why? says...

Why? creator and frontman, Jonathan ‘Yoni’ Wolf has just finished up working on his brother’s record when Kat Hartmann catches him for an early-evening chat. Today’s task: putting the songs together and blending them. Why?’s Australian tour is next on the agenda. It promises to be a multi-instrumental affair brimming with vibraphone, piano, percussion, keys, vox and guitar.

Covered: 4-Track learning, solo project to four piece, lyrics as poetry, having a critical ear and music as a social art.

Kat Hartmann: Is it true that you first started experimenting with music after finding a 4-Track in your father’s synagogue? Tell me a little about that…

Jonathan ‘Yoni’ Wolf: Yeah, it was a brief little stint, I think I found it in a closet and my dad showed me how to use it and I made a few recordings playing drums, piano and bass and just kinda had fun and rapped on one or two of them. I was 12 or 13 and I didn’t touch it again until I was like 18, maybe I did with a friend in high school but not by myself until [I was] 18. It really sparked something in me, and I knew at that point that I really liked recording.

KH: What prompted the decision to expand from a solo project to a four piece in 2005?

JYW: I had gone on tour to play the songs from the record Oklandazulasylum. I did that record by myself but on the tour I wanted to have a band and after that it seemed like a shame to go back to my hole, recording songs by myself, so we just kept working that way for the next record and it has just been ongoing.

KH: How has your sound developed with that transition?

JYW: In a way it has pared down since we have gotten more comfortable as a band, the sound has come back to the raw, basic elements rather than having so many elements going on at once like Elephant Eyelash or Oklandazulasylum do. Therefore each element becomes more important.

KH: The album has been described as your most live sounding yet and also very intimate in sound, can you describe this seemingly unlikely fusion?

JYW: I guess it sounds like five people playing in a room together, which is pretty much what it is. There aren’t many overdubs, it’s just what we did over those days, which I guess is a pretty intimate sound.

KH: It has also been described as your least hip-hop sounding record yet, do you think that is the case? And if so, was that an active departure?

JYW: I think that’s true, it just developed that way, these are the songs that just jumped out to be in this album because they fit together out of the sessions for the two records.

KH: Is it hard to translate your studio sound to the live realm? You are known for your unconventional stage instrumentation, is that a product of this transition?

JYW: I think so, I would cherish the things that we’re able to do recording and always felt like I wanted live shows to have something special about them too. I was never into the idea of backing tracks or anything like that, I always felt that it was… not cheating, but cheapening your live performance. The whole idea of it is that you have these people playing together right then, in the moment, in front of you. Some of the appeal of that is that at any moment it could all fall apart. There is a fragility to it. We’ve always been into the idea of not thinking conventionally in terms of like [with funny voice] we’re a rock band, we play with these instruments. That being said, we still pretty much use typical rock instruments, we try to make our arrangements interesting for us to play and consider the arrangements before we consider virtuosic playing; even though any of the players in the band, aside from myself, are more than capable of that kind of playing.

KH: And your visions for bringing Eskimo Snow to the stage in Australia?

JYW: I can tell you what it is; we’ve already been rehearsing it. It’s the band that recorded on the album and on Alopecia; it’s a five-piece. I am not doing much more than singing and a bit of percussion this time around. My brother, Josiah is playing vibraphone, drum set and percussion and will be singing, my friend Doug McDiarmid is playing piano, guitar and keyboard, singing and percussion, Andrew Broder is playing guitar, piano and singing, and Mark Erickson is doing bass and singing.

KH: That sounds like a pretty eclectic range of instruments. What inspires your instrument choice when putting together a live show in comparison to recording?

JYW: We tend to listen to the songs and think about what the most important elements are that make up the record. When we were bringing my solo stuff to the stage, we would almost take the song and start it anew. Nowadays, since it is the same band that recorded the song, the arrangements are pretty much the same as the album but we have to strip it down a little bit.

KH: For you it seems there is little gap between poetry and hip-hop lyrics. Tell me a little bit about that connection.

JYW:  I never really wrote thinking of poetry or hip hop necessarily, I guess I thought they were poems in a way back then. Then, later, I would just fit them to the music and try to make the words fit into phrases. Nowadays when I write, I write thinking of the rhythm and the phrasing, which I think is just a product of doing music for a while, I know that the words are likely to become lyrics.

KH: Why? has certainly made its own way there. Is this interest in an obscure, slightly left-of-centre sound a conscious thing you create or simply a product of each member’s creative input?

JYW: It is just what we like; there is a push and a pull when you have multiple people working on it. It just becomes what it is. You just have to have a critical ear, especially when you are producing; you have to know what you like. It’s a social art, it really is.

KH: Anticon is a label steeped in an ethos of independent creative expression. What’s it like being a part of such a unique collective?

JYW: It’s cool. It’s more of a record label now, rather than like a hippie commune. We sign a lot of new artists and that first release always feels really nice. Or getting a new record from an old, familiar artist, a friend that just knocks your socks off, that always feels really great.

KH: How did the connection for Anticon come about?

JYW: I guess my connection to a lot of the other guys came through Adam [Drucker], through Dose[one]. It was just this group of dudes that started listening to each other’s underground rap music. There was a tape tray that was going on, where you would get these fourth generation tapes in the mail where there was just hiss and a kick drum and someone rapping on it. They were the most precious and ephemeral thing: you knew one more generation and it would be gone. It was the last living will and testament of this person you’d never met. We all met through that.

why?, jonathan 'yoni' wolf