BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
Hinterlandt’s new album shares seven tales of comedy and tragedy, each named after a character that emerged from the composer’s imagination.
Jochen Gutsch has crafted fictional lives and moments, all woven into his new song cycle to shed light on the human experience.
In this conversation, the composer talks us through Seven Tales, and how he uses “acoustic indie-chamber anecdotes” to find meaning in the world.
Jochen, the world is in flux. And in the middle of it all, you’ve released a new album. Firstly, thank you for bringing art into the world. Secondly, how did you find the unusual experience of putting out an album in a pandemic?
Hi Stephanie, well thank you for thanking us! Let me put it this way: Releasing an album and touring as an independent act in Australia is challenging at the best of times, and the pandemic amplified some of these existing challenges.
I was in the middle of booking a Hinterlandt tour to support the proposed release of Seven Tales, and I had a string of good opportunities lined up. We were in a good place as a band, we were proud of the new work and wanted to share it and get feedback.
Then our plans evaporated into thin air from one day to the next – like those of all other artists who perform live.
Certain aspects of the process behind Seven Tales were not affected, though: I had written all of the material before the pandemic, and we had rehearsed and recorded it just before everything was shut down. Mixing, mastering, and artwork can be done during a lockdown because these things don’t require the whole band to be in one room.
Eventually, we decided to release Seven Tales despite the cancelled tour. We knew the release would have less of an impact, but sitting still felt even worse than risking it.
Sitting still felt even worse than risking it
We’re based in New South Wales so we could book a limited-capacity COVID-19-safe launch show when the Sydney lockdown was lifted. The dreaded second wave didn’t happen here (not yet, anyway). So the concert wasn’t cancelled, and we could rehearse and play the show, which made us very happy. People were still cautious about going out, but the show went well and we could do another gig in Wollongong.
Those concerts were sold out, but it’s hard to find any other opportunities to perform. It’s still near-impossible to plan anything.
Most of these implications are purely practical things. For example, as a group, you need to be in a room together for rehearsals. And even if venues are legally allowed to book shows, many of them can’t do it simply because it’s not financially viable to open with these limited capacities, the many rules, and the massive pressure of being responsible for every patron’s health and safety.
Running a live music venue in a place like Sydney wasn’t exactly easy before COVID-19, and now it’s even riskier. Those that survive are running on margins so slim that they need to book guaranteed sell-out events. I won’t blame them if they book dinner-and-show packages for cover shows instead of taking the chance on a comparatively experimental at like Hinterlandt.
I can imagine many of us contemplating the reasons why we make art, and reconsidering the way forward
Practical considerations aside, any artist’s enthusiasm and motivation will take a dent from a situation like this – no matter how much of a positive thinker and passionate artist you usually are. Most performing artist face many hurdles and reap little reward under normal circumstances, and now things are even harder than they usually are. I can imagine many of us contemplating the reasons why we make art, and reconsidering the way forward.
I have to admit, the subject matter of this album isn’t all positive. In fact, you introduce fictional characters who go through intriguing and heartbreaking experiences. How’d Hinterlandt come to share these stories?
Hinterlandt has existed with and without vocals. Before Seven Tales, we had an instrumental phase. Then I felt the time was right to write a whole album with vocals, and told myself: If we do this, the words need to carry some weight. If we have nothing to say, why say anything? So I thought about possible lyrical themes, and eventually decided to go into a more openly narrative direction.
I chose an overarching theme that holds the individual pieces together: all of the Seven Tales have a somewhat tragic element. The protagonists go through difficult situations and experience grim realities – but they’re meant to be endearing and relatable characters. They’re just people, and essentially, they mean well. So in that sense, I would hope that the album does not provide a negative outlook. That was not my intention.
What are some of the main stories you share in Seven Tales, and why are they moving enough to set to music?
Thanks for saying they’re moving, I really appreciate that. I love to read but literature is not my area of expertise. I’m definitely a ‘music person’ first and foremost.
Writing narrative lyrics – many of them in classic third-person mode – was new to me, and it took me a long time to get them to sound the way I wanted them. English is my second language, so that’s another hurdle, particularly when it comes to subtleties in tone, and when it’s set to music.
Perhaps zooming in on the lives of individuals who live in the real world is the key thing that makes the stories relatable. Most of the accounts are rather concrete: listeners are presented with common people, items, locations, and situations. Magic, mystic, philosophical, or spiritual themes may be touched upon briefly, but only in passing. These things are not centre stage.
I’d prefer to leave the interpretation of individual pieces up to the listeners: they’re the better judges.
