Kepla Interview: “I’m very attached to a romantic notion of DIY culture”

Over the past two decades, Liverpool has been a vital source to some of the most exciting experimental artists across the country.

Having spent years forming sound worlds and taking his listenership to far off places, Jon Davies has been a vital cog in the machine of Liverpool’s DIY community. Whilst featuring in various projects over the years (most notably Eyes, the experimental collective that included Bonnacons of Doom’s Sam Wiehl), under the Kepla guise, Davies has never made the same record twice.

Exploring estranged sonic terrains, both tapping into the past and future, the Kepla story continues to canvass across dark frontiers. And following his 2019 collaboration album alongside DeForrest Brown Jr., The Wages of Being Black is Death, an album of esoteric collages and poignant spoken-word passages, Davies returns with In Furnace.

Inspired by a weeklong residency at Capel-y-Graig in the Welsh hamlet of Furnace, In Furnace sees Davies unearth a series of compositions formed from a wide range of instruments, including the cello, ocarina, organ, piano, and the Suona.

An album that reaches eerie corners of composition and sound design, tracks such as the opening Spectre in Summer and A Clearing, Spectre in Autumn are vignettes that lead us through a sound portal where the likes of David Lynch and La Monte Young have occupied.

On the album’s centrepiece, Horse Ladder, Davies unfurls a series of creaks and groans via his arsenal of stringed instruments. It’s almost like a no wave classical encounter in a bid to find a spiritual plane from all of life’s horrors.

And speaking of, Time In Furnace is a dystopia drone that screams into the same void where Godspeed You! Black Emperor and, more recently, The Lord have garnered their best results.

Then there’s Sanctifier – the final piece that reaches the core of what Davies sets out to achieve with In Furnace. A release that aims to realign the mental dispositions we sometimes experience. This is the beauty of experimentalism; an ambiguity for the listen to paint their own picture and draw their own conclusion.

Last month we caught up with Davies, who answered our questions about his creative process, local experimental artists, and In Furnace.

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S13: Growing up, did you always want to be a musician?

Jon Davies: “Certainly playing music, being in bands and going to gigs was the bedrock of my life outside of school, but whether I really believed in myself being a musician I’m not totally sure of. I was given a decent chance with lessons and patience from my family, but in hindsight I wasn’t very good at being in a band. I’m not a perfectionist at all so writing sets and practising over again was boring and I probably just enjoyed being with my friends.

“Growing up in Croydon, neither part of London nor its own centre, meant I wasn’t part of a scene either, so it was difficult to know if you were any good because there weren’t any chances I knew of where someone offered you support slots with upcoming bands. Every so often you’d see a band out of town or go to a suburb with a scene and be overwhelmed by how seriously they took it, but I think the energy and talent in Croydon belonged to grime and dubstep culture which I was pretty much oblivious to.

“So, I think really I wanted to be actively part of a scene, whether it’s being in bands, writing about music, putting on gigs and club nights, and trying to bring people together, I’m very attached to a romantic notion of DIY culture.”

S13: Can you tell us about the recording process of In Furnace? 

JD: “Most of the recording was done in 2021 when me and my partner got ourselves a residency retreat at Capel y Graig, Machynlleth, a deconsecrated chapel near the Celtic rainforests of Wales kindly offered to us by the steward of the place. Initially I just needed to take a break from work and sketch out some ideas, so I would spend around five hours a day improvising on various instruments, record some materials I’d picked up on walks and come home with a big library. Among the instruments was a suona, which is a type of shawm used ceremonially across South-East Asia, a grand piano which needs a bit of tuning and an organ where only one bellow works, making hard work of creating drones.

“Over the week I just fell in love with the atmosphere of the chapel. Its reverb is so unique that you basically feel like you’re playing the room more than your instruments. I recently heard a record by Angharad Davies and Steve Beresford that was recorded there too and just immediately recognised the frequencies. So, in the end I wanted to foreground the space, and try to not overproduce or unnecessarily make big edits.

