Dear reader,
We would like to acquaint you with an interesting English musician
Felix Jay. This extraordinary composer and performer works in
such styles as jazz, ambient, new age, and world music. Felix
Jay has his own unique style and his music has a specific depth.
He began his career collaborating with Brian Eno, he was a music
journalist, and then he began to carry out solo musical projects.
Moreover, Felix actively collaborates with legendary musician
Hans-Joachim Roedelius, who has made a great contribution in development
of electronic music. He also takes part in Aquarello, a group
formed together with his friends Fabio Capanni and Nicola Alesini.
Finally, Felix Jay and Andrew Heath perform in a duo, Aqueous.
The story of his life and creative work makes Felix a very interesting
person. He has kindly agreed for "Jazz Magazine" to
answer some of our questions. Here we present to your attention
a short variant of our talk.
{editor's note: "Jazz Magazine" is a music magazine
published in Russian and available for sale in Belarus (a small state west
of Russia, which was created after the disintegration of the USSR).}
Serge-- Felix, could you tell us, please, where are you
from, where did you study music and what is your musical education?
Felix-- I was born in Nairobi, Kenya, East Africa, but
my parents are both English. I was brought up in Ireland, where
my parents still live. I went to Trinity College, Dublin and got
an Honors degree in English language and literature. I took a
year off to study double bass at the Royal Irish Academy of Music,
but I never really got the hang (or the point!) of written music.
I played some very free jazz, influenced by the American Impulse
label, but later getting into the funkier side of Miles Davis
and Weather Report. You may not be able to hear these influences
clearly in my music, but that's probably due to my own lack of
technique. I'm sure I'm trying to recreate my teenage years!!
I also did sort of concrete music/tape collage soundtracks for
student drama productions, influenced by my friend to this day,
Roger Doyle, who still does exactly the same sort of thing with
modern technology.
Then I left Ireland as people do (James Joyce, Sam Beckett) to
seek my fortune and came to London.
Serge-- As we know, you've collaborated with Brian Eno.
Could you please tell us about this period of your life. Besides
writing and performing music, you are occupied with musical journalism,
aren't you?
Felix-- In London I worked for a percussion instrument
for hire company for a year, where I met lots of musicians including
Brian Eno. He invited me along to the Harold Budd "Pavilion
of Dreams" recording, which was a very special moment for
me. I had started writing music reviews, and after running into
Eno a few more times decided that he would be a good subject,
as he let me watch him working in studios. But I never actually
did any music with him. I wrote to all his collaborators at that
time, but Roedelius and Holger Czukay were the only ones to respond,
so I wrote about them instead. I did later meet Jon Hassell, who
came closer to my own interests in world jazz.(Because my interview
with him was not published, I gave up writing music journalism
and got a "proper job" in advertising.) This area of
my music has not been really exposed yet, because it can seem
quite "doomy", but I have some quite old pieces that
I'm doing new things to accompany, and this will probably be my
next "jazz" release. I'm trying to play bass a bit more,
because believe it or not (my last three CDs have bass on only
one track!) I think of myself as firstly a bassist, secondly a
percussionist, and only then a keyboard player. I record quite
a bit with the e-bow MIDI guitar, but I never play it for pleasure
- in fact I really dislike the thin strings! I wish I were a better
wind player, as I am a great lover of pure melody.
Serge-- When hearing your music (for example the album
"Other Suns"), one can feel that this is an ascent from
hopelessness, despair and chaos at the edge of an abyss (it can
be said even, on a razor's edge) to something harmonious and clear.
Felix-- OK, now for the hopelessness, despair and chaos
that you have been very perceptive to notice! I left London for
love and to escape ill-health, taught for a while in a country
school, had two children Jacob and Alice, now 19 and 20, but soon
discovered that their mother was not really the person I wanted
to spend the rest of my life with (although I have spent the rest
of my life paying for her mistakes). I became very ill and nearly
died, lost our house, had huge debts, and it took about ten years
to have any sort of life again. My children had been taken by
their mother to live abroad mostly as a sort of gypsy life so
I hardly saw them, and there was no opportunity or impulse to
do any sort of music.