I really like the way this album has been described as a collection of “acoustic indie-chamber anecdotes”. From a musical perspective, why do you think listeners want to hear a song cycle? That is, do you think we’re entering an era where audiences are searching for stories as a supplement to music? After all, we seek them out every day — you’re even engaged in one right now.
I’ve aimed to suggest underlying narratives in my compositions for a while, even when it’s instrumental music. For Seven Tales, I took this approach from the abstract to the literal, so to speak. I thought:
Why not spell it out this time? Why not actually create fictional characters and tell their stories, through lyrics and vocals?
And then I thought:
Okay, if I go down this road, I should take it seriously. Even if these are just tiny anecdotes, there should be life and death, love and loss, hope and failure, the things that make us human.
Whether it’s literature, theatre, or film, other artforms don’t seem to shy away from addressing these things.
Stories are tools we use to make sense of the world. I agree with you about us seeking them out. We need them to understand who we are, where we come from, where we go, how we relate to each other, and how we relate to the world we live in.
Some go further and argue that fiction is more powerful than facts. Whether that’s true – and if it’s true, whether that’s a good thing or not – that’s a different story.
An album of this medium could risk a separation of music from story; where a narrative might be overpowering or competitive with the music. But your album has achieved synergy. How closely did you consider the lyrics and, on a practical level, how did this inform your music-making?
Thank you! Yes, a separation of music from story was a risk I was aware of while writing. I actively tried to address this in the composition.
While I wanted the music to be interesting, I aimed to make the composition transparent enough so it leaves enough space for the words to unfold their meaning. To achieve this, I tried to keep the music tidy, clearly organised and emotionally relatable.
Luckily, we’re a pedantically ‘pure’ band in the sense that we use no electronics or electric instruments, and no effects: it’s all acoustic, all hand-played, there’s no bells and whistles.
On stage, it’s still a rather dense package. The music doesn’t just provide an unassuming accompaniment for the vocals – there’s a lot of rhythmic detail, counterpoints, harmonic shifts, and so on. The vocals are also not just vocals; their lyrical component adds another layer of information and meaning, which relates back to the music.
Every musician on this album knows exactly where they stand and what their role is. Simeon Johnson on cello represents the reliable and energetic bottom end that holds it all together and drives the compositions forward. Monique Mezzatesta and Jara Stinson on violins converse in playful and almost sibling-like ways, and our singer Nicole Smede performs with the unassuming clarity that is needed to bring the lyrics across. Her voice is rich and beautiful, but like all of us she knows she’s embedded firmly in the balance of the acoustic quintet.
My guitar playing has mostly a percussive function, and my trumpet lines are sparsely placed ornaments that are supposed to add colour and help with orientation in the arrangement.
Also bursting with character is your artwork, which is among the most beautiful I have seen in quite some time. Tell us everything about it.
Oh yes that’s the work of Sam Harwood, all credit to him! He’s made album covers for several Art as Catharsis releases, the label we’re on. Our cellist Simeon Johnson and I worked closely with him on the idea and execution. We gave him the lyrics and the music, and explained the concept of the album. We also highlighted a few key words that appear in the lyrics and suggested that these could find representation in the image.
We’re very happy with the artwork and we wish we could release the album on vinyl, but we simply can’t afford it as long as we can’t tour. Maybe we can press a small vinyl run, one day.
Do you have any final words about this album, or how you’ve been coping during the pandemic, or anything else you’d like to share with us?
First of all I’d like to thank you for the great questions, Stephanie. I wish all music journalism was this thorough. CutCommon really has become a crucial part of Australia’s music media landscape.
I increasingly get the sense that we’re all feeling our way through this pandemic. Actual knowledge seems to play a minor part in our decision-making and opinion-forming processes. We’ve spent months and months looking at numbers and graphs, listening to medical researchers, economists, analysts, virologists, politicians, lawyers, and other academics, scientists, and experts. And how do we make our decisions? We base them on feelings.
Our opinions are shaped, altered, shifted, and reversed constantly, at a rapid pace. Nobody knows where they stand anymore, and who they can align with. Even our language changes as far-right fanatics rally side by side with esoteric hippies, jointly turning terms like ‘freedom’ upside down, absurdly reframing some of the things we thought we believed in.
This is very unsettling of course, but it’s also interesting. We believe we’re so factual, and yet we base our actions on intuition. Everything is vague, nothing is absolute.
It’s all stories.
Stream Seven Tales by Hinterlandt on your favourite platform. Learn more about the artists on the website.
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Images supplied. Featured image credit Wesley Nel/Goethe.
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