The Hammock Papers: Tradition.

03 December 2023

Tradition.

Killing Joke founder, Jaz Coleman, on the origin of their sound ...

KYLE HARCOTT
The formative Killing Joke sound was unique amongst its contemporaries of the time, I wanted try and get a sense of where you were coming from musically, and how your beliefs tied into that formation as well.

JAZ COLEMAN
One of our foundations was to inspire a renaissance, when I remember my early conversations with Paul – and this was before Geordie and Youth [Glover, bass] even came on the scene. That was the objective; that and also to have an understanding of the world’s power system, the world power complex; and more importantly – to see ourselves in context to it. That was one of the other points I remember discussing with Big Paul.

Apart from that there was strict musical form. We rejected ALL blues music as musical communism, because it was a musical form from a foreign land and not our country of origin. We would ask ourselves these questions on what an Anglo-Saxon rhythm is, so Killing Joke came out of fierce debate like this. We rejected ALL guitar solos, on the grounds that they were an expression of ego – and that tradition remains to this day. The drums were always considered the royal instrument. Big Paul drew from Celtic tradition on drums, and we meant to reinvent and establish modern tribal drums of an Anglo-Saxon style – so in many respects we were almost writing our own folk music, because England has no real folk tradition. And by that I mean, no one sings the songs of their ancestors or forefathers anymore. If you asked 500 people in England today to sing the songs of their forefathers, they’d probably sing you a Manchester United song! So it was always about reestablishing tradition. And of course that’s what we are today.

EUPHORIA

Overcast, the branches bare

The autumn leaves have fallen

I can hear the magpies laugh

I can't shake this melancholy

And then the clouds break

A ray of sunlight, gloria!

As if a promise

Some strange kind of euphoria

Dark phantoms of the past

Some things are best forgotten

Like Orpheus, don't look back

The best years are waiting for you

And then the clouds break

A ray of sunlight, gloria!

As if a promise

Some strange kind of euphoria

And then the clouds break

A ray of sunlight, gloria!

As if a promise

Some strange kind of euphoria

And then the door breaks

A ray of sunlight, gloria!

As if a promise

Some strange kind of euphoria

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL