nterview with Thomas Weber from Kammerflimmer Kollektief (APRIL 2007)
Interviewer : Taka Osuki from AFTERHOURS

Taka : �I'm always interested in your each album's title. What does "jinx" mean? Does it have multiple meanings?

Thomas : A jinx, in popular superstition and folklore, is:
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- a sort of curse placed on a person that makes them prey to large numbers of minor misfortunes and other forms of bad luck;
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- a person afflicted with a similar curse, who, while not directly subject to a series of misfortunes, seems to attract them to anyone in his general area.
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- an object or animal that brings bad luck.
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- a common slang term used when two people say the same thing at the same time (said as a game amongst young children around the ages of 11 to 14 again suggests some kind of spooky supernatural interference).

Or as Lou Reed told us in one of his greatest songs, in Street Hassle: "Some people got no choice/ And they can never find a voice/ That they could even call their own/ So the first thing that they see/ That allows them the right to be/ Why, they follow it/ You know what it's called?/ Bad luck."

It may come from the Latin word iynx, that is, the wryneck bird, which has occasionally been used in magic and divination and is remarkable for its ability to twist its head almost 180 degrees while hissing like a snake.
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Furthermore Son House recorded a song called "Jinx Blues" in 1942, beginning with the line, "I woke up this morning with the jinx all around my bed."

Taka: Members of the band who participated in this album became half from the previous album. Why did you make the band's formation simple?

Thomas : Since 2004 we played concerts not only as a sextet, but also in smaller constellations due to personal and logistic circumstances. The persistent & toughest constellation was the trio with Johannes Frisch on double bass, Heike Aumueller on harmonium and me (Thomas Weber) on guitar & electronics; the trio constellation has given us - six eyes tight shut - enough room for excursions and was also a great base for new developments & experiences. The songs have developed a more organic and looser feel.

Jinx, our sixth album was recorded at Electric Avenue Studio in Hamburg with Tobias Levin and has to be seen as direct result of the many concerts played as a trio.

The groundwork for Jinx were improvisations on bass, harmonium and guitar that had been recorded live and edited and modified later on. The 3 remaining musicians are still members of the Kollektief, but are in a kind of hibernation.

Taka: The vocal (voice) was featured on some tracks. what was your intention of featuring vocal (voice)?

Thomas : The use of the voice is also natural development, which arised from the trio improvisations. Its kind of a "speaking in tongues" or Shaman doo-wop! There are no real lyrics, it is more in the vein of a scat tradition. (Scat is an improvisational vocal technique in jazz, in which nonsensical syllables or words are sung, often as part of a call-and-response interaction with other musicians.) Still we like birdland.

Taka : �Your some album's artwork (jinx and abcensen etc...) has been having certain aesthetics. Please tell me your concept for the artwork. And who is the photographer of those artworks?

The artwork is (as on all the Kammerflimmer Kollektief albums) conceived by Kollektief member Heike Aumu¨ller, who is also an artist of her own. More info about her work you can find here:
http://www.meyer-riegger.de/de/index.php?cat=artist&artist_id=3

Concerning this, the Kammerflimmer artwork is always connected with the music in a kind of subterranean way.

Taka ; What kind of music have you listened to for a recent few years?

Thomas :

PLAYLIST
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On Heavy Rotation:

Thelonious Monk - Abide With Me
39 Clocks - Past Tense Hope & Instant Fears On 42nd Street
Bruce Langhorne - Riding Thru the Rain
Ornette Coleman - Love Life
Matching Mole - O Caroline
Getatchew Mekurya - Tezeta
Terry Riley - In The Summer
Slapp Happy - Blue Eyed William
Tim Buckley - Love From Room 109 At The Islander
Nico - Secret Side
Don Cherry - Infinite Gentleness
Loren Mazzacane Conners - Along The Way
Marvin Gaye - I Want You
Noah Howard - Queen Anne
The Honeymoon Killers - Laisser tomber les filles
Jim Dickinson - O' How She Dances
Cpt. Kirk &. -Drausen Ist Freundlich
Ton Steine Scherben - Voruebergehen Geschlossen

Taka : If you have some words which has been helping or supporting yourself for a recent few years, Please let me know.

Thomas :

About life:
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"Here everything is Heaven, but different from the origin. Up above are birds that hang on different kinds of jet streams with their heads down, not to be interchanged. The sun is shining, but it's not really the sun: it's the moon. When did night fall, anyway?" --Dietmar Dath (1970) is a German writer, poet + novelist, whose books are unfortunately not yet translated.

About dreams:
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"He was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream mak-ing a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence o dreams. No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life sensation of any given epoch of one's existence that which makes its truth, its meaning its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream alone."
-- Joseph Conrad - Heart Of Darkness

And about songs:
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"And, of course, that is what all of this is - all of this: the one song, ever changing, ever reincarnated, that speaks somehow from and to and for that which is ineffable within us and without us, that is both prayer and deliverance, folly and wisdom, that inspires us to dance or smile or simply to go on, senselessly, incomprehensibly, beatifically, in the face of mortality and the truth that our lives are more ill-writ, ill-rhymed and fleeting than any song, except perhaps those songs - that song, endlessly reincarnated - born of that truth, be it the moon and June of that truth, or the wordless blue moan, or the rotgut or the elegant poetry of it. That nameless black-hulled ship of Ulysses, that long black train, that Terraplane, that mystery train, that Rocket '88', that Buick 6 - same journey, same miracle, same end and endlessness."
-- Nick Tosches, Where Dead Voices Gather