An interview with Joseph Rabjohns & Lachlan R. Dale…

Hey guys and thanks for taking time out of your day to have a little chat. Although given the weather currently hitting Australia’s East Coast there’s a chance I’m just saving you from a family Monopoly game or that novel you keep putting off?

Lachlan: Man… we only just got out of a COVID lockdown of almost 4 months, so I’ve already taken the opportunity to finally read both Tolstoy’s War & Peace, and Dostoyevski’s Crime & Punishment (which was the last of his great novels I had left). I guess now I’m just practicing for my solo album launch, and for Hashshashin’s recording session just before Christmas.

Joe: We’ve been lucky here with minimal lockdowns and not many cases. I’m not much of a reader, I’m still going on the Hobbit from year 10 on high school. I’ve just finished teaching guitar at school for the year and am now practicing and transcribing string arrangements for my solo album launch, and writing with my other musical projects.

Tell us a bit about the collaborative album. How and why did you guys decide to do a split like this? I understand you guys were doing some shows for Kodiak Empire and Hashshashin around 2016?

Lachlan: Split releases were a big part of me growing up in the extreme metal and hardcore punk scenes. I hadn’t realised that outside of those genres a split record is an anomaly.

Truthfully, I didn’t know if my songs were going to be enough for people to buy a record. It’s my first solo release. And on the other hand, I am in love with Joe’s solo work, and had started thinking about reaching out to him about touring together, and eventually writing music together, so it all just fell into place. We both deal with similar concepts, and draw from similar inspirations – though our approach to guitar is ultimately quite different. It fits together well.

Joe: Yeah Lachlan and I met back in 2016 when Kodiak Empire was touring our release Silent Bodies. Since then we’ve become good mates, Lachlan has asked me to help out with the label, and we’ve played more shows together. It just seemed to make sense to create something together at some point because we both really respect each other’s musical brains.

Covid withstanding; how does a project like this take shape on a stage? Do you guys learn each other’s parts and perform side by side — an intimate setting while onlookers sip wine and sway from side to side? Or would you guys be content simply playing a few songs from your respective sides?

Lachlan: Eventually we will earn each other’s sides, but so far COVID travel restrictions have slowed our progress there. That’ll be the plan when we eventually do an East Coast Tour around April / May 2022.

Joe: We don’t feature on each other’s recorded music on this release, we may do when we tour together in a live setting though. We do have a writing session plan early next year to co-write an album. I’d say this release would not suit a rum n’ coke rock venue. Intimate setting with wine sipping sounds good to me.

In your opinion, what’s the best part about each other’s style? Is there something in those styles you’d like to revisit yourself, perhaps to incorporate into the Kodiak Empire and Hashshashin framework? More importantly, would these features fit?

Lachlan: I love that Joe uses techniques from classical guitar, and can pull on his immense knowledge that has come out of jazz and progressive music – and yet, the final product manages to avoid being overly esoteric or isolating. He has this balance of beautiful hooks and melodies that help offset the more technical aspects of his music.

To me the whole thing is very emotionally expressive, with a very earthy and grounded sound. It represents so much of where I’ve been trying to steer my music over the last 5+ years.

I’ve always been very attracted to finger style guitar – my dad plays like that. I’ve been slowly developing my own techniques there, but I really look up to Joe. Same goes for his knowledge of modes and theory: it’s an area I’m trying to develop in.

With Hashshashin… well, we’ve got quite a specific direction at the moment, where I’m playing the Afghan rubab in a very dynamic set of songs. We’re always gradually increasing modal manipulations, and have always tried to balance technicality and some vestige of accessibility. But I do think Joe’s beautiful layering and orchestration on Eclipsing has given me some inspiration for how we might approach production.

Joe: Lachlan’s sense of frequencies and sonic space is really inspiring for me. All the loopers, reverbs and delays create incredible texture. Through his drones (sometimes heavily layered) there is never a point where I feel like frequencies are clashing or working against each other negatively. Also Lachlan’s ear for of middle eastern really resonates in his playing, not only in Hashshashin but also in Orbs.

Ever since I heard Serious Beak, to which I lost my mind, Lachlan has been a massive influence on me musically and continues to be today with his unique approach to sound making. I’m definitely incorporating more half step/whole/middle eastern harmony in some of the newer Kodiak riffs, so thanks for that inspiration Lachlan.