“A little while down the line I added some small bits of modular synthesis and no-input mixer feedback while at Bidston Observatory, and with the help of Simon Barr (from Dawn Ray’d), Jacob King (Ling) and Andrew Hunt (Dialect) we finished off the mixing with some extra violin and cello parts at the end of Horse Ladder.”

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S13: There’s a really dark spiritual aspect that underpins the album, I think. Was that something you thought about when creating these compositions?

JD: “It’s a sound world I’m heavily drawn to, and I think this is derived from film and philosophy as much as music. The recordings made in the chapel made me think a lot about how time is framed in cinema, the relationship of the viewer to interiority and exteriority, is subjectivity to witnessing something from the ‘god’s eye’ but at the same time being immersed into a world that you’re not part of. So, with this in mind, I thought a lot about how scenes are sequenced, and how cinema frames things that are noticed and perhaps things which are out of shot or non-diegetic appear as the subconscious secondary narrative.

“With regards to the dark spirituality to it… I guess what I’m trying to say is that I like tapping into uncanny sound worlds with whatever I do. It seems somewhat inevitable to invoke the spirit while dealing with places of worship, but it’s really interesting to consider what an ex-place of worship. Then there’s also that most of the improvisations are playing with Olivier Messaien’s tonal language, and he was intensely religious.

“My previous album Within The Gaze, A Shadhavar was all about the very expressionistic defacing of ‘real’ sounds and creating an alienated/alienating experience. This record is warmer, and it’s trying to be somewhat entrancing but perhaps that’s more eerie.”

S13: Are politics an influence on your work?

JD: “Yes. And I think everyone should say yes to that question, whether they know it or not.”

S13: Sanctifier is such a lovely finish to this album. When was this piece composed throughout the writing of the album?

JD: “Thank you! Yeah, I think this contributes a bit to the dark spiritual aspect of the record. 

“This piece wasn’t composed, at all. I spent a couple days on piano just familiarising myself with it, then at some point I sat down and played that in one take. Either before or after I played around with an ocarina that a friend bought me years ago, with the mic on the other side of the room to really bring out the chapel’s resonances. Only then from working through the recordings did I notice these half-shared melodic contours, so I tried to overlay one over the piano record to see if it fit. 

“I think as soon as I listened back to the recording I knew that would finish the record, just that I’ve relied so heavily in the past on sound processing and production that there was something very special in producing something as close to ‘acoustic’ and unedited as I could.”

S13: The artwork to In Furnace is striking. Did you have ideas about it before the album or was it a concept that formed afterwards? 

JD: “Saphy who runs Chinabot is a brilliant designer, so he came up with it after I sent some photos taken by me and my partner. The vines on the front of the record is a night-time long exposure image I took in Tainan, Taiwan five years ago, which sort of represents the very beginnings of thinking about this album. Laura took the image of the piano which is amazing with the mirror reflection; my one small regret is that I shouldn’t have left my mug on the piano.”

S13: Field recordings have always interested me because they are unique. In your case, were the recordings for In Furnace captured specifically for the album, or do you have a library of recordings that you can choose from? 

JD: “I’m trying to be better at noticing and capturing things when they’re interesting, either to use or reference a rhythm, melody or texture that I might have caught. In the end I didn’t use much in the way of specific environmental sounds, the chapel backed onto a river and a road, so the traffic is present through much of the record. The end of Spectre In Autumn, A Clearing was recorded in the local RSPB under a tree using some binaural in-ear microphones, while it was seeding.

“Usually though I’m just out and about and unprepared, quite frequently I’ll have to record something on my phone and hope it comes out okay. I’ve got a great recording of a broken tannoy in Genoa that I want to make something with. I feel very self-conscious with the field recorder, the phone is better in that aspect of being inconspicuous.”

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S13: Regarding your writing process, do you usually need some sort of vessel or inspiration to start writing, or is it something that you work on every day?

JD: “I’m mostly working things out in my head and figuring out if it’s an interesting experiment or idea to explore, otherwise I get more than enough enjoyment playing instruments for my own sake. But for sure whatever I’m reading or watching at the time is going to subconsciously permeate whatever I’m doing. Then there’s also collaborating with people like DeForrest Brown, Jr, Nathan Jones, Beau Beaumont that help with positioning your creativity in a certain place, serving a story, idea or someone else’s vision.

