I don’t think it matters if I think it can happen in our lifetime, I think it matters that we try and make it happen in our lifetime.
Unfolding is the latest album from Montréal violinist/composer Jessica Moss and is a very powerful collection of music, at a time when that is more than needed. Gavin Brown had the pleasure of talking with Jessica to get an insight into Unfolding, with its creation, guest musicians, reaction and outlook all discussed in detail as well as delving into Jessica taking the songs of Unfolding to the live stage, touring with Swans, the prospect of new material, and how her time with Silver Mt Zion member and Black Ox Orkestar has shaped her as a musician in an informative and passionate interview.
E&D: Your new album Unfolding is out now. Have you been pleased with the reaction to it so far?
Jessica: I really have been. I’m feeling a little bit different this time around, I guess, for a million reasons, personal, political, the state of the world, I have felt much less invested in the kind of public reaction, and more just the close personal reaction of people giving me very good feedback. I’ve had some really nice interviews, and I see that some of the music is resonating, which is honestly all that I could ever hope for, but my ability to engage in the social media self promotion element of it is has never been less than I feel right now, and I’ve just had to accept that it just is what it is.
E&D: Does that feel like a form of necessary evil?
Jessica: I mean, definitely the evil part. I guess what I’m trying to say is it feels less necessary to me than so many other things. I know that it’s necessary to a certain degree, because there’s only one way at this point in time, there’s so few people like you, there’s such a little amount of actual music journalism, just this sort of fat, little tasty bites of flashy things that get people’s attention. I just can’t fucking do it anymore. But that’s okay, because I think at this point, this is my sixth full album, and it’s really just about the music at this point, for me,
E&D: Would you say that Unfolding is your most sorrowful but also your most powerful album to date?
Jessica: That’s beautiful words. I think that’s likely true. I think it’s definitely as sorrowful as where I live and where a lot of people I love and connect with live at the moment, not sorrowful in a hopeless way, but legitimately, if you have your eyes open, it’s hard not to be feeling pretty sorrowful right now. On a technical level and on an experience level. I’ve been doing it for long enough now that I think I was a bit more intentional going in with this one, I had some very clear ideas of what I wanted to do, especially the last track with the choir piece. I had in my head that it was something I wanted to get to, rather than what often happens, which is the elements talk to tell me what to do while I’m doing it, but with this, I actually was striving for it. I don’t usually work that way, but that piece of music, that short few minutes, is the thing I’ve worked the hardest on. I think I made 16 versions of that before I was happy with the end.
E&D: What have been the biggest influences on the sound of the album?
Jessica: It’s interesting. I have a hard time talking when the word influence comes up, because I think I have come to things in a very non linear way, and so influences, it’s very hard for me to point directly to other musicians or other bands or other projects that that are doing something that I want to do as well. I feel like I’m influenced by encounters with other artists. I think the music I listen to the most is from other parts of the world where the lyrics are not understandable to me, but the passion behind the music grabs me in a certain way. I don’t have a very good answer for influences, because in a way, I feel like I do t have any but in a way, everything I do and input does have an influence. I did have a wild realisation not that long ago, that when I understood that I was raised with classical music, and at a certain point I realised that my compositional brain, is definitely influenced by the flow of how a symphony goes, where there’s movements, where you can have some sort of an expression, and it can begin and then 40 minutes later you’ve ended your expression, you can go through different textures in symphonies, there’s movements, and I think I am definitely influenced by that flow.
E&D: You dedicate the album to a free Palestine in our lifetime. How are you feeling about this at the moment and do you think that that can happen?
Jessica: I’ve been feeling this kind of ebb in terms of engagement, in terms of understanding. I think that unfortunately, a lot of attention has dissipated because the word ceasefire happened, even though everything about it is false, basically everything continues, and now it feels even more covert, because many eyes and minds have moved on, but mine haven’t. So, I don’t feel less passionate about it. I feel less hope. Hope is such a dumb word anyway. I don’t think it matters if I think it can happen in our lifetime, I think it matters that we try and make it happen in our lifetime.
E&D: Have you had a lot of support and on the other hand, a lot of hatred, for speaking about the situation in Palestine?
Jessica: I suppose that in the last couple of years, there’s been a sort of ebb and flow. At the beginning of the last two years of escalated genocide, since the October 7 event, for the first many months, it felt much more scary in a way, to engage in that way, and I have been following so closely that I’ve seen people I admire have their everything taken away from them. I’ve seen the leaders of the disgusting countries that are supporting it, the efforts that were made and continue to be made to shut down this kind of voice. There’s been some scary moments, personally, but I have never wavered in my knowing that it’s my job, it’s my job as a white, Jewish, extraordinarily privileged Western person, to use my voice that way, and whatever comes to me is not even a tiny touch of how it can be for other people who are much more brave than me engaging more publicly. I’ve had some things taken away, for sure. I’ve had some opportunities shut down because of it. But I also think I’ve met my true community by being like that, and I definitely will never, turn away from it, no matter what that means.
