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Since they first began sharing their music on-line, Jack Wiegold has gone from making improvised drone metallic, to loud, distorted shoegaze, and now delicate ambient folks in only a few years. Hailing from Nice Yarmouth, UK, the musician’s first releases had been beneath the alias Alphabet Holds Hostage, however you gained’t discover any of them on digital platforms, save for a few collaborations with one other enigmatically ethereal venture, Katia Krow. A yr in the past, Once more and So Quickly noticed AHH’s sound transfer in a gentler, extra refined path that they’ve absolutely embraced since adopting the J. Wiegold moniker. Citing Ichiko Aoba, Dilute, and Pure Snow Buildings as a few of their influences – although I additionally hear echoes of Skullcrusher of their evocation of liminal areas and hazy recollections – Wiegold put out their latest album, the gorgeous Norfolk Serpent, final week. Recorded of their bed room in addition to a forest close to Norwich’s College of East Anglia, the follow-up to Esmé showcases Wiegold’s development as a musician and producer, with songs that really feel gorgeously organized with out dropping the tender spark of improvisation, whereas additionally imbuing their songwriting with the emotional nuance that makes them really feel interconnected. Within the course of, Wiegold finds glimmers of hope and the opportunity of catharsis, all spinning away in the identical darkish, complicated net.
We caught up with Jack Wiegold over electronic mail for this version of our Artist Highlight interview collection to speak about their songwriting journey, their musical influences, the method behind Norfolk Serpent, and extra.
When did you begin making your personal music, and the way has your songwriting course of developed over time?
I began making music correctly over the course of the primary COVID-19 lockdown in England – about early 2020-ish, so I used to be 16. It began with me recording drone metallic improvisations on my cellphone (I used to be listening to plenty of Boris and Sunn O))) on the time). I had completely no manufacturing expertise so I’d normally simply import them to Audacity and “EQ” them, export them, and add to Bandcamp. They had been completely terrible! Listening again to them now could be equally endearing as it’s completely embarrassing, however fortunately I deleted them just a few months later earlier than anybody may correctly hear it. I used to be then inquisitive about ‘correct’ DAWs and began trial-ing Cubase and Reaper. Although I didn’t have a microphone, I used an app referred to as WO Mic that primarily let me flip my cellphone into one – the music I made with it was equally as terrible, however it had drums this time! I additionally began to correctly construction songs, began to grow to be a bit bit competent at manufacturing, and so forth. It inspired me to purchase a microphone, and begin utilizing Ableton. The very first thing I made with it was a complete bunch of amateur-hour shoegaze beneath the title Alphabet Holds Hostage. Actually distorted guitars, a great deal of digital results as a result of I couldn’t afford pedals, MIDI drums, the entire 9 yards. A few of it nonetheless holds up however I additionally wiped the lot of it clear from the web as a result of I simply can’t stand listening to it (or having different folks have the ability to).
A few yr into the Alphabet Holds Hostage venture, just a few of my associates had been telling me the drum sound I used to be utilizing sounded actually plastic and apparent, and I used to be starting to grasp my low-cost microphone couldn’t actually carry out the depth in loud, distorted shoegaze guitar – and since I used to be beginning to develop a large curiosity in folks music, I took each of them out. The final AHH album I made, Once more and So Quickly, might be the largest indicator as the place I used to be going to go along with the music I’m making now. It was lots softer, used barely any distortion, and my whispery vocals hit their peak. I’ve completely no coaching in singing so I’ve simply type of needed to adapt my very own voice over time, and see what matches and what doesn’t. Seems I’ve a very excessive register regardless of having a reasonably deep talking voice! It was each enjoyable and mortifying determining what my voice actually feels like, being socially anxious and residing with three different folks isn’t actually conducive to vocal experimentation.
The precise lyrical content material of my music hasn’t actually modified over time when it comes to fashion. I’m actually unhealthy at writing earnest lyrics regardless of the quantity of emo and skramz I take heed to, so I are inclined to latch on to those themes I actually need to write about then simply make them tremendous cryptic. It has produced outcomes I’m actually pleased with, however it does take a hell of plenty of drafts to good. I typically inform folks I don’t actually care about lyrics after I’m listening to music, which is broadly true, however I grow to be such a perfectionist when it’s my very own – regardless that I concentrate on making the music as wealthy as potential months earlier than I sit down to jot down lyrics. Since realising I’m non-binary, not lengthy after these terrible drone recordings, my lyrical content material has targeted virtually completely on the struggles of gender dysphoria and outward illustration. ‘The Life and Opinions of the Final Enby on Earth’ and ‘Mimicry’ are most likely my favorite units of lyrics beneath that theme. I discover it so cathartic to jot down in regards to the garments I put on as an enby, the to-and-fro nature of my dysphoria, discrimination I’ve confronted, non-acceptance, issues like that. I’m not all the time depressing although! I additionally like to jot down fairly commonplace love songs if I’ve the time, virtually all the time devoted to my long-term associate. ‘Stephenson 218’ is the perfect and latest instance of that. I do discover it laborious to jot down a extra ‘commonplace’ music like that generally, so it will possibly take weeks and weeks to even get a primary draft of some lyrics, as an alternative of a pair days for a extra loosely structured music. Humorous how that works.
