Progfreaks.com's interview with Djam Karet's Gayle Ellett

20/09/01

Djam Karet is one of those bands that fans of progressive rock simply have to admire for its determination and drive. With thirteen albums to its credit, a wonderfully unique name (which, for those interested, means "elastic time" in Balinese), and an all-instrumental approach that has allowed the band to create its own inimitable style, this is a group that has never been afraid to embrace progressive rock as a main form of expression, and that has never allowed its integrity to be questioned. Now, with the albums New Dark Age and Ascension just being recently released, and with the band scheduled to headline next year's ProgWest festival, we couldn't help but try and get in contact with someone from the band to learn a bit more about the history and future of Djam Karet. Were we successful? Well, thanks to band member Gayle Ellett, we were!

1 - Way back before Djam Karet was even born, three of your members (Mike Henderson, Chuck Oken Jr., and Henry Osborne) played in a band called Happy Cancer, which released the album McMusic for the McMasses. What musical endeavors were you involved with at the time? Once the four of you joined to form a band, didn't it feel awkward at first to work with three people who had already played together to the extent of releasing an album?

Gayle: I was at that time playing with a group called Still Life, and sometimes Chuck and Mike played in that group as well, so we all had played together in other groups before forming Djam Karet. No, it was not awkward to play with them, we were already friends, I liked their group Happy Cancer (that is where we got the name for our record company we own…HC Productions), so it was easy and fun to play together.

2 - You've mentioned that, when the band first took shape, your intention was to play completely improvised music with no regard for what the audiences' tastes were, and your debut No Commercial Potential was indeed a completely improvised album. However, by the time you were making your second, The Ritual Continues, you were already starting to plan and organize your music before recording. Why did you make that decision or, better put, change? How do you feel those initial years of improvisation affected the way Djam Karet has evolved?

Gayle: For the first two years ALL rehearsals and performances were totally improvised. This was very, very helpful in teaching us how to listen. Listening skills are almost more important them performing/playing skills. You need to know how to fit in, and when not to play at all. We were starting to see themes and reoccurring musical ideas reappearing in our jams, so we started to incorporate some structure…a guidepost for our music. Today we still have a strong improvisational element to our music, and all of our albums have improvised sections in them. We still start every rehearsal with a 45 minute jam to warm up our fingers and minds. But having some structure also helps us focus our sound and make stronger statements.

3 - Jumping a few years forward to your Collaborator album…that record featured a variety of guest artists, including Carl Weingarten. It was also considered to be somewhat of a departure from your "traditional" style. Why bring so many outside collaborators (no pun intended!) to that album and just how much did they have to do with the musical direction of it?

Gayle: We have many friends and we wanted to do an album with them on it. With Collaborator…We asked each musician to send us incomplete musical fragments to us on DAT. We told them to focus on rhythm, melody, or harmony, but not to have all three elements at the same time in their contribution (so that we would have some room to add more sounds/music). Each tune on that CD is based on what they sent us. Some people sent us many short fragments; others sent us one long piece. Some of them we shortened or stretched or altered them however we wanted to. They all gave us permission to alter and add to their music any way we wanted to, we had complete freedom from them. It was really fun. I'd like to someday do a Rock CD that way, with many other players on it. Collaborator is rather similar to our release Suspension & Displacement…both are very electronic-based.

4 - Three years later, with The Devouring, you went from being a completely independently run band to having your albums released through Cuneiform records. Just how exactly did it feel to have some of the promotional and distributional weight taken off your shoulders?

Gayle: It made life easier for us. We had done all of the promotional work ourselves in the past, and it was nice for them to take this over. Cuneiform/Wayside had been ordering our music from us wholesale in the past, so we knew and trusted Steve Figenbaum already. So when he asked us to join his label, we did. We also really like some of the groups he has like Univers Zero, Steve Tibbettes, and Richard Pinhas/Heldon.
We have just released two new albums…New Dark Age is published by Cuneiform, and Ascension (NDA Volume 2) is published by our own label: HC Productions, so we are still sometimes involved with promotion and distribution.

5 - You are a relatively inactive band when it comes to touring, but you recently got the chance to go to the East (United States) for the second time in order to play a couple of gigs there, one of which was the NEARFest festival. How did your fans from that region react when they found out that they would be able to check you out? How exactly were you added to the NEARFest bill and what do you think of the recent rise of progressive rock festivals, considering that you'll also be headlining next year's ProgWest?

Gayle: We had been asked to perform at NearFest the year before, but we were too busy. Rob and Chad (the concert owners/promoters) both like our music, so they asked us to come out and play. It was easy because they paid for our airplane tickets, hotel room, car, etc…so we came out there and had a great time!!! It was very professionally run, everyone: Fans, bands, and the concert owners had a great time. The success of NEARFest I think encouraged some people here in Los Angeles to try to create ProgWest. They like us too, so they asked us to headline. It will be at Pitzer College, the college Chuck and I attended 20 years ago. In the same auditorium that The Ritual Continues was recorded…Should be fun!!