E&D: Is the title of the album, a significant one when it comes to the music unraveling?
Jessica: Absolutely, yeah, it’s significant. It’s hard for me to use words to explain it, but it does definitely embody a lot of things about how I was thinking about one’s own personal experience in the world, as your internal unfolding, with food and knowledge to grow your own personal unfolding. It’s also a title that came to me right at the beginning. Like all albums and everything I do, I had to go very far away from it and think, no, it’s too literal. I tried to think of other words that embody that concept, and then I came back to the beginning, and I’m glad that I did.
E&D: How was the experience of working with Radwan Ghazi Moumneh on the album?
Jessica: Radwan and I have been very, very close friends for over two decades, and our own friendship and relationship has also been in a perpetual state of unfolding in that, depending where we are in life, we can be closer or less close, but he remains. I want to say like a very permanent, positive element in my life. So just on a personal level and on an artistic level, I’m a huge admirer of his engagement on every level of his own art and how he approaches the world and what his his own messaging through his own projects, Between the two of us, our deep friendship and love of each other also has developed into a working process that is there. It’s completely entangled. It’s hard for me to imagine making a record without him there. Since this is the fifth one that we’ve made together over 10 years, another element of it is that he and I have been working towards, sort of setting me on a path of independence in terms of my engagement with the technology and everything so that this album, I made a lot by myself, both in the recording and mixing, and most of it I did on my own, but with him always in the background for me to have access to. Right now our relationship is more as a mentor and mentee in terms of the recording process. Then there’s a stage at which I have gone as far as I can technically, and then that’s when he really comes in. It’s his art as an engineer, as well as his art as decoding my own complicated way of approaching things. He makes it cohesive, and it’s his chain of both technical and mental understanding of how a track can become part of an album. He’ll have ideas that I could never have conceived of, and sometimes he’ll have ideas that are counter to mine, and in explaining to him what my idea is, both of us get more clarity. I’m very incredibly grateful to have a working art partner in my life. I think it’s rare.
E&D: So it’s safe to say you will work together again in the future?
Jessica: It’s safe to say, yeah!
E&D: The epic album track ‘One, Now’ features Tony Buck from The Necks, how was it having him play on the track and what did he bring to its sound?
Jessica: Well, we met for the first time, actually, through Radwan. We have people in common. The last tour before this one, about a year and a half ago, Berlin was on the calendar, but at the time, being a pro Palestine artist in Berlin felt like a dangerous place to be. It was not clear where it would be okay and safe to be that way, but a friend of Radwan has become a friend of mine and has a studio home in Berlin. His name is Rabih Beaini, and he also is a friend of Tony. We decided a year and a half ago that my time in Berlin would involve two shows at his studio, which is a haven for like minded art people. We decided the first night would be solo, and the second night I would do some improvising. Radwan encouraged me to ask Rabih to see if Tony wanted to be part of it, and he did, so we met for one night, played the show together, and it was, for me anyway, transformative in terms of having met this person whose drums I’ve listened to in the most intense ways. I feel like his percussion, his artistry. There’s something about it that’s truly magical to me. I listened to his percussion on any Necks album and I hear something magical. I brought that experience back to the recording process. I made the whole album, and I felt like I had this track that I wanted to embody. I wanted to bring him in, in a spiritual way, so I made this whole percussion track I invented. I had bells and pot lids, and I was just finding things around that sort of gave me this texture, but there was still a hole, and it felt like a Tony Buck sized hole. So again, Radwan was like, just email him and see if he wants to add something. I did, and he sent me a bunch of beautiful music he recorded there in Morgantown, the same place that we had met, and sent me tracks. It was a joyful experience, and to siphon them into fitting into the track, it’s truly wonderful. Actually, I was just in Berlin again, and I sat down with him recently, and we talked about maybe playing together some shows in the future. I hope it happens. I really am a huge admirer of him and his work so it’s very exciting
E&D: How did your shows go supporting Swans recently?
Jessica: For me, really great. It was top to bottom, a wonderful experience. I’m hugely grateful that they brought me along to share their stage. It was really nice to connect with a certain type of music listener that’s adjacent to audiences that I have met before opening for Godspeed or on my own tours. There’s like a population of people who are drawn to a certain type of music, and Swans fans are the same type of people, in a way, but have found a kind of passion and a different expression. Swans is a very external and very intense live show to be at, and I felt really confidently good that my 30 minutes on stage before that happened was a nice kind of portal opening, and I happily stepped into that portal and felt really good about it, and I had a lot of really positive reactions of people that never heard of anything about me which I love. It means to me that the whatever I’m doing up there is translatable, and playing live is the thing that’s the most important to me of all, to connect in that way. i have only good things to say about that.