Who’re some artists which have formed the way in which you view music?
Enormous query! I’ve been actively listening to music since I used to be about 4 or 5, so I may most likely make a really lengthy record. The massive catalyst nonetheless was some random skateboarding video I used to be watching on YouTube after I was like 13. It had within the background Toe’s music ‘Goodbye’ and I used to be completely enamoured. I used to be determined to search out extra music that sounded prefer it and I ended up stumbling throughout math rock. That was most likely the largest occasion in my music-listening life to date, as a result of I felt prefer it was music made particularly for me. I all the time beloved Foals however my favorite was Antidotes, I listened to a great deal of Don Broco after I was 11 and 12 however my favorite bits of their songs was after they went heavy with the syncopation – and right here was a complete style stuffed with it! I couldn’t consider my luck.
Since then, the largest artists in that fashion which have had the largest influence on my precise notion of music should be the bands Faux and Dilute. The best way they each assemble these extremely intricate harmonies however then even have them set to the craziest drum patterns in essentially the most ludicrous time signatures – it makes my hair rise up. I simply adore it when artists subvert what is anticipated of them when it comes to songwriting; no choruses, no 4/4, no flashy solos (not together with the tons of jazz I take heed to) – it’s pretentious as fuck, however it’s my jam. You may actually see it in Norfolk Serpent specifically – a few of the harmonies are very a lot impressed by Dilute’s album Grape Blueprints Pour Spinach Olive Grape. Anybody who is aware of me is aware of I’m completely obsessive about that album.
Outdoors of math rock although, since making an attempt to actively broaden my music style the previous few years, I’ve to record Autechre and Pure Snow Buildings as not solely two of my favorite artists but in addition artists who’re doing shit I didn’t even know was beforehand potential. I believed math rock was fairly daring when it strayed away from plenty of the tropes I used to be used to listening to in my favorite indie information, however the first time listening to NTS Classes (now my favorite album of all time) or Daughter of Darkness was simply mind-boggling. I’ll most likely spend my life making an attempt to determine how you can make artwork as unimaginable as that.
What attracts you to this specific fashion of ambient folks, each as a musician and a listener?
Ichiko Aoba, mainly. Effectively, not fully, however shut sufficient. Her albums Origami and 0 are what acquired me into this actually sparse fashion of people and so I attempted to emulate it in my very own manner. The best way she makes just a few chords sound completely monumental is awe-inspiring. “灰色の日” from Origami is like, six chords strummed each few seconds with large gaps in between, and it makes me bawl my eyes out. She works such vivid emotion into all the things. Then artists like Stars of the Lid, Giulio Aldinucci and naturally Pure Snow Buildings, combining the natural components of Ichiko’s music – the instrumentation, the sparsely written guitars – with these large, all-encompassing drones. It’s a mix I don’t see all that usually, so I made a decision to try to recreate it, principally for my very own achieve since I really like studying novels to Stars of the Lid and I simply wished extra of the identical, however it ended up popping out glorious. I correctly produced it, wrote lyrics for it, and it grew to become ‘Within the Coronary heart of the Metropolis’, which is now on my album Orca. I don’t even know if “ambient folks” qualifies as a ‘actual’ style in the meanwhile, however I hope sometime it does as a result of I really like making and listening to it. The 2 issues simply work so endlessly effectively.
Repetition appears to play an vital function in the way you assemble a music. How do you resolve which patterns or harmonies are value saving, or how far they need to stretch out?
You’re proper, however that’s fairly a tough query to reply with out simply saying “I simply do,” as a result of that’s mainly the gist of it. Loads of my songs are birthed out of 10, 20, 30 minute periods of taking part in the identical arpeggios time and again and seeing how I can harmonise with them in numerous methods. Typically I’ll give you one thing that sounds wonderful on the day after which come again every week later and assume its shit. Typically the other! ‘Regicide’ was sat on my laborious drive for like two months as a result of I hated it however forgot to delete it, however after I by chance opened it into Ableton while in search of one thing else (the implications of naming all the things ‘track1’ or ‘track2’ or ‘idea5’) I used to be like, “Hey this isn’t so unhealthy.” Now it’s one among my favorite issues I’ve ever produced, particularly the second half. ‘No Coward Soul’was additionally very very near not making the album.