Lachlan has stated (both in the presser and on the album’s Bandcamp page) that “This record deals with the loss of my grandparents”. As a driving force, especially in the creation of music, how clearly does this translate throughout your tracks? Being that they’re instrumental (especially in regards to Lachlan’s half) and lacking the ‘normal’ lyrical narration, how much time did you spend meticulously clawing over sections to ensure your inspiration shone through?

Lachlan: I don’t make music for a living, or as a profession. The process of creating music has always come from a deeply personal source from me. Given my interests, it’s intertwined with my reading of philosophy and literature, my practise of meditation, and my life experiences.

Generally, when I write music I’m riding off some kind of raw emotional energy from something that has happened in my life. And it’s oddly pre-linguistic, and pre-conceptual. When I get towards the end of that, I need to start working out how to talk about this weird sonic creation.

For me a piece of music – or a riff, or a passage – I’ve written is “good” when I can connect it to this deeper source of emotion. When I play it (a million times), I ask myself if I can both generate and communicate a particular emotion or experience. It is almost literally a meditation, or a type of ritual. Repetition is key, as is my ability to channel something into that idea. Only then does it begin to make sense for me.

I wrote ‘Absorbed By The Earth’ when I was in a sort of depressed state, so I knew what emotion lay there. But ‘A Soundless Stream’ was new for me. I tried to express what meditation has done for me in improving my quality of life, and re-connecting me with the world. For that I borrowed some ideas from Indian Classical Music. ‘Leaking Light’, on the other hand, has me reflecting on my grandparents – it’s a little sad, but it’s also warm and expresses gratitude and acceptance.

So I had all of these sort of raw emotional elements that I needed to shape into a narrative, which was one of the final parts of assembling the album. My experience at a 10 day meditation retreat last year was one of my recent major life events, as was the loss of my grandfather just before I went on the retreat. So I put together this narrative of my positive memories of childhood (Warmth And Time), an encounter with death (Absorbed By The Earth), remembering those who have passed with love and acceptance (Leaking Light), and reconnecting with the world through spiritual practise (A Soundless Stream).

Breaths Of A Summers Day is a reference to a Robert Musil novel I read earlier this year, which circles around mystical experience, which to me represents a path forward. It’s a vision of all the negative aspects of the world redeemed by spiritual practise and/or mystical experience. Those experiences have been incredibly important to me. The sounds you hear at the end of the album is the dawn of my last morning of my meditation retreat.

For newer, uninitiated listeners, explain your main projects: wrong answers only.

Lachlan: Hashshashin – indulgent orientalist prog wank.

Black Aleph: you think you’re fancy because you mix Persian instrumentation with doom.

My solo stuff: looping boring stuff just makes for more boring stuff.

June Cartel: improvised post rock because we have no backbone and are scared to actually commit to riffs

Joe: Kodiak Empire: space age dream theater/karnivool rip job

Kieran Stevenson: the money maker/pop band.

My solo stuff: weirdo acoustic sad boy prog

Each side has their respective roster of guest musicians, rounding out your sound and really bringing this project together. Yet there’s some collaborations featuring artists of Milton Man Gogh for example. Where’d you pull these talents from and what sort of projects do they largely work on?

Lachlan: Cameron Macdonald on bass. Cam is a fellow Hashshashin bandmate and a very close friend of mine. He’s also played with me in Jxckxlz in the past, and was part of the excellent Five Star Prison Cell (RIP).
Peter Hollo is an amazing cellist who has his own loop project raven, which we released on Art As Catharsis. I’m also a big fan of Tangents, which he plays in, and which are sort of like “The Necks with electronic elements” though that doesn’t do them justice. [While] Susie Bishop is a wonderful violinist who used to play in Hinterlandt (who AAC have released) and who plays in a wide range of groups. Tim Carr is the engineer we worked with. He’s also a good friend. We’ve probably done 10+ albums together at this point. It’s been a long and rewarding partnership.