E&D: How did the songs from Unfolding expand in a live setting?
Jessica: With every record I’ve done, when I sign off on the master, right away, begins the process of, how do I now translate that record that has a million versions of me on it into a version that I can bring to a stage on my own. Every live set I’ve made has developed with knowing that there’s only very small amount of the record that I can perform as it sounds, and that otherwise I have to invent a whole other version. For this one, I was more intentional in terms of the pieces that I would bring with me onto the stage. So I actually had, while I was playing, there was moments where Tony’s drums would be there, where I could expand the version. I guess this also is a record that has more non violin elements than any other one, and the only way for me to have that with me is to bring it on actually recorded, and so that the work was less about inventing brand new versions and more about how to make a live experience where I could bring those elements in, where it never felt like I was playing along to a track, because I can’t bear that, not as a performer nor a listener. There are entire sections of the album that I can’t play live, which is always the case. But for this particular set, for the Swans tour, anyway, there was quite a bit of the album that I brought in to join me, and felt really good.
E&D: Have you had thoughts about any new music?
Jessica: That’s a totally fair question. I think it’s always in the background. There’s a machine that’s always going and gathering and putting things together, like, one day maybe, but when I embark on a new project, I get so completely enraptured and taken away by it that I don’t actually let myself think about new music until I have the time and space to actually work on new music. I do have things that Radwan and I are hatching a plan for the next album, and if everything works as we hope it will, we’ll record it in Beirut with his community there. We’re going to meet this week to talk about what that process will be, but I’m not allowed even to start working on it until the path has been set.
E&D: With your previous work with Silver Mt Zion and Black Ox Orkestar, do you look back on that with with pride and fondness, and does that influence you as a solo artist as well?
Jessica: 100%. My birth as a touring musician, as an engagement with the audience in that way, Silver Mt Zion was absolutely my education. I had played in plenty of bands before that. I’ve played in plenty of bands since that. But yeah, Silver Mt Zion and Black Ox Orkestar, sort of happened at the same time at the beginning, it was not possible to imagine a version of me that didn’t have this experience. It’s not that I necessarily look back like, like, Oh, that was so nice in a fond way, but more that it was like an often difficult but absolutely necessary education to bring me to exactly this point right now. I wouldn’t have gotten here otherwise, everything about it, the way I play, the tools I use, the learning from what It feels like to be in the band where there’s a front person imagining my way into being that person, it’s all education, and incredibly valuable. I was forced to play violin when I was a kid, and it was not easy at all, and it was oftentimes very upsetting and difficult as a kid, but the passion I had for the instrument, for the music that I could make with it, overrode that and continues to. Every time I make an album, I’m like, What the fuck am I doing? It makes me crazy. It’s so difficult. I’m a perfectionist in a way that doesn’t make sense in the world. It gets incredibly painful every time, and every time I say to myself, I will never do this again, but then the passion overrides, and all I can do is learn how to to get more and more honest and more embodied in terms of how I present it and how I live with the choice I’ve made of being a musician in this world, and how I can best continue in that way, while also embodying all my other values, so that that’s what drives me now.
E&D: Do you still feel that music, and your music, is still a powerful weapon in terms of protest?
Jessica: I’m not under any illusion that there’s any act or any song or any one thing that has really that much power all on its own, although there are artists and musicians in this world that could wield a huge amount of power if they chose to, but the most powerful and and richest and the most popular artists won’t, because that will be a risk to their power and wealth. For the most part, to anybody operating on a real human level, it’s not one thing, but I do think that it cumulatively means a lot. If an audience in a year sees more and more people up there saying it. That means something to the people who have witnessed it. I also think that I genuinely believe that not just as an artist, but as a worker participating in the system in this world, that if I, or if any of us commit to truly living in the version that we’d like to see, that actually has an impact cumulatively, and I have this true driving belief that each of us is responsible towards effecting the change that we want to see. We are responsible to modeling it and working within that framework as our own personal circumstances allow us to and as I said before, my own personal circumstances give a lot of room for it, so I I take a lot of room with it. I totally understand, though, that somebody next to me who is in a much more precarious situation is less able in certain ways. I think that we each have the responsibility that our circumstances allow, if that makes sense, if we want to live in a just way, if we want to model what we truly believe, then we do it as much as we possibly can. I think that’s true for our any worker, any person, any anybody who is living in the world with a cell phone and a job and any kind of income and has to buy groceries, and we’re participating. So as a participator, I think there’s no other way to be.
