistically inspiring. I try to help facilitate a creative and positive environment for collaboration. The next concrete release is a reissue of Ricky Eat Acid’s fantastic ambient piece, Seeing Little Ghosts Everywhere. I can’t wait to show of the beautiful art that Nathaniel Whitcomb made for it.
7. Do you think that music (or art in general) is more powerful to the artist as its being created and performed, or to the audience as its being received and interpreted?
Oh wow. Maybe this is a cop out but I think its different but equally feasible. I’ve been moved to tears by material that a sound artist was ready to throw away as unusable and have run into many situations where I’ve made something important to me but it doesn’t seem to touch anyone the same way. I guess the best thing to hope for is that your audience is on the same page as you and is open to what you are trying to put out there.
Bonus Request: any new bands/artists to recommend?
I’ve had my head in a hole for a while as far as new bands go. Happy Jawbone Family and Christmas played an amazing rock show I went to a while back. I love everything that the Celestial Shore dudes do including related projects. I’ve been going back to all of Kría Brekkan’s releases a ton lately though none of them are new.
[EDIT: Right after I first published this piece, I walked downstairs to check the mail and found a care package from Jordan. Inside was his new split cassette with Philip Seymour Hoffman, Hear Hum’s Psyche Cycles, Magical Mistakes’ Dislocation (probably our next featured artist) and, to top the whole thing off, a copy of the out-of-print Afternoon’s Blood EP by now-defunct Holy Spirits! So much fantastic music, Thank You So Goddamn Much, Jordan. Our apartment sounds so lovely on this grey evening.]
—Z. Saint James, 1.23.12
