Jaz: No, it was always clear that we were going to do a recording. It was on the cards from the minute we went to Raven’s funeral. The very second the service started it was all clear. We knew for the last 25 years it was going to happen at some point, we didn’t think it was going to happen so soon but it was always on the cards.

PW: How did the process come together and did you all work collaboratively?

Jaz: Yeah well everyone gets their own ideas and you get in the studio and pretty much throw away everything and you just jam. As far as the new album, I shouldn’t say but I’ll tell you the truth, it’s 80% jams. We had structured songs that we do in the afternoon and just jam in the evening. There are 12 tracks on the album and I’ll leave you to guess which are the structured and which are the jams.

PW: And as far as the lyrics are concerned?

Jaz: Well I tried to work on lyrics a little bit with everybody. You don’t want someone singing something that is not felt universally by everyone. Beyond that I kind of take a lot of responsibility for the lyrics. With big Paul [Ferguson] back in the band, he’s very different in as far as he is one member who has always been very inspired to write verse and Paul always contributed lyrics during his tenure in Killing Joke. We worked very hard together on this album. When I started Killing Joke with Paul, we both sung, it just gravitated towards me I guess as I was doing keyboards. I was doing a little less activity than Paul and it just kind of went that way. So I would say it’s pretty collaborative but at the same time you’ve got to say what you feel as an individual and at the end it’s pretty much predominantly my lyrics. What I do is, I take themes that I’m interested in writing about and say to Paul, Youth, Geordie, OK these are the themes go for it. Then we all write and all synthesize, whoever can be fucked to do it. I guess I focused on Youth for two songs and Geordie for two or three songs but Paul pretty much with all of it. It’s a band, we are trying to get what we all feel down in prose. When you take away the music it just stands up as prose. I’ve always felt this.

PW: The album was recorded in London, Spain and Prague did everything go more or less to plan; I know the release date was delayed and concerts rescheduled?

Jaz: Well the only plan we have with Killing Joke is that we will record and we will finish it. Killing Joke don’t really do plans, how can you make plans, you know it’s pretty hard. When you get to the studio in the end, it turns out very different from what you expected. If you had preconceptions it just shatters them. It goes its own way. When it feels right and everything’s locked in, well you’re on it!

PW: One thing I was really interested is the way your old songs have stayed so relevant in society and themes fit in with narrative on the new album. For instance we really are seeing an ‘Age Of Greed’ and if there ever was a time for ‘Absolute Dissent’ it is now! Do you think that perhaps we have become too complacent and those in elevated positions are getting away with too much?

Jaz: I think that’s probably the understatement of the century. I mean what can I say? Codex Alimentarius was passed last December which means that all nutrients and vitamins will be extracted from all edible goods and all cows have to use Monsanto feed by law. This will lead to a sick population which is Malthusian ideals to cull and it’s happening now! People are just so busy, busy, busy and in debt and fearful, they don’t want to know, there is no rebellion. You can add fluoride in the water to that, dopamine that is being sprayed in the outer atmosphere with chemtrails and all the laboratory tests are there, we know what’s going on. The fact that one family can have 52% of the Federal Reserve is acceptable. You have David Rockefeller saying the future of the world will be a super national elite ruled by bankers. And Nicholas Rockefeller saying the future of the world is a micro-chipped population run from microwave towers. No nobody gives a fuck and nobody is rebelling, you’re damn right!

I’m not trying to lead dissent in any sort of nationwide, popular uprising like this. My ideas are very different from this. I believe that we should move to the under populated regions of the globe and we should get as far away from urban centres as possible. I think the food supply is the biggest problem ahead of us. Food prices are set to go up by 40% over the next few years. It already has, look at staples like wheat, corn and when the poor people can’t afford to feed themselves, well you can see where it’s heading. Looking at solutions we need to increase food supply but safe, nutritious food preferably. As for the population problem, education is the only answer. Once you start taking Malthusian tactics we lose our humanity. We would lose the meaning of what it is to be human.

PW: Staying political the album is, as was Hosannas very apocalyptic. Song titles like The Great Cull and This World Hell kind of speak for themselves. We are coming up to 2012 a year that has this stigma of end of days attached to it, do you think things could be coming to a head?

Jaz: Yes I do. You know, the points and dates of when they come to a head that’s an interesting debate. This points called ‘singularity’ by the way, other people call it time-wave zero and there is the 2012 thing. The actual date is interesting, whether it happens on the 23rd December 2012 or not well that’s an interesting one but I think actual cataclysm on a scale that we cannot imagine is heading our way. I don’t know whether I would do anything different to ‘the elite’ in one sense because I don’t know what would happen if you told the public the truth? For a start, everything infrastructure wise would just break down. So I think the public can feel something’s wrong and are in a state of fear but what the hell do you do? Whether it makes everyone happier knowing, well I think everyone does know, I think they feel it, even with only the left side of their brain function.

