Mahjonng
Having dug out our old Joy Division records a little while back, we thought it would be a good time to check in with Karyl Czientzar from Chicago-based electro-pop group, Mahjonng: Who are you listening to at the moment? ‘I really like White Williams. TigerBeat6 consistently puts out good records, and this is only the latest of the greatest. I’m feeling the last Times New Viking record, and Dude N’ Nem’s ‘Watch My Feet’ is one of my favorites of recent times. And, of course my old buddies, White Rabbits’. Mahjongg create wicked grooves. And then you muck around with them and destroy the simplicity of the moment with these crazy skewered melodies. If we broke it down to three central elements, what are the key ingredients to writing a good Mahjongg song? ‘Beats are really important. Often a beat will inspire a melody. If a beat is somewhat complex, for me to understand and think of it as a groove instead of 17/8 or whatever, I have to write a melody as a guide, and those melodies usually stick. If a melody comes first, then the beat acts as a counter to it usually, instead of going along with it straight-up. I’m really into arrangements and I think that’s important with jamming out on riffs. So I suppose the key elements are beats, melodies and arrangements. I used to be stuck on chord changes a lot and I think we’ve freed ourselves up in that area’. Mahjongg the board game … who’s the band champ? ‘None of us actually know how to play! But if we all learned how I’m positive Hunter would dominate’. If you could be teleported back to any gig in history, which would it be? And what would you be drinking there? ‘I’d go with the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival or Monterey Pop Festival. I’d drink whatever I was lucky enough to get my hands on’. [illustration by Chris Ede]
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