Jens Kuross Digs Into The Bedrock Of His Music
A deep-dive into his formative influences...
*Jens Kuross* has always known that music doesn't go in a straight line.
Just look at his own career. An aspiring drummer in Idaho, he studied music - twice over - on the East Coast, before transplanting himself to Los Angeles.
Initially fascinated by jazz, he was drawn to Rage Against The Machine before becoming a drummer for hire, notably taking a starring role with RY X, Howling, and The Acid.
His debut album - proper - 'The Man Nobody Can Touch' lands later this month, and it's a fascinating release, distilling down so many formidable influences. Jens dug down into his musical bedrock for Clash...
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*Rage Against the Machine - 'Evil Empire' *
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My first real forays into music were undertaken as a drummer. And my father being the responsible product of a late-1960's adolescence unsurprisingly nurtured those forays with a steady diet of Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix records. So before I hit my teens I was fairly well versed in some of rock and roll's most formidable rhythm sections.
The first rhythm section I really discovered and fell in love with on my own however, was Rage Against the Machine. I was too young to really give their first, eponymous record much mind as I was still listening to my Dad's record collection and probably too terrified of the self-immolating monk depicted on the cover art. But somewhere in middle school my older sister played me their second record 'Evil Empire' and I was transfixed. I had not then, nor have I since, heard a band channel so much raw energy, with such soulful groove and finesse.
Not to take anything away from Tom Morello or Zach de la Rocha, but for an aspiring rock drummer, the way that Tim Commerford and Brad Wilk could lock up on a groove like they were Bootsy Collins and John 'Jabo' Starks while at the same time filling an entire stadium with more energy than all of the pissed of 16 year olds in the mosh pit knew what to do with was a truly inspiring feat and it changed the way I hit the drums for sure.
I spent more hours playing along to this album than just about any other I can think of. Revisiting it in my post-teenage-angst years, I have more to say about Zach's ability to weave complex political commentary throughout his Ginnsbergian poetry stylings but I'd be lying if I said I gave a damn about their anti-authoritarian political views when I was 14. I just wanted to groove, and groove loudly.
The stand out tracks to me were 'People Of The Sun' and 'Vietnow'.
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*The Bad Plus - 'Give' *
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This one comes a little further down my drumming journey. It's difficult to leave out so many of the classic jazz albums that taught me about swinging, and comping and trading (Art Blakey's 'Moanin', Ahmad Jamal's 'Live At The Pershing' and Wynton Kelly's 'Smokin At The Half Note' are the honorable mentions here) but The Bad Plus was the jazz outfit that managed to fit my love of jazz into a cultural context that a kid who grew up listening to Rage Against the Machine could identify with. They gave me permission to play jazz like it was punk rock.
Before listening to them the idea of pivoting between a Tony Williams-esque up-tempo jazz ride pattern and a Phil Collins inspired, endless tom fill probably would've sounded like a horrible idea. And yet somehow, they made it work, all the while improvising and maneuvering through tempo changes and unpredictable syncopations with the deftness of a string quartet.
Finding my emotional connection to Jerome Kern and George Gershwin was all well and good, but improvising over PIXIES and Nirvana really hit me where I lived. It was some of the most original and inspired music making I'd ever heard. Once again I missed out on the first record 'These Are The Vistas', and had to discover it retroactively after I had imbibed their second offering 'Give'. I remember being particularly moved by the way they stretched the tempo in their version of 'Iron Man' which, even though performed entirely acoustically, still hits quite a bit harder than Sabbath's original to my ear.
And all this immediately following their interpretation of Holst's 'Neptune'. What?
I'd be remiss not to mention some of their brilliant original compositions but I figure that if a piano trio bashing their way through some Black Sabbath isn't an inviting gateway into some avant garde jazz populism then I'd better save my breath.
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*Bob Dylan - 'Blood On The Tracks'*
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Dylan is not a particularly unique route into songwriting but if you can think of a better place to begin I'd be eager to hear it. For me the transition from drumming in the back to singing in the front basically started with rewriting Bob Dylan songs. He opened my eyes to music that was lyrically driven. It sounds silly to say now but lyrics weren't really the focus of my listening until I started listening to Dylan. I became obsessed with my own lyric writing after that.
I knew that I wanted to sing about something significant but at the time I didn't understand what that was, and so those early attempts contained some cool-sounding phrases but they were every one devoid of real meaning. Regardless, Dylan turned me onto a very wordy form of songwriting, and taught me that I didn't have to rely on clever chord changes, or sophisticated rhythms if I could encapsulate something relatable and poignant with the words.
This may be obvious to most, but for a devoted drummer with two degrees in jazz performance I assure you it was not. The song form: verse, refrain, verse, refrain, verse, refrain with no chorus or bridge is one that has stuck with me over the years.
No one can write that way like Dylan can. Just listen to 'Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts'. That song is like ten minutes long and all it is is verses. Incredible really. I still couldn't tell you what it's about but it never gets boring.
I could've picked several Dylan albums for this list but I went with 'Blood On The Tracks' for the tunes 'Simple Twist Of Fate' and 'Shelter From The Storm'. They're just verses; incredibly elegant, meaningful and poetic verses.
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*Radiohead - 'Amnesiac' *
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I think the eureka moment that most aspiring song-writers and producers go through with 'Pet Sounds' or 'Sgt Peppers' I went through with 'Amnesiac'.
And that is the realisation that writing a great song, and recording it in a meaningful and original way are two very different skill sets. There is a literal universe of sound available to you when you sit down to record something. How do you harness that universe in a way that presents your songs in the most honest and unique way? How do you answer the question: What is my sound? I can't think of a band who's answered those questions more thoroughly than Radiohead.
This album first struck me when a college roommate showed me 'Pyramid Song' to see if I was smart enough to figure out what time signature it was in. After no small amount of time or effort I finally realized it was just in 4/4 and I was left utterly amazed at how something so simple was so cleverly disguised (the technique of displacing chords over a repeating rhythmic ostinato is one that I've since lifted from Radiohead on several occasions).
But more importantly I was discovering how many layers a good song that's well produced can reveal to you on repeated listens. I was learning to love songs that don't give up their secrets to those who aren't willing to work for them, and I've come to believe that this is a quality of all great songs and albums - they are so much deeper than they may appear at first listen.
You might really have to earn the depths that they contain but you are going to love every moment of earning them.
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*Tom Waits - 'Mule Variations'*
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I'm a fan of pretty much every Tom Waits album so this was a tough call.
You can't lose with 'Small Change' or 'Rain Dogs' or any number of others, but I think I'm going with 'Mule Variations' cause it contains one of the very few songs I wish I'd written: 'Take It With Me'. That track contains, in both the way it's performed as well as the way it's recorded, an intimacy that I think I'll always be chasing in my own songwriting and recording. You can hear the dust on the piano strings and the smoke in Tom's voice. And in so far as it captures the honesty of a moment, in my opinion it represents recorded music at its absolute best.
The album manages to capture other aspects of Tom's multifaceted and idiosyncratic personality. The eerie sound collage 'What's He Building?', the cool and pessimistic 'Get Behind The Mule', and the hopeful anthem 'Hold On' all testify to the originality and boldness of his sonic choices. He's as playful as a child, and as serious as a grandfather recovering from a heroin addiction.
And as someone who's perpetually chasing Tom's coattails, observing and enjoying such fearlessness and honesty reminds me what I loved about music making to begin with.
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Jens Kuross will release his new album ’The Man Nobody Can Touch' on September 25th.
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