There are certain things we do know. At the moment magnetic North has moved out of Canadian territory, it is heading towards Siberia at an alarming rate. To explain just a part of what’s happening, at the moment time is speeding up and it is speeding up, it’s not just your brain shrinking, the universe is speeding up to a point of singularity. How it works is this, when we increase the geomagnetic field of the earth, time goes slower and when it diminishes time accelerates and so we have at the moment the Earth’s geomagnetic field at 0.05 gauss and decreasing rapidly. We are heading towards 0 gauss and that’s where everything is and will keep accelerating until this point of singularity. Of course information will quadruple up until this point ‘badabadabadabadabadabadba.’ Mckenna puts time wave zero at 2012 and he was funded by the Rockefeller Association.

The Maori people of New Zealand, they call it the uniting of Rangi and Papa which means the sky and the earth will come together. In Maori this means quite literally ‘the unveiling.’ I think that our whole reception of reality will change after this date that is what I do believe. Everett made the big leap into proving that parallel universes exist, his discoveries are greater than Copernicus in my opinion because the occultists already knew this, hyper-dimensions. We have multiple time lines where we can go back into the past and create a new time line. Alternatively in distant, distant future Paul Raven’s not dead yet and exists as Schrödinger and his cat theorem illustrate. So I believe this phenomena and we haven’t even tapped on the exo or extra terrestrial element to hyper-dimensional activity, which is a huge area in itself, but these things are all coming to pass.

Youth and myself are setting up 2012 parties at the end of the earth, Youth is hoping for 40 different countries. He’s always ambitious, I’ll be happy with just two or three.

PW: After this overload of information it seems almost trivial going back to the music itself but time is definitely speeding up and I have to steer things back towards the music of the album.

PW: You have always been one of those bands who have been dedicated in releasing singles and extended mixes with bonus songs for your fans. This album is no exception, and the forthcoming European Super State really sticks out having an electronic almost techno edge to it. Was it easy choosing this and In Excelsis to put out?

Jaz: That was a jam track if you want to know the truth. You know, we were in Germany for three albums and The German movement of Can, D.A.F. and we were part of it and so that’s really an extension of our very early work. Ideologically Geordie is a huge supporter of Refkin and the European dream; we are all passionate Europeans not Anglophiles as you can see when you look at the lyrics of ‘Europe’ on ‘Night Time.’ It’s always been dear to us, the idea of a European block of common interests and a European lifestyle that I think is better than the English lifestyle. It’s part of our past, part of our heritage, the first band I ever heard was Can.

PW: ‘The Raven King’ is a lovely tribute to Paul Raven……..

Jaz: It’s more about Paul’s ideals. He was an anarchist he used to talk about the confederation of the dispossessed. The last thing he ever said to me when he left Prague was carpe nocturna, which means seize the night. That’s the last line in Raven King. Taking that first verse, it affects all Englishmen because, you know the story of the Tower and the ravens leaving? It starts,

‘The ravens flown the tower and Albion feels all abandoned.
A desecrated cenotaph surveying states and waning choices.
Guarded by warriors we knew, guided by our ancestral voices’

You see that means so much to me as I believe in professor Christopher Knight’s ideas. Individually if you look at them I’ve always believed in the idea of ancestor worship back as far as Fire Dances, that humanity should be gladdened by our ancestral spirits. Raven is very much alive to me! Understanding parallel universes, he’s ever with me and I listen to his council, and not on some occasions ha ha. Just to let you know that’s the world I live in, regardless of what you may think.

PW: Another song I was particularly intrigued about is ‘Ghost Of Ladbroke Grove’ the dub heaviness had me thinking this really had Youth’s stamp over it…….

Jaz: Very much and if you hear the whispers on that, when Youth went mad and took loads of LSD and ended up in the loony bin, he was always just whispering. He sounded just like that and that’s what we put on it. It was one we did thinking of Raven and Joe Strummer as we were always hanging out down in Ladbroke Grove. It’s our tribal area and we were there when the ‘punky reggae party’ thing happened and what can I say?

PW: Do you find that now the coffee shops have moved in and the whole area has become more gentrified?

Jaz: Yes it’s disgusting, that’s what the whole song is centred on. I love it, that’s another of the jam tracks.

PW: It’s got a sort of Clash, Big audio Dynamite feel to it.