When it comes to stretching issues out, it’s a continuing toss-up of how lengthy I would like one thing to final and the way a lot I believe different folks will need one thing to final earlier than losing interest, as a result of in any other case my albums could be like triple their lengths. I’ve been utilizing my very own music ‘Fifty Suns’ as a template for that as a result of it’s the primary time I actually went heavy on the repetition, and I beloved it. The distinction is, plenty of the songs on Esmé had been absolutely written earlier than I recorded them; Norfolk Serpent has a hell of plenty of improvisation, and I can get actually into improvising these harmonies. ‘Final Enby on Earth’ was recorded virtually fully on the spot, and there are elements the place you may actually hear me getting carried away with the enjoyment of all of it, and taking part in actually quick or messing up my timings. The silver lining is although, since I overdub all my harmonies, I can adapt the overdubs to my very own errors and find yourself having the music be in a totally totally different time signature, or have these unusual bits of syncopation that each one really feel so pure in comparison with the complicated songs of mine that purposefully written to be so. Understanding when to cease repeating the identical set of notes is nearly the identical course of as understanding when to alter chords or understanding how I’m going construction this piece while I’m in the course of taking part in it – it simply naturally involves an in depth.
Had been you shocked by any of the lyrics that grew out of what you name “random syllables”?
Sure! The syllables had been actually in place simply as like memos for the vocal melodies of sure songs, however I used to be simply type of announcing phrases in a random order as if I had been really singing. Like I stated earlier, the hole between composing a music and writing lyrics for it may be months, so if there’s a selected melody I actually like however don’t have any lyrics to accompany it, I’ll simply sing random phrases over it as a result of my reminiscence is dreadful. The music ‘Stephenson 218’ grew fully out of this course of, since one of many random collections of phrases I sung occurred to be “a thousand occasions ove”’ – which is now the hook of the music, “You eclipse the solar a thousand/ Ten thousand/ 1,000,000 occasions over,” and even how the music acquired its title, from the star Stephenson 2.18 which is so far as I do know the largest star people are conscious of. In actuality it’s like 10 billion occasions larger than the solar, so I used to be fairly a methods off.
You’ve described Norfolk Serpent as being about “illustration, love, suffocation, euphoria, suicide and the locations the place they weave collectively.” Are you able to discuss how these in-between locations got here to gentle?
My music has been about my very own psychological well being points for so long as I’ve been writing lyrics, however I felt plenty of my older lyrics had a little bit of tunnel imaginative and prescient inherent to them, in that I’d discuss a single matter for a single music, transfer on to the subsequent, et cetera. Since that realisation I’ve been making an attempt to jot down extra multi-faceted songs, speaking as an alternative about how all these subjects work together with one another, reasonably than how they function by themselves. Not solely that, however the panorama of my psychological well being has been altering quite a bit the previous few years as totally different points come to gentle and others go away. Going from highschool to varsity to school and dealing a primary job and changing into an grownup and all of these items occurring throughout the identical three years of the lifetime of a really anxious and depressed individual was fucking exhausting.
One-topic-per-song wasn’t actually sufficient to cowl all that I wished it to anymore – not solely that, however getting actually into literature the final couple years and getting all this inspiration from writers like Thomas Hardy, Leo Tolstoy, George Eliot, Jane Austen, Rachel Cusk, made me need to write extra in-depth lyrics; however I wished nonetheless to jot down the odd music about how I do have good days – songs like ‘Stephenson 218’ and ‘Fifty Suns’ which each cowl the subjects of affection and euphoria. The songs about days which are the other of fine are actually simply written with a bit extra nuance and optimism. ‘Regicide’ is about struggling to search out methods to characterize myself in an overwhelmingly binary world however it additionally has factors the place I comment about feeling actually good about myself every so often. ‘Final Enby on Earth’ is a music about dysphoria driving me to the purpose of suicide however it additionally reckons with the thought of me being completely acceptable as I already am.
How did the bodily areas the place the album was recorded intensify these themes?
