By Bernard Zuel
Jono Ma has just woken up. Before he eventually confesses it, the slow responses, the croaky voice and creaky laughter, the sound of water being poured – of course it's water; whatever else could it be? – are dead giveaways.
"I've just splashed water on my face to wake myself up," he says, when asked if he is pouring himself something medicinal. "Sadly it's just London tap water."
Jagwar Ma (from left), Jack Freeman, Jono Ma and Gab Winterfield.Credit: Maclay Heriot
This is rather disappointing, especially given his French connections. Since Ma and Gab Winterfield met in Sydney in 2007, then formed their band in 2011, they have carved an international reputation for their particular strain of dance-with-rock – or acid electronica, or trippy, euphoric pop, call it what you will. They have also become familiar with the qualities of rural France, having recorded parts of both their albums – 2013's Howlin' and this year's Every Now & Then – at a French property, hidden from the gaze of label heads and media, and ducking the assaults of various bugs, creatures and rodents.
"It is so rural where we were, and the building is so old that if you turn your back on it for more than a week or so you come back and there would be a new infestation of some sort. Like some feral cat came one time and decided, right it's my place now and this is where I'm going to deliver my litter of seven other feral cats," says Ma, who is more involved in production while guitarist Winterfield takes the lead on vocals, and Jack Freeman joins them on bass guitar for live shows.
"When we were playing our first shows during Howlin', then came back, one of the houses was overtaken by fleas – we had to rip up carpets. Then there was an ant infestation, though that one took care of itself: they nested in a wall and then over the course of one evening literally a million flying ants came out of this wall and I was like, 'Oh my god it's Armageddon'. Then they just flew away and that was it, a million female ants being liberated."
And people say there is no romance in music anymore.
As anyone who has ever read about the Rolling Stones recording their seminal Exile On Main Street album in the south of France knows, rising damp, poor sanitary conditions and infestations (of local drug dealers in their case, rather than flying ants) are all part of the legend, right?
"This definitely wasn't romantic," Ma says. "It's rustic as f--- where we were. There are no drug dealers around even if that is your thing, which it isn't. The most romantic part of it is the fact that you are isolated. There is no internet or phone reception and you are fairly self-sufficient. Sam, who owns the place, he grows a lot of produce on the land. It's not even a chateau really; it's another couple of steps down. It's a bunch of old buildings on a farm near a chateau."
Isolation is a vital part of the Jagwar Ma process. Some of the early writing for Every Now & Then was done hidden away at another studio in Crescent Head on the NSW north coast.
Ma also spent the last few days before going on tour sampling all his instruments, including drum machines, vibraphones and wurlitzers, so he could "put them back together like a jigsaw puzzle" when writing and producing the album. The trick is to cut off outside stimuli and leave space where technology might otherwise sit. "It creates an emotional vacuum where you can become more of a conduit for ideas," he says.
That helps explain the sound palette, but at what point does the music's emotional palette come into play?
"That's kind of always there," says Ma. "I get emotional about the sounds. It's probably a nerdy thing but the harmonic richness of one synth note, for me, can have emotional context.
"When I started the band, part of the appeal was having studio space in different places – there's one in Sydney, one in France and one in London – where we could spend a portion of time in each and your emotional headspace changes from day to day and place to place. The way you hear the songs really does change from place to place."
Jagwar Ma play Laneway Festival in Melbourne on January 28 and Sydney on
February 4, $169.50, lanewayfestival.com