“When it comes to making music, I tend to be preparing for a live show and I’m assembling ideas, drawing out sounds I’ve recorded and building on them, then maybe something like an album would come out. I’ll also want to work on compositional ideas that I hadn’t explored before, so ‘silences’, pauses and a human touch in the way of not programming in loops or whatever emerged in this record.”

S13: Having been involved in various projects over the years, have your writing challenges and processes changed over time?

JD: “Definitely, my first demos as Kepla were sort of beat-driven, techno-ish and progressively through learning new ways of making stuff as well as my tastes changing it’s where it is now. Like most musicians I think it can get stale for one’s own creativity to use the same instruments, same processes all the time. I’ve never tried to crystallise my sound, rather I think everything I’ve done has served a project or particular aesthetic and the only thing that ties it together is my limitations or idiosyncrasy production-wise. I also love working with different people and figuring out how my music-making relates to someone else’s expression, making a unified voice rather than two egos in a room fighting it out.

“For most of my music I’ve used granular synthesis, but I think the outputs of that are really wild and that’s what has attracted me most. In fact, I think quite a lot of artists using granular synthesis rest a bit too much on the cloudy washes that are nice, certainly but you can get really into this ruptured sound world.”

S13: Liverpool has always seemed to be quite the underdog when it comes to experimental music, with so many wonderful artists originating from the city over the last three decades or so. How do you see the city now and its role in experimentation and the avant-garde?

JD: “Hmmm. I’ll start by listing some musicians and artists I really like in experimental music making, sound art world in Liverpool. It’s in no way exhaustive and biased towards my social circle so this should be taken with a pinch of salt: 

“Mali Draper, Lizala Vi, Beau Beaumont, Dialect, Ex-Easter Island Head, Luce Mawdsley, JC Leisure, Phil Hargreaves, Nick Branton, Fend, Ladies In The Radiator, Paula Kolar, Aous Hamoud, Anna Jane Houghton, Quieting, Zurkas Tepla, Peter Smyth, Mark Greenwood, Claire Welles, Chloe Mullett, Lola De La Mata, Rosie Terry, Germanager, Hell On Hearth, nil00, Lucy Grey, Rachael Gibson, Reality Goggles. And more people who are semi-active, mulling some great ideas. I’d love to be a bit more generous than just putting names down, so if you’re reading this and there are links, please check them out. 

“The Liverpool scene is still mostly white guys, so promoters, musicians and writers reading this, please celebrate, support and develop people outside the dominant social circles! I know it’s not just about representation but honestly, womxn, non-binary, queer, global majority artists are doing incredible stuff right now and it’s too easy to be replicating the same environment and language that deters people from getting properly involved in the Liverpool music scene.

“With regards to the city as a scene, or maybe a map, we desperately need more accessible space. Quarry as a venue is an absolute dream and the people that run it have worked wonders in getting a great system in there and making the space feel safe and comfortable for everyone who goes. But the local authority haven’t followed through on their plans of developing the north docks as a cultural destination with regards to public transport links and accessibility. It can take just as much time connecting buses and walking as it does doing the whole journey by foot from L8 and we’re so behind on night buses compared to other cities.

“Elsewhere town planning and the encroachment of city centre living has really messed with where noise is made in the city. The square from Berry to Hanover Street, Bold to Duke Street is a fucking nightmare! We previously had venues nicely spread across the city and now most of the bars are concentrated there and volume wise it’s more punishing than any noise gig. 

“So yeah. I think we could do with better spaces, not necessarily great system and that, but spaces that are preserved for experimentation, trying out different ways of presenting sound in a considered manner. Actually, I think studios like The Royal Standard, Bridewell and CBS are pretty good at that so hopefully more dialogue between visual and sonic art would be an interesting way forward.”

In Furnace is out now via CHINABOT. Purchase from Bandcamp.