(In 200 Words, we highlight a new record we like a lot, via a 200-word review by Marc Masters and 200 words (or so) from the artist about whatever they choose.)
JO JOHNSON â Â Weaving LP (Further)
Some music is so open about its influences that not referring to those influences when discussing said music seems willfully ignorant. Jo Johnson clearly isnât hiding her antecedents â the opening track on her first album Weaving is called âAncestral Footstepsâ â and yet listing her obvious forebears feels beside the point. Because she drenches her compositions in so much mood and emotion that even when youâ hear something youâve heard before, you feel something new.
Maybe this is just to say that Weaving is less music to be analyzed than an experience to submit to. âSubmitâ might be the wrong term, since it doesnât take much voluntary effort to be consumed by Johnsonâs rippling, radiating music; just open your ears, hit play, and pretty soon youâre swimming in the sonic deep end. Each track washes into your nervous system from the very first sound, filling veins with running water, and nothing seems to ever trickle away. For me, âWords Came After Musicâ achieves this body-soak most thoroughly, its ladder-climbing emissions and rising quivers all directly striking the aorta. But really, all of Weaving is like that: notes and chords whose patterns evoke external influences, but whose effects reshape you inside.Â
A few years ago, Mark and Chloe at Further Records asked me to record a tape for their label, which was a lot less established at the time. They were easygoing and patient and knew next to nothing about me, so I felt free to play and experiment without the pressure to fit into a release schedule, meet anyoneâs expectations or think about genre. I could take my time and do what I like.
A tape release seemed quiet and small, which is attractive enough to an introvert, but itâs also an interesting format to work in. Almost obsolete, lo-fi, nostalgic, warm⌠When I thought about the ways people listen to tapes now, long-distance car journeys came to mind. This reminded me of a night-drive through Arizona back when I was touring with Huggy Bear in the 90s.
As we drove across the desert, I watched through the car window, through the layers of stars into the darkness, lost at sea in the midst of a tough, seven-week tour. That sky was so deep, it was like none Iâve seen before or since, and the tapes we listened to that night vibrated! This memory was kind of a backdrop for me writing Weaving, and sometimes Iâd work on the tracks while looking at Hubble telescope images to remind myself.
It took me forever to finish the music â maybe two years on and off â and by then, Further had begun releasing vinyl and they decided to make Weaving an LP. The titles of the tracks took a long time to come, too, and it wasnât until near the end that I realised a theme was coming together and each name was in some way about the relationship between past and present: evolution, inheritance, ancestry, genealogyâŚ
âSilver Threadsâ, for instance, is about the long-distance communication technology makes possible, and those unique pauses between a message being sent and received. So long-distance with the Voyager mission that our voices may never reach anyone, or may only be heard long after the human race has expired. Or, closer to home, stumbling over the tiny silences, crackles and echoes during international phone calls while words speed through cables, under water, along wires and across space to be heard by someone thousands of miles away.
âWeavingâ started out as a working track title. It originally described the way two arpeggios interplay but it took on more meaning over time and stuck. The word isnât exactly cool or poetic but for me, now, âweavingâ evokes a legacy of womenâs work, art and activism, and conjures up a scrapbook of extraordinary images: women working together at colossal machines in a Lancashire cotton mill in the 19th century; Dora Thewlis, the young mill worker and suffragette, who was famously photographed being arrested after breaking into the Houses of Parliament â one of many working class women who nurtured the early suffrage and the labour movements; the art of Bauhaus weavers like Gunta Stolzl and Anni Albers, and the stunning photos of Michiko Yamawaki and Leonore Tawney at their looms, looking like theyâre controlling some kind of retro-futurist synthesiser.
âIn the Shadow of the Workhouseâ is about a different kind of legacy. Some people inherit money, land, a title or status from their ancestors, but maybe others inherit obscurity, poverty, tragedy, shame. I wonder how many generations have been hindered by their ancestorsâ experience of the workhouse?
We usually think of workhouses as long-gone, âDickensianâ, but the system existed right up until 1948. When she was a child, the threat of the workhouse hung over my grandmother after her father committed suicide, leaving her mother distraught and the family without a breadwinner. With no Welfare State to fall back on, the workhouse was a real possibility and its walls were feared as much as prison or prostitution. No wonder. Workhouse families were separated, parents could often only see their children by discharging the family and readmitting them, and there was a time when 90% of children who entered the workhouse died.Â
As successive UK governments dismantle the Welfare State, it feels as though time is folding back on itself. Poor people and those dependent on government assistance are increasingly being vilified, punished and ridiculed by politicians and the media and Iâm pretty worried about where this is all goingâŚÂ
The titles âAncestral Footstepsâ and âWords Came After Musicâ are both about the archaic roots of music and dancing. âAncestral footstepsâ is a phrase stolen from the choreographer Martha Grahamâs book Blood Memory (and only on my radar thanks to Niki from Huggy Bear). Grahamâs words have stayed with me for a full 20 years: âThere are always ancestral footsteps when I am creating a new dance and gestures are flowing through me.â She talks about keeping âthe channel openâ and, for an untrained musician using machines and software in place of skill, the idea that there may be a musical reservoir coded into our DNA that we unconsciously draw on is attractive and rings true. âAncestral Footstepsâ is pretty fast at 180 BPM and was mixed while watching Tiyiselani Vomaseve and Tshetsha Boys videos on YouTube.Â
âWords Came After Musicâ was inspired by hearing the anthropologist Robyn Dunbar speak a few years ago. He is exploring the possibility that music and dancing played an evolutionary role in social cohesion before language â replacing grooming as a way to bond the large, early human groups. Taking part in music-making and dancing has the power to trigger endorphin release and feelings of happiness, pain relief, warmth and tolerance towards others. Iâm no scientist, but that sounds familiarâŚÂ
Dunbarâs talk resonated with something very powerful I remember Arvo Pärt saying in an interview with Bjork: âPeople donât know how strong music influences us⌠good and bad. You can kill people with sound⌠And if you can kill⌠Maybe there is a sound that is the opposite of killing?âÂ
Music isnât on the one hand popular and trivial and on the other elitist and serious. I donât believe (like Steven Pinker) that itâs a throwaway but entertaining by-product of evolution that we can take or leave with no harm done. Music is as critical to happiness and sanity as touching and being touched, or communicating with others. Its mysterious, ancient power makes us feel alive, heals us and connects us to other people in ways we donât, yet, understand.
Weaving is out now on Further. Buy it here.