6 - When reading an interview from Djam Karet's early years, I read that you refused to gig around the LA circuit because of the "pay to play" policy that many clubs were adopting at the time. You still gig around very little, but I take it that now it's due to other reasons, isn't it? Why do you think progressive rock is a style of music in which artists are more likely to not embark on extended tours than those from other branches of rock?

Gayle: Personally, I have tremendous stage fright…I get very scared playing live. And Los Angeles is still a stupid place to perform, many clubs make you pay as you said, then you resell the tickets for more money…hopefully making a profit. We won't do it. Here in America…pop is huge and prog is not. There is very little interest in the general public about prog rock. It is sad, but that's how it is. Touring is expensive…We stayed in New York City for 3 nights (2 rooms) and hotels there are VERY expensive. We performed at The Knitting Factory there, with two other Cuneiform groups.

7 - Another interesting characteristic of Djam Karet is the fact that you have also worked on making music for commercials, films, etc. How much control do you have on how the music for that comes out? Have you ever refused to participate in a project because the music asked for was something that you wouldn't enjoy doing? What does the rest of the band do when it's not working on musical projects?

Gayle: When you make music especially for TV and film…You need to make the producer happy, not yourself. That's why they pay you. So we just try to make the producer/show owner happy. What ever they want, we'll do it. It's a job. Djam Karet is a creative/artistic outlet for us. Music for TV and film is just a job…not art. So they are separate in my mind. Sometimes they just use Djam Karet music already from an old CD and we don't have to make it special for them, other times I make whatever they want…Heavy metal, jazz, surf, reggae, world folk music…whatever they want. It's challenging work. I recently wrote and recorded original compositions of traditional world folk music from China, Japan, Bali, Peru, and many other countries. I play very many instruments. This was for a music library CD I did. Chuck owns a record store, Henry is a schoolteacher, and Mike is a garbage man.

8 - Just one more thing before we move on to New Dark Age and Ascension. How often do you guys actually get together to write music?

Gayle: Every week, at least once a week for months before we start recording a CD…then we meet about 3 to 5 times a week to record…and that usually takes about 9 to 12 months. Since we own our own recording studios, we take our time and spend hours recording each track. It takes forever, but it is really fun. Then we might not see each other for a few months…We'll take a break/vacation from rehearsing/recording.

9 - Soon after you released New Dark Age via Cuneiform, you released Ascension (Dark Age Vol.2) on your own and in a limited edition pressing of 750 copies. Why is it a limited edition pressing? Would you ever consider releasing it as a normal album in the future? And how did you choose which songs would end up on New Dark Age and which on Ascension?

Gayle: We had so much music it would not all fit on New Dark Age. There was enough for two CDs. We put the best music on NDA, and the rest was not totally finished for Ascension. But once we finished the tunes on Ascension, it also became a really great CD, just as good (if not better) than NDA. It is more acoustic based, and more mellow and beautiful. I like them both. They were digitally recorded mostly by Mike Henderson, and the sound quality is the best we have achieved so far on our thirteen albums. We made Ascension a limited edition to make it more special.

10 - The titles for your instrumentals are pretty non-standard when one thinks of it. "Licking the Skull" and "Kali's Indifference" are two prime examples of this. How do you come up with those titles? Are fans to try and interpret some hidden meaning from them?

Gayle: When you don't have lyrics, it is hard to come up with titles. We usually come up with them after the tune is recorded, not before. During the year, I write down interesting phrases I hear or read about, and sometimes these become future titles. They are both meaningful and insignificant.

11 - What would you say was the main inspiration behind the music for New Dark Age and Ascension? Is there a message that you want to transmit to the fans with your music?

Gayle: Have fun, do what you want. Make art, not a crafted product for sale. Have a vision and follow through with it. We really make self-indulgent music for ourselves. If other people like it…great. But we are the only real people we try to please. We do what we want, and our music is very fun to play because it is difficult, and very fun to record because we can use unusual sound sources and instruments.

12 - Ok, here's your chance to end this interview by talking about something that's completely your own…how would you describe the Maskit Chamber project to all Djam Karet fans out there? And just what exactly was the deal with the work you did for that music library?

Gayle: The Maskit Chamber is my solo side-project. It is not Djam Karet, just me. It is not as good as Djam Karet, but it is a chance for me to create electronic and prog music my own way. "The 4th Wave" is a single fifty-minute track of ambient and melodic music, very spacey and exotic. The music library CD was for a company that buys music and the composition, and resells them to TV and film projects. They already had a lot of rock and jazz, but no traditional world folk. So I created an album for them. Each tune was also in a 15-30-60 second version as well. It was fun learning to compose music in the traditional style of such countries as China, India, Mexico, and Japan, etc. I have a Koto, Sitar, Oud, Gimbri, Rabab, wooden flutes, and other numerous ethnic instruments. I will do more music for them in the future.
Next year (2002) we are going to start work composing and recording music for our 14th album. I'm hoping it will be a dark, brutal, crushing hard rock/prog rock CD more forceful then our previous album Burning The Hard City. Thank you for giving me the chance to talk about our group!

[Ed.note: Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions!]

For more information, visit The Official Djam Karet Website (http://www.djamkaret.com/)

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