Fifteen Questions with MM Works

https://15questions.net/interview/mm-works-about-directions-jazz/page-1/

Name: MM WORKS
Members: Mads Lassen, Mathias Lystbaek
Interviewee: Mathias Lystbaek
Nationality: Danish
Occupation: Drummer, composer, improviser (Mads Lassen), multi-instrumentalist, composer, improviser (Mathias Lystbaek)
Current release: MM WORKS’s new album Park is out via 12k. 
Recommendations for their current hometown of Copenhagen: Always visit the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, and then hurry back to Copenhagen to catch a concert at Alice CPH or Koncertkirken. The programs are so broad, well curated, and keep getting better …

If you enjoyed this MM WORKS interview and would like to know more about the duo and their music, visit them on Instagram, and bandcamp.

What were some of the musical experiences which planted a seed for your interest in jazz?

To begin with, I was fascinated with midcentury American jazz. It was not just the music, but also the coolness and history surrounding it. Miles Davis’s Second Quintet, and Thelonious Monk come to mind. On the free jazz side of things I listened a lot to Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman.

Around 2010 I heard the Danish guitarist Jakob Bro and a trilogy of records he recorded with various American musicians. Those records made a big impact on my perception of and approach to not just jazz, but to music in general.

The openness and carefulness in the music, and the way virtuosity steps back and makes space for patience and attentiveness made a big impact on both me and Mads. I think MM Works is shaped a lot by that approach.

What does the term jazz mean today, would you say?

To me jazz today is a melting pot, a more and more multifaceted way of musical expression – an increasingly complex size, just like society in general. As it always has been, you could say. It’s a medium for immediate responses to life and culture. 

The coolness factor is also still there I’d say. It’s a genre with space for many different directions.

As with everything else, its increasingly commercialized, but I think a lot of really great music is still presented both live, digitally and on pressed mediums.

As of today, what kind of materials, ideas, and technologies are particularly stimulating for you?

I’m not too concerned with technological innovations, if anything I’m probably going backwards a little, trying to strip down the amount of equipment being used.

I had the pleasure of handling the recording and mix of Park, and it was recorded with a very simple setup – one mic for flute and guitars, and three cheap mics on the drums. Trying not to be tempted too much by plugins and post processing allows for focusing more on the creation of the music itself.

In MM Works we find setting those limitations to be very stimulating for the creative process, and we often set up certain dogmas to help us build a concept for the albums.

Where do most of your inspirations to create come from – rather from internal impulses or external ones? Which current social / political / ecological or other developments make you feel like you need to respond as an artist?

With MM Works it’s very much about internal responses as a group. We feed off each other in the moment when we play. 

Sometimes I’ll bring an idea or loop, but we try to keep a balance and I keep the ideas simple, leaving room for the unexpected, so we can capture the heat of the moment and let the interplay come through as much as possible.

Music has become a lot more global, and incorporating elements from other parts of the world or the musical spectrum is commonplace. Do you still think there are city scenes with a distinct, unique sound? How does your local scene influence your work?

Even though our music has a live feel, we actually don’t really play concerts. So I’m not sure you can say that we’re part of the local scene. 

That said, I think a lot is happening in Copenhagen in regards to both jazz and experimental music genres. Copenhagen still has one of the greatest Jazz Festivals, but I’m not sure if I see a distinct sound. Maybe such sound is more territorial – like the ‘nordic tone’, ‘Japanese aesthetics’ etc.

What role do electronic tools and instruments play for your creative process?

We try to limit that. We only use acoustic drums, and while making records we sometimes sample a sizzle cymbal to place here and there. 

On Park I incorporated an occasional sine synth bass, but other than that I try to record guitars and flute as direct as possible with very limited post effect processing. 

Most effects come from my guitar pedals. This is one of the dogmas I touched upon in a previous question.

Thanks to technological advances, collaboration has become a lot easier. What have been some of the most fruitful collaborations for you recently and what approaches to and modes of collaboration currently seem best to you?

In MM Works we have yet to collaborate with other musicians extensively, but personally I have collaborated with quite a few other musicians and visual artist. It’s crazy how easy it is to meet skilled people all over the world thanks to social media. 

But the core idea of MM Works is the dynamic we get when playing together, and that is hard to get online.

Jazz has always had an interesting relationship between honouring its roots and exploring the unknown. What does the balance between these two poles look like in your music?

I don’t think we honor any roots specifically, but due to musical heritage those honors are paid subconsciously I think. Your musical luggage is always with you, but we don’t strive towards any traditions per se. 

As our music is generally so improvised, its hard to pinpoint any specific traditions, but I feel a track like ‘Cry’ has a clear nod to the more restrained and texture-based way of playing of aforementioned Jakob Bro.

How much potential for something “new” is there still in jazz? What could this “new” look like?

I feel like a lot of more traditional jazz is still based around the concept of written melodies and composed arrangements, and then you solo from there … I think there’s still room for expanding the abstraction a bit to make the freer form more normal than just ‘weird’. 

Being weird for the sake of being weird is ok, but it doesn’t move the needle very much – I believe that there’s a middle ground. I’m not paraphrasing, but Igor Stravinsky argues something along the lines of that you can please some critics by making something different just by being weird, but that the genre and quality of music comes from eventually systemizing and humanizing that weirdness and experimentation. I think I agree with that.

For many artists, life-changing musical experiences take place live. How do you see that yourself?

As MM Works doesn’t really perform live, I will answer this as a listener. 

The list for specific concerts is too long, but both me and Mads attend a lot of very different concerts and have always done that. As kids and teenagers we experienced many of the same concerts together so we do definitely share memories about musical experiences that sort of shaped us both to where we went, and also to where we are now as a group. 

I think that’s also a big reason we know each other so well musically today, and we immediately understand where the other one is going with an idea.

Are there approaches, artists, festivals, labels, spaces or anyone/-thing else out there who you feel deserve a shout out for taking jazz into the future?

Genre pushing labels like Room40, and Shelter Press, do a great job of promoting genre-less music, which I feel is much in the spirit of jazz. 

More traditional labels like ECM are maybe less ‘out there’ but just keep up presenting a very specific sound, and I think that deserves credit. That, by the way, is also a sound and label Mads and I are both fascinated with.

Lastly, it wouldn’t be fair not to mention 12k. I can honestly say that I was surprised that Park would be released on this label, because – in a way like ECM – I’ve always associated 12k with a specific sound. But then it’s all the more humbling to actually get signed here as this to me proofs the willingness to keep expanding an already marvelous repertoire. 

We are so proud that Taylor has taken on our album and it makes a lot of sense for us to present this sound with 12k.

[Read our Taylor Deupree interview]
[Read our Taylor Deupree interview about collaboration]

The Montreux Festival intends to preserve its archive of recordings for future generations. Do you personally feels it’s important that everything should remain available forever – or is there something to be said for letting beautiful moments pass and linger in the memories of those that experienced them?

That right there is the beauty of live music and art shows. However, we are big fans of archives and having art accessible to everyone at all times. It’s a balance I’d say, and I think its difficult for me to be unbiased, as I’ve never been to the Montreal Festival and would love to hear the recordings. I see the beauty in the idea of letting it only exist in the moment, but I tend to be pro
archival. 

There’ll always be a magic and beauty happening live that you won’t ever get on the recording anyway, so I think they are of equal value. You won’t get the smell, the vibe, and whatever company you’re in and the raw emotions from the recorded material – but if the musical quality is there, I think it’s still worth preserving.

Our first two records were actually compiled of old recordings that we thought were too good not to be released. Our own little archive in a way, fittingly called Archives I & II.