"Konsultanté K." by Jem Doulton

Jem Doulton

He plays drums with Thurston Moore and Róisín Murphy. As well as live he's on Thurston’s singles Cease Fire and MX Liberty, and the albums Spirit Counsel and By The Fire. Jem toured with Róisín’s band for 7 years, and he's involved in a lot of psych-rock, free improvised stuff in London too. All that means he'd met very distinctive and powerful musicians.

So he made an album featuring all of them. It’s called Perfect Picture – He's set to release it song by song over the course of a year as a sort of serialisation and journey that slowly reveals itself: who's playing what where, imagery, social media kookiness.

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Konsultanté K.

Wieder einmal haben wir Jem Doulton bei uns zu Gast, auf seiner Reise ist er mittlerweile bei Titel Nummer 9 angekommen. 9 von 12 Singles, welche er jeden letzten Freitag des Monats veröffentlicht.

"Konsultanté K." heißt das gute Stück und wie sich bereits erahnen lässt liefert er, wie sollte es anders sein, wieder einen musikalischen Leckerbissen ab. 

Unter anderem mit an Bord Jamie McCredie an der Gitarre und Kevin Toublant am Bass und Moog. Jamie McCredie brilliert an der Gitarre und entwickelt sich zum Hauptakteur, gekonnt wird in die Seiten gegriffen und diesen ein euphorisches Hörerlebnis entlockt. Dass ihn seine Mitstreiter, sprich Musikerkollegen dabei unterstützen sei natürlich vorausgesetzt, die ganze musikalische Szenerie im Background präsentiert sich phänomenal und zeichnet sich für dieses akustische Klangerlebnis verantwortlich. "Konsultanté K." by Jem Doulton, die spannende Euphorie zwischen Art und Alternative Rock.

Q&A

Jamie McCredie on guitar and Kevin Toublant on bass and Moog, how is it to work with them?

They're both people I know and became friends with having worked for Roisin Murphy. They both happen to be really good musicians too and are great to tour with. 

They were happy to help be a part when I asked and so everything ran pretty damn smoothly. With everyone involved, it's about open conversation and my relationship with them and then see what comes.

The guitar part sounds fantastic, was it more free playing/jamming or did you say, "I want it that way", or a mixture of both?

Creds is on fire for sure and I certainly didn't demand anything from him... I think. I'm sure he'd cut me hard if I did - ah maybe that contradicts the above a little. Jokes aside, "have fun" is probably the only thing I said alongside having a few vague ideas like some sort of riff here and some blistering shred there, he firmly achieved both :)

When do you say or decide that a track is ready for the release?

I guess a track is never really finished so you have to find a contented place where you can live with it as is, otherwise you can end up going round in circles forever not completing stuff and/or moving on to the next thing. 

With experience/hindsight you'll always not quite have done it in the way you did having known what you will know when listening back in the future. Nothing is perfect and in a way it all becomes a marker of where you were at a particular moment in time, there's something quite sweet in that. Maybe it matters, maybe it doesn't but there's always something other coming.

If I remember right, you were on tour some weeks ago, how was the feeling to be back on the stage?

Yes you remember well Wolf. I did a mini tour as the drummer in The Thurston Moore Group in November. It was so so good to be back out on the road again, properly playing, great venues and also to be out of the Brexit mess that is the UK having not been allowed to escape too easily because of the pandemic. 

Holland, France, Belgium and Spain are where we were, mostly "evil" France though ;) We were meant to have toured the 'By The Fire' album the November before but the obvious got in the way. It's all a bit up in the air for everyone and I guess we have to adapt and make the best of it but certainly losing the right to work is quite a hard thing to reconcile (both covid and freedom of movement), so when it comes back, even if briefly, it's basically the best thing in the world. 

Plus that group is a special thing to be a part of and even more so when it's received the way it was and in all the places we went :) That is truly appreciated! The Ancienne Belgique show from Brussels is up on YouTube if you fancy checking it out ;)

Track 9 of 12, 3 more songs and the wonderful journey is over, do you have plans for another project like this one?

Well there's always stuff happening to be honest. I've almost recorded a second album but it's not quite done in this way. There are guests but also over this last year a live band has materialised so the additional bits left that need to be put down, will be done soon by some of these luvvers. 

I also hope to release that as an album, not track by track; we'll see if that's possible and you never know, it could happen this year. I guess it's always a bit fluid and things reveal themselves to you as you go, or at least that's what I hope for. It doesn't always fit with the next person but that's cool too. There's other stuff in the pipeline beyond that but that's me being a bit greedy.

9 out of 12, what's your favorite one so far?

Another question I can't really answer! But not because to do so would put me in trouble with the other songs. I guess like any good parent should say, "I love them all equally" :)

The year 2021 is over, how would you describe it in one sentence?

It's had its ups and downs but some good decisions were made and well, you have to try and enjoy what's there, mostly community and/or other people - that should be one of the main takeaways from this whole pandemic.

...and of course what's next for you?

The same thing as we do every night Pinky... not quite! Making a vinyl of this album is top of the list. I'm just getting that together as we speak. 

More gigs if possible both in the UK and on the continent for this project and for the others that I'm involved with too and hopefully even further away! 

More recordings for this idea and again others old, new and as yet unknown; finishing some, starting others. Being in the middle of a lot of music basically! And surviving it!

Photo credits:
TM Group photo by L Orseau
Cover Art photo by Chris Floyd
Art Direction Aude Debout

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