To be trustworthy, my concept to report away from residence was principally to fight noisy neighbours fucking up my recordings, however it did develop into one thing a bit deeper, each when it comes to aesthetics and emotion. Being surrounded by nature while singing lyrics impressed by poets who spent their careers doting on it was a reasonably particular feeling (after some time of feeling foolish about singing right into a microphone a public area). Not plenty of the forest-recorded vocals really ended up on the album save for ‘No Coward Soul’ and the second half of ‘Regicide’. The sensation of taking part in guitar while sat in an empty forest proper on the finish of summer season although, that was unimaginable. A few of my greatest improvisations got here out of these periods as a result of I simply didn’t need to cease, just like the entirety of ‘Viviette’, which I named after Woman Constantine from Hardy’s Two on a Tower as a method to join the expertise of recording music surrounded by nature with the expertise of obsessively studying his novels which have these enormous, entangled descriptions of it. I felt like a personality from a very clichéd romance film for just a few days, it was nice.
Are there any particular variations between the songs you recorded in your bed room and those you tracked in a close-by forest? What was the environment there like?
Not that close by, really! The forest is adjoining to my college which is about 30 miles away from the place I reside – takes 2 buses and a pair medium-length walks to get there however completely value it. I discovered it lots simpler to work in such a distant area, my microphone selecting up a few of the background noise actually gave depth to plenty of the songs that had been much less intricately written, or not caked in reverb. The environment was undoubtedly distinctive – I am going on nature walks and birdwatching on a regular basis so it wasn’t like my first time discovering bushes however given England’s drought in 2022 making all the things a bit bit desaturated, a bit limp, it was virtually just like the petrified look of the forest was being woven into the themes of my lyrics. For a time, the album was really named The Drought – the closing observe nonetheless retains that title – however I made a decision to alter it to Norfolk Serpent, pondering it a bit extra distinctive and likewise monitoring the place it was recorded in (Norfolk) a bit higher than simply The Drought.
‘No Coward Soul’ is a reference to Emily Brontë’s ‘Final Traces’. What significance does that poem should you?
It’s much less about what the particular poem signifies – though I do find it irresistible – and extra what she signifies as a author. Wuthering Heights and by extension her poetry had been so carnally obsessive about nature and can as harmful forces that it was type of just like the evil twin of the romanticist period (which I’m doubly impressed by). The concept of euphoria being blended with melancholy and suicide is one thing that the album has in droves. No Coward Soul Is Mine is to me the crux of the themes that seem in all her work, although within the excessive – speaking of “withered weeds”, “suns and universes ceased to be” – I’ve learn it so many occasions I may recite it backwards. My music named after it doesn’t a lot hint a singular story like the opposite songs however is in an analogous far more of a summation of the themes of the album utilizing Brontë as a reference level. It’s the album’s centrepiece in a manner.
You clarify that you just initially had been planning to make a special type of dream pop report, however recording it throughout a tough interval in your private life turned it into “one thing way more delicate.” What struck me is that doesn’t sound prefer it additionally grew to become a darker report – there’s nonetheless plenty of gentle seeping by. Why do you assume that’s?
Almost definitely as a result of the music that makes me essentially the most cathartic is stuff like Bjork’s ‘Undo’, Seaside Home’s ‘Actual Love’, William Basinski’s ‘Watermusic’, M83’s ‘Intro’ – nothing you’ll actually affiliate with unhappiness over one thing like Deathconciousness. I have a tendency to reply emotionally far more to stuff that sounds actually stunning reasonably than stuff that’s designed to elicit a unhappiness, and since what I like to take heed to so typically pops up in my very own music it’s most likely why there aren’t many darkish sounding songs (sans ‘Mimicry’) regardless of plenty of them having fairly miserable lyrics. Not solely that, as a result of I compose virtually completely with harmonies and improvisation these days, transmuting these songs from dream-pop to folks labored fairly easily as a result of I all the time have the identical type of constructions and sounds in thoughts irrespective of whether or not I’m taking part in them with an electrical guitar and drums or simply my acoustic.
What are some belongings you discovered from making Norfolk Serpent, and the way do you hope to hold them into your work going ahead?
Each time I make one thing new I uncover issues about my voice, my guitar, my DAW, my capabilities as a composer; it all the time feels recent after I begin a brand new venture and I’ve all the time tried to not make the identical factor twice. Norfolk Serpent feels totally different although, it lastly seems like I’ve discovered a sound that I’m wholly snug in and will whisk away hours of fabric with. I had a lot enjoyable over what was typically a very tumultuous yr simply hammering out these repeated chords and I’m so comfortable folks appear to be having fun with listening to them. When it comes to future information, I would like give myself even much less restraint – strive my hand at a few of the progressive folks I actually get pleasure from listening to, and bettering my ambient manufacturing. This album is well the perfect piece of artwork I’ve ever made, however hopefully in a yr’s time I’ll have one thing even higher.
J. Wiegold’s Norfolk Serpent is out now.
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