Altered Zones

[From left-to-right: Damon Palermo, Jesse Reiner, and Diego Gonzalez of Jonas Reinhardt]

By Daniel Gottlieb

Jonas Reinhardt: "Stereogabber"

If one were to make a quick sketch of developments in electronic music-- from Stockhausen’s Kontaktke and Kraftwerk to the proto-house of Manuel Gottsching and the techno explosion of the '80s-- there is a stylistic thread that holds it all somewhat together. Jesse Reiner's Jonas Reinhardt project, which has expanded to contain Mi Ami's Damon Palermo and Citay's Diego Gonzalez, has evolved on a similar trajectory as the genre as a whole. His self-titled debut owed much of its grandiose synth washes to kosmische acts like Klaus Schulze or synthesists like Michael Garrison, whereas his sophomore album, Powers of Audition, set them to propulsive, driving rhythms. Music For the Tactile Dome, his latest, steps even further away from traditional Kraut earmarks, lacing the trademark analog synth work with beats you can actually dance to.

This new focus on exploring the possibilities that lie within the parameters of house and techno-- perhaps most appararent in Jonas Reinhardt’s live improvisations -- has resulted in collaborations with everyone from Norwegian "space disco" producer Mr. Prins Thomas to contemporaries like Zombi's Steve Moore. You can already peep two of those Prins Thomas tracks over on the Reinhardt SoundCloud, but for the purposes of this profile, we’re debuting another one of those beauties: the Prins Thomas produced "Stereogabber" is sure to blow you away with its meandering synth lines, insatiable bassline, and beat, which sticks in your mind long after the track has finished. I caught up with Jesse recently to talk about Jonas Reinhardt's embrace of dance and disco, the number of collaborations he's got planned, and the idea of a mad professor recording in his basement in the wee hours of the morning.

AZ: You've got an improv set with Steve Moore in NYC coming up. How do you prepare for a show like that?

Jesse: I think we’re going to get together before the show and just jam. A lot of stuff I’m doing these days is sequencer-based, and I do a lot of MIDI programming, but the show will be played with an old Roland drum machine-- a metronome in the background-- and we’ll improvise over it.

AZ: Does improvisation play an important role in your approach to music?

Jesse: Absolutely. Improvisation is half the experience. I like it not to be a completely open-ended, jam-out thing, but to have set themes to return to and long sections of improvisation in between. I've been lucky in that I've always played with people who have been really good at improvisation, who are aware of how to fill space and balance it. I think you can structure arrangements and songs in parts, like structuring an open canvas. You have to draw from stuff such as an awareness of space and knowing where on the keyboard to go. A feeling and sensitivity for space is half the battle-- being in the right mood and knowing who you are working with. I've played in a couple of bands where everything was written out, and it's good discipline, but it gets to a point where it becomes less interesting. Playing live and performing becomes more exciting because of the fact you don't know where you are going.

AZ: It seems that Tactile Dome has quite a strong narrative arc, moving through passages of tension into climactic periods of conflict before a final resolution. Do you actively consider these structures when assembling an album?"

Jesse: I think about the concept. I will have a collection of pieces, and I will notice a theme taking shape within them. But I don't want to say there is a definite narrative as such, because you don't want to assert your own take. It's good when listeners pick up certain things for note. With the last record, The Powers of Audition, the content was filling in the narrative gaps by having loose, reinforcing structures that allowed you to inscribe your own narrative into it. You kind of set the boundaries in a broad sense and let the music take people where they want to go.

AZ: How much do your live sets differ from the recordings?

Jesse: It depends what I'm into at the moment. The recorded music that is out reflects a strong sensibility, but there's a lot of dancier stuff that we've been doing live that hasn't made it onto much of the recorded material yet. The sets that I'm doing now involve almost more techno-driven, improvisational, molecular dance music, which has been really interesting to explore.

AZ: That seems to place the '70s, "Kraut" template to the side. Is that a natural progression do you think?

