‘This is our music, it’s us, 100% naked’ – Luc Hess and Jona Nido of Coilguns talk to MacDara Conroy ahead of their four-date Irish tour next week Though Robin Staps’ post-metal collective The Ocean might be their higher-profile gig (signed to the legendary Metal Blade, with world tours, critical adulation et al) it seems obvious from their passionate words that drummer Luc Hess and guitarist Jona Nido‘s other group Coilguns is no mere side project. Far from a dashed-off exercise in songwriting frustration that music from people in bigger bands can tend towards, Coilguns’ debut full-length Commuters is a bold declaration from the massive-sounding Swiss trio (completed by vocalist Louis Jucker, another Ocean vet) with its own distinct personality, marrying post/prog-metal atmosphere with the intricate patterns of math rock and hardcore aggression, and scattered with hints of styles across the board. And it’s all made for themselves, not anyone else – ‘not giving a fuck’ is a common thread in the conversation. Ahead of their four-date Irish tour next week, Luc and Jona talk passion, friendships and high standards with MacDara Conroy.
Your releases so far have demonstrated a raw, grainy sound – even more so on your first album Commuters – that conveys a very heavy, slightly distant atmosphere. One band that brings to mind are your compatriots Knut; were they any inspiration in that?
Luc: We’re definitely inspired by Knut. To me, Knut is by far one of the best noise/hardcore/blah-blah-who-gives-a-shit-it’s-music-after-all band of the last decade. First I love the songwriting, very raw and brutal but always tasty and clever, with its very own approach and style. No bands sound like Knut. Then as a drummer, I’ve always been very inspired by Roderic Mounir’s drumming. Tricky, technical, brutal and subtle at the same time. The way I hear it seems like the band’s sound is always upfront. So his musicality serves the band and his technical skills serve his musicality.
Then I guess the fact that we’re going for a raw and grainy sound, as close to the raw takes as possible, is also because we listen to a lot of different bands who use the same ingredients but play different kinds of music. We listen to a lot of pop rock, kraut rock, shoegaze, electronic, folk, etc. In the end, no matter what kind of music I listen to, there’s a certain amount of ingredients in their music that I find interesting and that touches my feelings.
We didn’t choose a raw sound for nothing. It’s an aesthetic we spent a lot of time setting up the way we wanted it. That’s why our recording process goes through a meticulous choice of amps, positioning the mics carefully and the way we’re playing each song, sincerely with all our body and soul in each part. I think this way half of your mix is already done, therefore we reduce the painful process of hours in a mixing room.
Where did you get the idea to use loop pedals to make a sound that sounds far bigger than just two of you? It reminds me a little of what Don Caballero did on their record American Don, though obviously the execution is different.
Jona: It’s funny that you mention Don Cab, as one of the songs on Commuters was written after I listened too much to World Class Listening Problem. The relation isn’t obvious as I always believed that influences are good when nobody can spot them.
It’s actually not the loop pedals making the guitar sound big. I use the loop pedals when I need different guitar or basslines going on, or to add some drone layers. I decided to build this custom pedalboard in the first place because after we recorded our first EP – where Louis was playing bass – and had our first show offer, Louis didn’t want to play bass live. I didn’t want to have more members [in the band] so, as a lot of bands have been doing for a very long time, I decided to just use some effects to fill the gap of the low-end spectrum.
I wanted to be able to control two guitar lines anyway, with different effects going into certain amps and not the other, be able to do left-and-right shit – so all I had to do was add a third line for the bass, which is nothing more than a couple of AB boxes and inputs. The whole wiring is really shit, though. Now I’m having a one unit switch for all the amps being custom built in France. I will be using it for the first time on this Irish tour! Really excited about that.
I also started using all this shit as I didn’t know where this band was really going – stylistically, I mean – so since I had to build a pedalboard, I’ve just put in everything I thought I’d need. Now I know I can reduce it a little bit, but the loop pedals I’ll keep and probably make more use of them.
As a band you make a point of recording live in the studio and getting it done on the first take. Obviously that’s important to you, but why?
Jona:First of all, it’s because that’s what Luc, Louis and I do for a living, pretty much. We create and mainly we play live. We’re also on the same page regarding how we should interpret our music and how we should feel it and how we want the listener to get it, both live and in the studio. Recording in one take is the only way allowing us to not compromise on any of these things. Also it allows us to focus on recording a good version of a song, as a whole, not like “Oh shit, the 32nd note is out of tune and we lost 2 BPM at 2’13”.”
Our records have some mistakes here and there; tempo changes – we don’t play to a click live or in the studio – and a lot of parts are actually played on cue just to be able to interpret our shit without having to count the bars. All of this makes this process necessary to respect the development of this band and its songwriting.