But the last ten years have seen a great improvement. I now have
a very good wife, Catherine, who has her own business restoring
art, she has her own house so I'm not so desperate for money.
We have a nice dacha in the country (the Cotswold hills in Gloucestershire,
it's to the west of Oxford) where we go every weekend and where
I have my little studio and all the instruments. It has a taste
of paradise, and has certainly stimulated my music.
Serge-- Could you tell us please about your collaboration
with Roedelius (like Brian Eno he is a cult figure in the world
of electronic music) and his friends, with whom you perform together?
Felix-- I had given Roedelius some of my tapes, which he
added other bits to, and put on his CDs over the years. And he
comes to stay with us often, so we can play together. He values
a wildness in me which I must say I'm mostly trying to tame -
my music does try to have conventional values! His music has the
spiritual qualities I respond to, he talks about the music just
coming through him rather than from him. You may be surprised
to learn that until the last year or so he has made almost no
money from his music, he and his three children being supported
by the work of his wife Martha who is a teacher. So it is very
hard to make a living. I am trying to shorten my working week
in advertising and spend more time on the music. But it is a struggle,
and until my children have finished their education I have to
support them too, so I can't give up my job completely, however
much I would like to!
Roedelius played some of my tapes to Nicola Alesini and Fabio
Capanni from Aquarello, and they played over them. Some of these
appeared on "Hermetic" (Roedelius was quite cross, as
he wanted them for Aquarello, but nothing was happening for Aquarello
then, despite me paying 1,000 pounds to make the cassette). Nicola
also asked me to send him some other tracks which he overdubbed
in Rome, which made up the rest of "Hermetic". Then
he visited me in England and came to our dacha and we recorded
some more, which was "Other Suns".
I called it that
because it was sunnier. In general, though, I think Nicola puts
too much reverberation over all the instruments for my taste.
But Nicola has been an important collaboration for me. There are
a few more unreleased pieces, which I'm sure you will hear one
day. My next collaboration is to be with a flamenco guitarist
who is on the same jazz label as me (the FMR studio on which the
last album by Felix "Acoustic Masks" was released -
S.K.), and I want to use a very good tabla player who is about
to tour with Bill Bruford. I've just finished an excellent long
track with an overtone singer (he sounds Tibetan but he's English)
who does meditation to his music and is quite an interesting character.
Serge-- What religious and philosophical schools are you
close to? What religious and philosophical views are reflected
in your music? What is your spiritual experience?
Felix-- I respect all religions, because generally I perceive
people with a religious outlook as being better people, not because
I myself have any particular religious practices. But you've spotted
from my titles that there is a spiritual quest going on, in which
I am following the music towards some sort of better place which
has not yet been revealed to me.
Serge-- Why do you write this kind of music? In general,
what is your music for you? How would you describe and characterize
it?
Felix-- I find that music is a great way of communicating
with other people, even those who don't share a language. Music
for me is something that just happens when the time is right.
I never end up with the idea I started with, instead some magic
gets in the way. Because my technique is limited, I am happy to
stay with a nice sound, or a good rhythm, or an interesting effect,
without rushing on to something else. Roedelius has a very good
expression for the sort of music that we don't do - he calls it
"purposed". I have another word for it, "teleological"
- with an end in mind or goal-oriented. At the other extreme,
I am not imposing myself onto the music, I am trying to let it
come out through me. But where does it come from?
Because of this passivity, my music is happy to stay in the present
tense, to listen fully to the moment as it happens. I find that
very proficient musicians seem not to listen to the sounds they
make, even though these sounds can be very beautiful, which means
that there is a hollowness or lack of substance to the music they
make. Sometimes I would rather listen than play at all !
I would like to think that there is an oceanic (Jungian) quality
to my music, and that it is perhaps more feminine than masculine
(Aqueous music is very feminine most of the time). I know that
there are still rough edges, but I am working at smoothing them
off. And my life is getting back into balance, now.
Serge -- What are your interests in life?
Felix -- Day-to-day survival still rates very high! My
music is a luxury that I am very lucky to be able to pursue.
Serge -- What long-term goals do you have in your life?