Jesse: I think so. Here's the thing about all the '70s influences: we make a very conscious effort to push that all to the side because in my personal case, my taste is actually really broad. It's in the DNA of the band for sure, and we totally acknowledge it, but with the newest record, we've been treating it as our piece without any particular aesthetic or era in mind. It just so happens that the stuff that comes out tends to come out a certain way. But I’m definitely trying to be a little more conscious these days about extracting the concept of Jonas Reinhardt as something more than just kosmische, or whatever you want to call it.

To be honest though, it does seem like there’s a common body of knowledge that a lot of people are picking up on. So whether it's Klaus Schulze or the Harald Grosskopf re-issue, it's becoming part of everyone's common conscisousness, which I think is great. I dont really know if there is some broader cultural context for why this particular style of European continental music is resonating with people. It's weird, but it's great that this stuff is becoming available because it makes it easier for people to get into what I’m doing.

AZ: How would you explain the move into disco and house territory?

Jesse: We started playing some shows following up off the first record, and those shows could have ended up being a big synthesizer freak-out, but I was like, "You know, it’d be much more interesting to have a drummer involved." And then we started playing more rhythms, with drum tracks over that, and the response was so positive. Who knew? People loved it.

I felt like there was definitely some unexplored territory between the '70s and more dance-based music. What artists like Patrick Cowley were doing in San Francisco in the '80s or whatever-- I loved his improvisational solos over slamming disco beats. I feel that there is still more there. It's funny: I'm almost working my way through time, because now I'm getting into early '90s house and techno stuff, with a much richer appreciation of what is actually happening than I did when it was actually happening. The test of time tends to filter the wheat from the chaff. People get to see what stuff has stood the test of time for good reason.

AZ: Stylistically, what about dance music interests you most?

Jesse: It offers a really nice engagement with the audience. It's a little more communal than the solo Kraut performer putting his ego out there as the main thing, like Klaus Schulze sitting on the white shag carpet with mirrors all around him and a picture of himself on his t-shirt. From that to getting the communal experience of the dancefloor, taking people on a journey with improvisation and drawing parts in and out through the shaping of sequences and drum patterns-- that’s really an important thing. The equipment has definitely had to evolve accordingly. I just bought a sampler-- my first-- and now I am beggining to understand how it fits into the music and why I need it. But I like the idea of kind of carrying on with two aesthetic parallels: one that is more abstract, and the other that is more jam and dance-oriented. There’s no reason why they can’t co-exist.

AZ: You worked with Prins Thomas recently. Did he have a big influence on this new direction?

Jesse: I think that was an opportunity for a collaboration more than anything else. It was the next step in the aesthetic of the band. I think the collaborations that we’ve been working on are really cool, and more broadly I'd love to work with more producers and people like that who have that dance music production background. I think it's fun to have a mixture of ideas and arrangements and tools around. There's a guy in San Francisco called Ryan Bishop who goes by The Beat Broker who just remixed a Jonas track that will be on an upcoming 12". I've also done some great recordings with Tim Soete from The Fucking Champs, who added some really amazing parts to the tracks with Prins Thomas. I definitely like the give-and-take that comes from working with people. I like having the Jonas Reinhardt concept or whatever being as many as ten people, or just one person. It doesn't have to be about me being the impetus.

Jonas Reinhardt: "Foam Fangs (Full Moon Mix)"

AZ: In the late '90s, you studied music synthesis at the Harvard Electronic Music Center. Do you think the academic environment was important to your music development, and for Jonas Reinhardt?

Jesse: Yeah, totally. Initially, the whole concept behind Jonas Reinhardt was this idea of making this music in between teaching gigs. Definitely the idea of Jonas Reinhardt was a kind of, you know, professor who was moonlighting and making weird synthesiser music in his basement. Usually I turn everything on and jam something fun and then spend a long time editing it down. I make sure that I’m not overly clinical-- I don’t believe in an overly clinical process. I always try and keep some element of soul into it.

Music For the Tactile Dome LP is out now on Not Not Fun