Now for the philosophical side of things. Recording that way is also used as a stance against e-mailed and over-produced records. We aren’t really super high-skilled or high-tech musicians, but we know how to play our instruments and most importantly we know how to do it with attitude, which a lot of bands are lacking nowadays. The environment we’re in, the context and our own restrictions in terms of production and recording process, have a major influence on the songwriting. It’s all about a certain moment in a certain place with certain people. Then it’s thumbs out of your asshole and just fucking play and make the best out of it. So far it’s been working well and I don’t think we will do it any differently, but who knows?
One last thing: recording alone in front of my computer isn’t something I wanna do anymore. At least not for when I play fucking punk-hardcore shit. I realised that when I recorded guitars for The Ocean’s Heliocentric and Anthropocentric albums, where I spent a lot of time playing as good as I can but still had to edit every single note I played afterwards, although I know I can play this shit. That’s why Coilguns is the perfect setup for me now as I don’t have to bother with this crap. I’m not trying to get a fucking Bachelor’s in editing; I’m trying to write and play music, period.
I’m not saying I would not do it ever again. I’d love to work on a super production, like on a massive pop record, but hey, when you’re talking about crappy crust punk/black metal/what-the-fuck-ever, who fucking cares? Let it breath, work on your sounds, learn how to play tight and play with people that understand you and vice versa. Then all you have to do is to find a sound engineer that understands your process and all he’ll have to do is set up microphones in a nice room to make sure to capture what you do. Bands were doing that 40 years ago already, and most of the heavy or rock bands I admire are doing that this way, so it’s not like it’s something new.
But don’t get me wrong, this is my point of view and I still think it’s one approach among 100. I listen to a lot of very well produced records – heavy music or not – but most of the time I judge a band when I see them live.
DIY is a big part of what you do – you have your own label, Hummus Records, and you’ve handmade record sleeves and more. But the Coilguns album is out of your hands somewhat; it’s released on The Ocean’s label Pelagic, with a professionally printed digipak. What was the reasoning there?
Jona:Well, the release is half-and-half. When we decided to write Commuters, Robin Staps offered to release it. Our first split with Kunz was self-released as a handmade version and then re-released by Pelagic Records as well. But hey, this is still DIY. I was doing PR for Pelagic for the last year-and-a-half through the PR agency Kickstart My Band that my buddy Patrick Häberli started a couple of years back. Then the deal was that we were taking advantage of Pelagic’s network and distribution but Coilguns paid for the pressing, and Pelagic bought a small amount of copies from us of both the CD and vinyl.
And see, that’s the thing about having a real label. You have to follow certain rules, certain formats. You can’t just burn CDs yourself and then silkscreen print them, which we usually do. You need a barcode, a catalog number, you need to do PR three months before release date, provide results to distributors beforehand so they order more copies – damn, I hate that! I wouldn’t complain about signing to a bigger label, but I know what I want and so far, no matter how small and underground we are, I’m happy.
We can release music whenever we want. I know that Coilguns can put out a 10″ vinyl limited to 300 copies and a year later it’ll be gone. We can tour – I mean, without being properly signed, we’ve been able to play like 70 shows in a year-and-a-half all over Europe and Australia and even got some decent support slots like The Dillinger Escape Plan, Norma Jean, Baroness. So we really don’t give a fuck. We do what we want, when we want and how we wanna do it. And this is a luxury, I tell you. Of course we don’t get the same exposure as bands signed on major or established labels but so what? The day a label will approach us in that regard we’ll definitely talk to them. But I’m not desperately putting energy into searching for one. I’d rather invest that time into creating my network and creating shit.
Hummus Records has now turned into a more participative project and it’s great. We may start having proper distribution and stuff for certain releases but generally I don’t want to go through the pain that it is to do it that way. I mean, when Louis our singer sends me some stuff he recorded by himself and he is like “Hey I did that last week, do you wanna release it next week?” I’m like “Fuck yeah, man!” and I wanna keep this as an option because I think it’s fucking cool.
It’s interesting that you front-loaded the album with an 11-minute track – not unusual in and of itself, and there are lengthy tracks later on, but that early position is certainly different. The effect is to split the record in two, with Commuters Parts 1 and 2 feeling like they comprise their own piece apart from the rest. What was your thinking behind that?
Jona: I’m not sure how much thinking we’ve put into this. Honestly, we had to get the track list together, in order to send the artwork to the pressing plant, right when we were recording, so we guessed that it would work well that way. We thought the intro riff for ‘Commuters Part 1’ had to be the beginning of the album. From there we had no choice but to put the second part right afterwards. Of course we talked about the fact that putting an 11-minute track with three chords was probably not the best strategy, but we decided to not give a fuck.
I think in the end it’s a good manifesto about what this band is as a whole. But at no point we thought “Oh yeah, let’s be cool and put this shit-ass long track second on the album”. It just seemed natural that way. Also I think that the people that can listen to ‘Commuters Part 2’ without skipping it are the ones that are gonna love the album in its entirety and that probably approve what we do and the way we do it.