Jaz: Exactly, well Don Letts was the man responsible for all the ‘punky reggae parties’ and that’s what it’s all about, the brotherhood. Like our friends in New Model Amy [points to my shirt] we don’t need freemasonry, we have our own brotherhood.

PW: I found the album as being full of songs with different identities, there are times like Depthcharge that take me back to Extremities and others where Pandemonium rears its head. It strikes that you were all perhaps full of ideas in the studio…….

Jaz: Oh it was explosive, INTENSE! And strewn with bodies, you know Youth, he gets on the Internet and just goes, ‘yeah we are recording it at…’ and next day there’s all these gatherers and they stay and we end up having a great time.

PW: I haven’t seen the actual album sleeve yet but was told it was done by someone from The KLF, Bill Drummond I assume?

Jaz: It’s these microchip towers that we are all going to be chipped and run from but it’s the figure of the cross and it’s ID chipped, it’s iconic! No Jimmy [Cauty] did it, another one, having been talking about the family.

PW: Speaking of the future, as long as we don’t all go to hell in a handcart do you see this line up having more life in it for future recordings?

Jaz: Sure, sure. Look, it’s all do what thou wilt because it can only run when everyone wants to do it. Frankly Geordie’s the key for me he’s the only one who has been present at every single Killing Joke concert and rehearsal ever apart from myself. I’m with him always, and Youth absolutely and Paul, whenever he can make it ha. There’s got to be a greater love for each other than just music, our interests aren’t just music. There are so many areas where we have common interests and I think the family sociology to Killing Joke is different. I don’t know many other bands that go on holiday together, I have been round the world with Geordie and Youth outside of music.

PW: Also what are your expectations of the forthcoming live dates? The last couple seemed to go down really well and I can imagine a lot of people wanting to see you. I think its 24 dates you are doing, was it really tricky trying to pick places to play and keep as many people as possible happy?

Jaz: If anything we cut down the amount of dates. I had my children early but Youth has younger children and he is a solo dad. He can go away for two, three weeks at any one time. Paul has to keep his business going and so it’s careful juggling. Saying all that, frankly if you had Paul Raven here now I wouldn’t hesitate to go off with him and do some dates and Geordie too, it’s just different… but it’s not hahahaha.

PW: Is there anything else you are working on at the moment?

Jaz: Yeah something dear to my heart and something I’m really passionate about that I’ve finished is a huge, huge work called the ‘Magnum Suscitatio’ which means ‘The Great Awakening,’ which is about this time, these questions about 2012 and our whole perception of reality changing. It’s a choral concerto for a full symphony orchestra, solo violin virtuoso and a choir and I’ve done it in seven languages. I’ve finished it and it’s revolutionary, there’s never been anything like this. I was passionate to get this done it’s a huge work, it’s enormous, it’s about the end of time.

Then there’s another work I’ve finished which is all arias about the sacred places that I visited on my own and with the band. I’m hoping to get a great soprano to go and record these arias with. So those are the two things but I am doing an album about cigar smoking that I want to do just for fun, because everything’s so fucking serious all the time, so I want to do a tango record with orchestra just for smoking cigars, so each track is about a cigar that I smoke, just something frivolous and beautiful.

PW: Are you surprised looking back that the band has lasted so many years?

Jaz: No. I’m amazed that we are all still around but not that we are playing together and I am not surprised we have an enduring friendship. Saying that, wow do I feel blessed. Look, it’s been a hard life, Geordie’s my witness, I’ve been hungry on this album, there you go! That’s all I have to say and Geordie has too. That’s how our lives change so quickly, sometimes we have a bit of money and sometimes we don’t but it’s never more than a couple of grand. It’s a horrible truth. We have so much respect and love round us half the time we don’t fucking need money. I seem to go from extreme poverty to Gulfstream fours and back again.

I have lived in a hotel or apartment for three years since I’ve been with the original line up. I’ve been in a hotel room and moving everywhere since I have been back with the boys. It’s disorientating, I’m going to New Zealand for a week next week and Morocco after this to prepare for the tour, training and yeah, but you get used to it. I’ve been moving country every month, almost for three years. I’m looking forward to going home to New Zealand and to my farm and concentrating on creating a sanctuary for people when they are weary of the world.

PW: So there you go and an invitation to said sanctuary was offered graciously before I left, weary of the world, well it sounds like a perfect utopia to this writer, who knows I may even take him up on it, seems a great place to spend the 23rd December 2012 at anyway, after that who knows!

http://www.codexalimentarius.net
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus
http://www.chemtrailcentral.com/chemfaq.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timewave#Timewave_zero_and_the_I_Ching
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_McKenna
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangi_and_Papa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Everett_III
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger's_cat

Interviewed by Pete Woods

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