Joe: Zac Sakrewski played double bass on the album and plays in Milton Man Gogh, June Cartel, Lamborghini Eagleman. Zac is a staple in the Brisbane Jazz scene and really helped me in finalising the structures of the songs and gave me real scope in finalising the vision for the sound palate of the release. Zac has been a good mate since we studied together at the QLD Conservatorium. Kat Hunter laid down strings and sang ambient vocals in parts. Kat’s main project Lack The Low is incredible and I’m super stoked to hear the new album. Kat is a phenomenal musician with a phenomenal ear. I gave her a very loose direction and she came back pure genius. She completely transformed the record. Kieran Stevenson is a long time friend and collaborator who sings ambient vocals on the record. On the other end of the spectrum to all the prog I write, I really enjoy good pop music, usually 80’s influences ala Peter Gabriel, Icehouse etc. Kieran and I have been trying to crack the code for the perfect pop song since we met each other fresh out of school at uni[versity]. Cody McWaters is another longtime friend who I met at uni. Cody engineered the album and played baritone guitar in some passages. Cody has the most amazing presence in the studio and no matter how many times I lose sight of the overall bigger picture of whatever record we’re working on, he always steers me back on course with his amazing ear and musicality.

The year is coming to an end. What releases (2021) have you spent a lot of time with? What’s your honourable mentions list?

Lachlan: I’m always bad at this. I spend a lot of time exploring styles that are new to me, so the music that excites me the most is rarely new.

I’ve been spending a lot of the last 5 years delving into classical music from India, Afghanistan, Iran, etc, so I can’t help but give a shoutout to a few of my favourites – Pandit Nikhil Banerjee, Ali Ghamsari, Homayoun Sakhi, Ustad Rahim Khushnawaz, Ustad Mohammad Omar, Hossein Alizadeh and Ustad Shahid Parvez Khan. Hearing master musicians like this is just humbling as hell. More recently I’ve been going deep on ambient artists like Abul Mogard, A Winged Victory For The Sullen and Rafael Anton Irisarri. But if you force me to pick a few new releases I’ll say:

Arooj Aftab – Vulture Prince
Hiatus Kaiyote – Mood Valiant
Jordan Rakei – What We Call Life
Floating Points – Promises
And Joseph Rabjohns’ side of this split (which is seriously some of my favourite music of recent years)

Joe: To be honest I haven’t listened to a heap of new music I’ve connected with as I’ve been quite immersed in writing my own stuff and listening to 13 year olds play Smells Like Teen Spirit, but there have been a few releases that have pricked my ears.

They are:

Lack The Low- The Sharpest Knife (single from the soon to be released God Carrier)
Blanket – Modern Escapism
Hiatus Kaiyote – Mood Valiant
Lachlan R. Dale’s side of the split
Animals As Leaders- Monomyth
Chassm- Falling

What’s in mind for 2022? Assuming we can get bands back on stages sometime in the new year I hope you guys will answer the call.

Lachlan: Joe and I are meeting up early in the new year to start writing a record together. We’ll be up in some ancient Gondwana rainforest, so we’ll be hanging out, writing music, cooking, and going for hikes. We’ll definitely be playing a whole bunch of shows together on the east coast of Australia.

Hashshashin’s new album will probably come out sometime next year. My duo with Persian classical musician Timothy Johannessen will record in January as well. I tend to call that “Persian drone”. And I have probably two releases of collaborations that I’ll eventually release under my name. Oh, I’m also featured on a bunch of other records playing rubab, so hopefully some of those see the light of day.

*quickly scribbles down a messy reminder to check for the new Hashshashin next year…

Joe: Next year will be a big one for me. I’ll be writing music with Lachlan as mentioned above, touring Eclipsing // Orbs, releasing new music with Kodiak Empire and hopefully performing again, releasing a pop record with Kieran Stevenson, releasing a solo prog project with a working title Shoal, releasing a guitar duo alum I’ve recorded with Tyler Cooney, releasing music with my folk/math instrumental band Last Lakes, and releasing music with alternative pop band Prince Peace. Then I’ll be teaching guitar. So yeah a lot of music stuff.

Again thanks for taking the time to do this. Do you have any final, passing sentiments to be shared with those that have read this?

Lachlan: Thanks so much for taking the time to ask us questions man, it truly means a lot to us. People like you keep the underground and independent scene working. If we had to lay down big bucks to score publicity, it would be a grim world indeed. Thank you for helping keep the underground alive.

Joe: Thanks so much for taking the time man! Can’t express in words how much we appreciate your efforts not only with this interview but every interview you do! Keeping music alive!

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