I never though about it that way before, but both ‘Commuters’ could have been a separate EP and then the rest of the songs maybe another album or something. But yeah, in the end we think in terms of audio aesthetic and only according to our taste. As you said, maybe it’s different, and I’m happy that people like you actually notice it – and like it? But definitely I would not give a fuck for whoever thinks it’s stupid.
It’s also a record of split personalities: there are short blasts of angular hardcore broken up by longer post-metal jams, presumably influenced by your experiences playing with The Ocean. How natural is it for you to switch between those modes?
Jona: As natural as masturbating, pretty much. I think people in the scene like to think that the ‘pro’ side of both The Ocean and Coilguns are connected, but I disagree. Of course, Luc and I have been playing with this band for six years so we have developed some different sensitivity to this kind of music. But I don’t think there’s anything in Coilguns sounding like The Ocean.
The way we play these prog parts in Coilguns is much different than the way it’s being played in The Ocean. We are only two instrumentalists: there are no extra instruments to add anything at any time. When we play an eight- or 11-minute instrumental track, we’ve got to be really sensitive about it and restrain ourselves from exploding to fast so that when we unleash hell, well, it’s real fucking hell, you know? It implies a great understanding of each other as musicians but also an understanding of each other’s sensitivity which comes from playing together for a very long time.
I also think that in Coilguns, both the prog and the chaotic, hardcore side are much more extreme and going deeper and darker than with The Ocean. I mean this is our music, it’s us, 100% naked, so it’s easier to feel it and live it the way it should be. We always do whatever feels right at the moment we do it and within the context we’re in. We were never meant to have instrumental tracks, nor epic build-ups. It just happened because sometimes I was like “Hey, I’ve got this evil arpeggio, can we make something out of it?” and then we would jam around it with Luc doing all his magic and that’s it!
To give you another good example: in early September, when we were on The Ocean’s world tour, we had a couple of off days in Mexico. Somehow we hooked up with Ricardo Zuniga who owns a studio there and invited us to spend two days there. We didn’t have any Coilguns gear – I have a really complex setup that has a big influence on my songwriting – so we both had to deal with a completely different setup. We wrote two songs on the spot that we recorded immediately afterwards. One of them is like a 12-minute depressing black metal jam that turns into a seventies classic rock song at the end – why not? That’s what happened there and we judged that it was good enough to be released at some point.
Coilguns, according to us, cannot be defined by any genre or any scene forever. You can call us mathcore now, it would not be wrong. But it does not apply to all the songs. Same with sludge or black metal – and what about if we wrote some pop songs, which could easily happen? So switching modes or whatever is not even natural, it’s what we are.
Keijo Niinima of Rotten Sound guests on the track ‘Minkowski Manhattan Distance’. How did you come about to working with him?
Jona: We met Keijo for the first time in 2008 when The Ocean were supporting Rotten Sound. Then Keijo’s other band Medeia supported The Ocean in 2009. The guy is almost twice our age but still rocks out 10 times harder than we will ever do. He is an amazing singer and an awesome drinking buddy. Him and Jesper Liveröd [Nasum, Burst] also asked us to support them with Coilguns on a couple of shows of Nasum’s farewell tour in 2012, and that’s when we started talking about this seriously. Then everything went really smoothly.
Keijo is a hard-working person. Due to his engineer job, he is really pragmatic and knows his shit. We sent him the song; he sent back a couple of pre-productions. Louis wrote the lyrics and then they discussed arrangements together. We flew him into Switzerland to record live with us. We could have saved money and time by doing it via e-mail but fuck that.
You know, we didn’t wanted to get Keijo for his ‘fame’ or whatever. He really is someone with who it just clicked personally, and when we wrote ‘Minkowski’ we had the feeling Louis was not the right singer for this song and Keijo came to mind straight away. Then we were really happy to have him in our home town for two days, showing him around, making him drink a lot of absinthe! He’s a great dude and it was worth doing it that way. This whole thing-scene-band is about that, isn’t it? Passion, fun and people.
Switzerland punches above its weight when it comes to metal and hardcore, at least in terms of international recognition – Celtic Frost, Fear of God, Coroner and the Young Gods are all legendary names. But you’re at the coalface of it today, running your label to support local artists. What is it about Switzerland that makes it such a hotbed for heavy music?
Jona: I have no fucking idea. There are good scenes and incredible bands everywhere, though. Even in the most random places you can imagine. But I do share the feeling that there is a really strong and extremely tasty music scene in general in Switzerland. One reason could be that people do it for the love of it, without pretending to make it big or whatever.
I think it’s a cultural thing. Swiss people are really hard workers. We have high standards regarding everything and that you can see in the general quality of life and the wealthiness of the country. Nobody feels like they need to be superstar or be important. They just do shit according to the standards we’re used to.
