It’s not just his music that seems to strike a chord, but also the way he presents himself on social media. That may have been the reason why he got invited to speak about how to market yourself as an artist in 2018 on a panel during Dekmantel Festival next to Sassy J and Hieroglyphic Being [see zweikommasieben #11].
zweikommasieben’s Mathis Neuhaus caught up with the Swede after the panel to dive deeper into the conversation and talk about everything from iPads and the techno scene’s conformity to GTA.
Mathis Neuhaus I am looking at the long sleeve you are wearing, which refers to a collaboration you did with Croatian Armor and wonder how you cope with collaborations? In the panel you said that you don’t work well in groups and that you would consider yourself a loner…
Jonas Rönnberg I collaborate a lot, but only with a few selected friends. The people that I work with are the ones I really connect with—people that share similar interests. I love interacting with those people and I love to see how that affects my work. With what I was saying in the panel, I rather referred to non-work-related-situations—like a hockey team where 25 different individuals come together and share something that is not really intimate and more like the least common denominator. I paint a lot of graffiti and I do not get along with most of the other writers, because it is also a lot of different people united by one broad thing. I can already tell by the style of someone painting a graffiti, if I am going to like that person or not.
MN Graffiti is a very competitive scene, right?
JR It is, and I have a lot of beef. I really hated graffiti for a while, because I mostly do not get along with the people doing it. However, Loke [Rahbek of Croatian Armor] and I speak the same language when it comes to creating. We made this tape [Body Of Water released on Posh Isolation in 2018] mostly just because I forced him to buy this iPhone-App for EUR 30. He didn’t like paying that much money for an app, and told me that I had to show him how to use it. And then he was like: “We need to use this properly now!” I think that was a fruitful collaboration, because the guidelines were set: Doing a C20-tape in one night using this app.
MN Is it true that you work quite a lot with iPads and iPhones and the apps that are available?
JR A lot, yes. The iPad is my most used synthesizer. I am still drawn to all the old stuff with blinking lights and still prefer sliders over a touchscreen, since it is easier to do a filter cut-off at the same times as raising the release, for example. An iPad is not that physical, so it is harder to use, but sound-wise it is fucking amazing. I use it a lot to spice things up. And I wouldn’t say I am lazy, but I also rarely go to the studio, sit down and plug everything into work for hours over hours. I lay in bed, connect one synth, no MIDI—if it shows the BPM on the screen, that is more than enough. Then I’d connect it to an iPad soundcard that is powered by a computer and does not need any more plugs.
MN But you still polish it afterwards?
JR I polish, yes. I didn’t know how to do that before, when I was only using hardware. Back then, it was not needed. It was more like a one take and maybe adding something later that I could not press down while I was playing, since I only have two hands. I started working with an iPad for the Gore-Tex City record [Nordic Flora Series Pt.3 (Gore-Tex City) released on Northern Electronics in 2017]. It has two live recordings on it still, but everything else was done with iPads and iPhones. I produced the track with Yung Lean on the plane, on my phone. Back home I only rearranged and mixed it.
MN I feel like track titles are a very important part of your work—am I right?
JR I have always been into poetry and imagery. I studied old printmaking techniques and how to hand bind books and as I said, I paint graffiti and draw a lot. All of this stuff is just as important to me as the music itself. A lot of the time, I come up with the titles, before I come up with the music. I sit down and create an album name and then fill up a page of track titles. And then I have to make the tracks. It helps me visualizing the finished operation. This is also the reason why I don’t release a lot of EPs, and prefer to work in an album format.
MN To me it feels like your body of work is heavily coined by continuity. Maybe this is even something that could be described with the German term “Gesamtkunstwerk.” I am sure you are familiar with the term…
JR Yes. I have a holistic approach to what I am doing. The first record I put out, Misantropen [Northern Electronics, 2013], was the first recording I ever made as a solo artist. Before I was only playing in metal bands. It was my first honest and personal work. And it is released. Everything I ever made is released. The whole discography will allow to follow my evolution as an artist: How I learned to use certain elements and how to mix. How I learned more about myself and how I became more mature or more immature. Varg is an open diary and will be a full project in the end. Inside of this, I have other projects: the Nordic Flora series will come together as one piece. I don’t see it as different records, I see it as one and it should be listened to as one. It is the same collaborators on all the records, all feature ECCO2K and AnnaMelina and they transcend between the records. It is a curated cluster of music.
MN Talking about curated: In the panel, your Instagram account was briefly mentioned. It became almost notorious a couple of months ago—in particular the Resident Advisor community did not seem to love it. What is your explanation for the techno scene being so conform and humorless?
JR I make jokes and I am not always serious. But I did not realize that my Instagram would become its own artistic persona in a way. I mean, my lifestyle is not very “black and white brutalist architecture and synthesizers making bleepy noises.” I like architecture and I like synthesizers, too. I even safe money to buy them sometimes, but this is not what I want to broadcast. Instagram is like visual masturbation for me. I posted a picture of AnnaMelina, pouring ice cream on her dog. Apparently, that triggers people—even though it is not even that provoking or new. But consequently, that triggered me to do more stuff like this.
MN In the panel you stressed the fact that Varg is not Jonas Rönnberg, mostly referring to your Instagram account, but it appears to me that especially in the track titles a lot of Jonas Rönnberg shines through? They often feel very personal.
JR The track titles are definitely where my personality is bleeding through to the project the most. A lot of the titles are about things that happened to me or that I had to deal with. And a lot of the music is about that, too—though hidden behind more layers. But still, the music is super personal. It is more the persona Varg than it is the artist Varg who is more visible on the Instagram account. I like to keep Jonas away from everything a bit more. This year was very hectic and I was going through a heavy depression. I grew bigger as an artist, got more and bigger shows and that added to a lot of personal stuff I had to deal with. I am trying to protect Jonas more, but at the same time it is also bleeding through more. And also, Varg is bleeding through into Jonas personal life. Sometimes, I can have a hard time separating the two.
MN Another thing that is very characteristic about your music is your way of using vocals and how they always sound like being far away, barely there almost. How comes?
JR I have a record coming out about people that I lost in my life. I have been suffering from hallucinations and dreams of seeing those people. That a lot of the voices I use are more muffled and unclear is a reference to myself hearing someone who is not there anymore, I think. It’s like a memory or a flash, and I try to make all my music sound like this, or the most personal of it at least.
MN In the interview that accompanied your Resident Advisor podcast, you said that you like to play GTA. If Rockstar would have asked you instead of Dixon, The Black Madonna, Tale Of Us and Solomun to contribute a soundtrack, what would it be?
JR To be honest, what I have been doing a lot in GTA is just hanging around in the nature. I like to do something you are not supposed to be doing. Like making art by using the camera phone in GTA or making a composition by slaying monsters in Diablo 2. I think that is what everyone should be doing—take the maximum out of everything. To answer your question: I would probably make a weird piano ambient soundtrack that fits these activities. Music to fly helicopters out to nowhere to. And the extreme opposite to that. Further, for the occasions when you use all the cheat codes to get all the guns and place yourself on a rooftop to kill cops, I would produce power electronics and harsh noise. Like yin and yang.