Felix -- When I was very ill, I asked myself what would
be left behind me for my memory? I decided that I should try to
create something that is uniquely mine, and hoped that it could
also be beautiful and appreciated by other people. When people
like you write to me (or write about me) and can sense something
in my music, that is what I wanted. Music is a universal force
for bringing people together beyond boundaries of language, country,
history, beliefs, etc.
Serge -- Which musicians can be named as your friends?
Felix -- Roedelius you know about. Funnily enough, Andy
Heath came over yesterday with the "Aqueous archive"
- a little metal camera case containing about twenty hours of
DAT tapes, which is what we record straight onto (I give all the
tapes to him for safe-keeping, as I'm always taping over important
stuff!).
Among them was the original Meeting the Magus session, from which
we have dug out about another hour of unused material. It's mostly
quite rhythmic, with Achim doing drums from the keyboard, or me
bashing on a KAT controller that was plugged into Achim's Kurzweil,
so I had no control over the sounds. Some pretty dark and interesting
stuff, actually, even if it isn't suitable for your project. I'll
probably work it all up into some sort of collage, not my favorite
form, incidentally, but one which Achim has been known to work
in.
I have been privileged to work with Nicola Alesini, whose saxophone
is the voice of an angel. Unfortunately we haven't been in touch
for a couple of years. He speaks very little English, me almost
no Italian. Perhaps one day again soon?
Byron Wallen I see regularly, talk to every couple of weeks, and
will be recording with again soon. He is very talented, and has
a lot of his own material waiting for his record company to pay
him some money. His older sister, Errolyn Wallen, is actually
a fine concert pianist and classical composer. I'd love to work
with her, but she's very high-powered (I am still only an amateur
musician, and I don't read score).
I've just met the man behind Loop Guru, a very entertaining band.
He is very like Brian Eno to talk to, looks a bit like him too,
and has done remix work for Mickey Hart and Jean Michel Jarre.
He's going to do some remixes of my tracks, so we'll see if that's
interesting enough to sustain an album. The interesting thing
from my point of view is that Loop Guru are completely independent,
but have released six or seven albums all selling around 30,000
copies, which is a fantastic amount.
Serge -- What is the new age music in your view? How could
you define it?
Felix -- New Age (with initial capital letters) is still
very big in the States, where it represents a whole new approach
to life and living. In Britain, I'm afraid it has become a victim
of changing fashions, and not really what anyone would willingly
be associated with. That's the problem with labels - they change
their meanings very quickly.
Serge -- What are you working on at present?
Felix -- I have a number of new tracks that I'm quite excited
by, particularly a 40-minute classical-sounding (or at least soundtrack-sounding)
piece for Rhodes piano and synthesiser strings that I'm hoping
to turn into a trumpet concertino for Byron.
Serge -- What is the state of your work on the album "Autoanthropology?"
Felix -- I am hoping that another label will bring out
my next couple of projects, saving me money and perhaps widening
my circle of contacts into new areas. My favorite at the moment
are Multimood in Sweden, but we haven't talked seriously yet.
Serge -- What are your creative plans?
Felix -- I hope to sell 20,000 CDs within the next 5 years,
after which I hope to be able to give up working in order to enjoy
my music properly. I have lots of collaborations with other musicians
planned, but I have to prepare my side of the work first. It is
very time consuming, especially as I am involved in so many different
sorts of music, jazz, new age, classical (chamber), ethnic, world
fusion, folk, trance, ambient. There are too many categories!
SOMETHING LIKE AN EPILOGUE:
Recently Felix and Andrew Heath have released a new album by Aqueous.
Moreover, as it was already mentioned, on the FMR studio the album
"Acoustic Masks" was released, which Felix has recorded
together with Byron Wallen. It should be mentioned that this album
is more complicated and multidimensional than previous works by
Felix Jay. For the recording of "Acoustic Masks" musicians
went to Indonesia, where they studied folk music, and brought
back traditional Indonesian instruments. Pieces performed by Felix
Jay on these instruments were included in "Acoustic Masks".
Felix also took part in the recording of a recently released album
by Roedelius. Felix actively and fruitfully works. So, in the
future we hope to continue telling about Felix Jay and his wonderful
friends in our magazine!