Then you’ll tell me that it doesn’t mean that because you do something right you’re good at it, and that’s where the mystery lingers. Seriously, there are shit bands as well as anywhere else, but for such a small country there is quite a strong scene. But I’m not able to tell you why there are all these crushing heavy bands and why they are so good.
The bands you mention have to be a reason. I mean, we’re not talking about Aerosmith and Bon Jovi. The Swiss bands that first had international recognition were these occult, avant-garde heavy/dark bands, so that gives you a hint on the scene here in Switzerland, I guess. Then some other bands opened the way of the underground in the last decade or so, bands like Nostromo, Knut or Unfold.
It’s funny to see how big this post-metal thing has become in the last couple of years when here in Switzerland there were like 15 bands doing that 15 years ago – some of them still being the best I’ve ever heard, like Unfold, Forceed, Zatokrev. But still nowadays we have some great bands in that ‘scene’ – bands like Abraham, Rorcal, Impure Wilhelmina. I mean, they come from it initially, but they are far from the cliché and all the shit bands you can find around playing post-what-the-fuck metal.
Is there a singular Swiss scene or is there big variety in styles of music from city to city? As in, if people want to hear more angular hardcore in the vein of what Coilguns do, is there a best city to visit for that?
Jona: I’ve played more shows abroad than in Switzerland really so it’s hard to say. The scene is maybe split in two: one would be the German part of Switzerland and the second the French part. In the German part you’ll find it easier to get a crowd for whatever is more classic, like classic rock or proper metal – thrash, black, death, etc – whereas in the French part people are more on the edge of experimental music.
There are a couple of cities where hardcore – I mean, proper straight edge/vegan hardcore – has been or is bigger than other places. But honestly, if I think of all the people and bands I know and the ones I hang out with, I’d say that in every major city you can find really good bands from any scene.
But let’s say that right now, the ones that have bands touring and being really active in the metal scene would be Geneva (Rorcal, Impure Wilhelmina, Wardhill, Six Months Of Sun, Elizabeth), Lausanne (Krüger, Abraham, When Icarus Falls, No Sun in San Francisco), the region of Neuchâtel/Jura/Biel (ØLTEN, Kehlvin, Yog, Coilguns, Edmond Jefferson & Sons) and there is a really good scene in Fribourg as well, with more quiet stuff. And here I’m only talking about the underground ‘metal’ scene from only the French part of Switzerland. In all these cities you’ll also find a lot of professional technicians – sound guys, backliners, light designers – and a lot of different small independent structures working in the booking or promotion field.
In the French part I go to shows in Lausanne, Geneva, Delémont, La Chaux-de-Fonds and Fribourg, and in the German part Solothurn, Zürich, Aarau and Winterthur. Switzerland has some of the greatest venues in the world – and I’ve done a lot of them around the globe. They’re always well equipped – even the shitty ones – and always clean, and they treat bands, even the small ones, like they’re human beings.
What bands, Swiss or otherwise, are you most excited about today – either doing shows with them, or just listening?
Jona: Swiss bands I’d love to collaborate with and with whom we’ve already talked about it are Abraham and Rorcal. We don’t exactly know how and when we will do it but we have evil plans to do stuff together. Right now, one heavy band from Switzerland that has all my attention is Impure Wilhelmina. They are about to release a new album next year and it’s insanely good. I would love to write some more quiet stuff and actually work with their singer on it.
I also listen to a lot of the quiet bands I release on my label, like The Fawn, a really classy experimental pop collective featuring Luc and Louis from Coilguns; or Lune Palmer, a delicate avant-garde indie-pop band from Lausanne featuring the guitar player from Abraham; and also the solo project from our singer Louis, who will do a short set every night during the Irish dates. I’m about to release his first full-length next month, Eight Orphan Songs, and it’s a very minimalistic, naive piece of lo-fi folk music.
But you see, the music scene in Switzerland is really small and everybody works with everybody. That’s how guitarists from sludge or black metal bands end up in indie-pop-unicorn-love shit. And that’s what I like about it.
Where international bands are concerned, I would love to collaborate with Terra Tenebrosa from Sweden. I think they are the future of heavy/dark music. Their first album The Tunnels I’m sure will be considered as a groundbreaking album in the next couple of years. I would love to lock myself in a room with these guys and jam around.
Coilguns play across Ireland next week joined on all four dates by Galway’s Ilenkus, with additional support from Murdock (Dublin and Galway), ZhOra (Limerick) and Kawtiks (Cork).
Monday October 21st – Thomas House, Dublin
Tuesday October 22nd – The Cellar Bar, Galway
Wednesday October 23rd – Dolans Warehouse, Limerick
Thursday October 24th – Fred Zeppelins, Cork
