Jim White Interview: “Music is a dream and so are memories.”

Out of all the Australian artists over the years, there is little doubt that Jim White is the unsung hero.

From the off, White’s thunderous, improvisational percussion and flash-like movements across the drumkit have not only underpinned some of the most vital acts from the underground, but has also catapulted some of them beyond (most notably, Cat Power’s Chan Marshall and Bill Callahan).

By and large, White’s natural habitat remains in the shadows. Aside from the carnage he has inflicted alongside Warren Ellis and Mick Turner as the Dirty Three (there’s talk of a new album on that front), White’s endeavours have seen him submerged in collaboration. From the violent maelstrom with Tropical Fuck Storm’s Gareth Liddiard and The Necks’ Chris Abrahams as Springtime, to the more tender wanderings with guitarist, Marisa Anderson (their second LP, Swallowtail, is set for release in May), White’s mark across the independent music landscape is indelible.

Answering a series of questions via email, I posed the question of collaboration, and whether any he’d been involved with over years failed to reach their full potential? “Give me an issue, I’ll give you a tissue,” he says.

On the back of his latest record alongside George Xylouris as the formidable Xylouris White, The Forest in Me, for the first time the drummer goes it alone. Well, almost…

Like The Forest in Me, once again, fellow Brooklyn-based artist, Fugazi’s Guy Picciotto, plays a vital role, co-writing several cuts that form White’s debut solo album, All Hits: Memories.

With White’s introduction of keyboards, All Hits: Memories is a fleeting affair. Percussive sketches that are deftly nimble, breezily hypnotic and, as the title suggests, offer a snapshot to the hallmark moments of the Jim White experience.

Starting with Curtains and later with Uncoverup and Jully, these moments feel like White is almost writing the soundtrack to his own eulogy. A dark thought, however, on the whole All Hits: Memories is far more uplifting than that. The wonderful, abstract psychedelia of Marketplace and Names Make the Name; the skewed sci-fi wanderings of Soft Material; the march-like patterns of Walking the Block, which sound more like a steam train rumbling in the distance.

While White’s militant percussion can be heard overriding his newfound love of the keyboards, it’s the cosmic meanderings where both instruments entwine that underlines the importance of All Hits: Memories. An album that sees White melding together the past with the present.

Now with All Hits: Memories in the can, I ask the drummer if there is a possibility of another solo record, to which – in true Jim White fashion – he simply replies, “I reckon.”

S13: Have you ever thought about a life where you wouldn’t be a musician?

Jim White: “Yeah, I think about it coming home every night. I’m pretty forged by what’s happened – I would like to see that other person after all that time on a different path. Oh yeah, also sometimes I wish I’d become an economist.” 

S13: You’ve worked alongside so many artists over the years in collaboration and support. Had you always envisaged making a solo record?  

JW: “No, not really. It has been there as a question. What can the drums do? How can they feel? But that’s been part of the program anyway. I see everything I’ve done as part of the same activity. Yet there’s a reason for each one.”

Be Forest: An Interview with Xylouris White

S13: Were there any circumstances or overarching themes that prompted All Hits: Memories? 

JW: “Themes are physicality and thought. Also memories… why do you remember what you remember? There’s no accessible answer to that, I believe, but there’s an argument that everything we do is a symbol in the firmament of our mind. There’s this approach I heard about where you treat your life like a dream in a psychoanalytic sense then everything that happens is a symbol. Hold your reality a bit loosely. Music is a dream and so are memories. Those are the themes. 

“Names Make the Name is one of the song titles… this refers to a name that took on significance to me throughout my life. How could that even be? The name doesn’t have any intrinsic categorical meaning, but the mind doesn’t know that, the names make the name.

“Circumstances are that Guy Picciotto and I have been working together for years now. We have great conversations about what we are doing, and in the last few years we’ve gone into an accelerated opening up of things after moving through a number of Xylouris White albums developing a method.

“The other thing that happened was I learnt to record myself for the first time, allowing me to identify in a different way [of] sounds I wanted and the sounds then leading me. Also playing the keyboard… bringing the keyboard in originally as a tone to accompany the drums, and then that showing some other ways forward.”

S13: While the album’s title may lend itself to this, I can’t recall many artists making a debut record where you could classify it as a ‘Best Of’, but to me this is a showcase of all your work since Venom P. Stinger through to your work alongside George Xylouris. Was that something you were thinking about with these recordings? 

JW: “It’s not something I thought about, but that’s great! As I said, I do feel it’s all on a continuum.” 

S13: Did it come together quickly, or was it an album that evolved over time? 

JW: “Both. The pieces come quick in themselves. But the album took a while. Guy sequenced what we had and then we made Jully and Marketplace to finish it off.”

S13: Were there any particular albums or songs that inspired the record?

JW: “Not in a thinking way. I don’t think I ever think about other records when I make a record, but it’s all in there. But I would point to The Cure’s Seventeen Seconds as a reference I thought of after the fact. Guy and Warren both referenced Moondog after it was done, but I’m not familiar.”

S13: What about cinema and/or literature. Are these artforms you’ve also been drawn to over the years?  

JW: “I read and watch, the stillness from reading is an influence. Also, sometimes when I read, if I get in a certain zone the letters get very big. That’s a reference. In terms of this album the song Walking the Block is named for a scene from Road by Alan Clarke. It’s a film, a British teleplay – the character is delivering a monologue as he walks around the block.” 

S13: The video for Marketplace got me thinking about your surroundings, particular Australia and Brooklyn. How much have your direct surroundings over the years influenced your work?  

JW: “This record was made in Melbourne and Brooklyn. Guy lives near me which is very influential. I’m very Australian. As I get older, I realise how much where and when you are from is defining, whether directly or in reaction. Guy is a D.C. person, our old band’s, Fugazi and Venom P Stinger came out of a similar time/scene, but such a different but similar precipitate.

“I kind [of] believe in records standing up for themselves sans their own context, but that doesn’t eschew the context of the person hearing it; the same record can mean such different things to different people, and that reveals other things about where and when they came from, when they heard it, etc.

“So yeah, I’m forged by the Melbourne music scene, the family I grew up in, the area I grew up in, and then the scene of music I found in Melbourne. And people like Kim Salmon moving to Melbourne with his inspired ideas; taking approaches seriously and yet completely rock ’n’ roll. The passion of people like Warren and Mick and Guy and many others believing in something in all sorts of different ways, and then making a living playing the drums the way I want to. And all the people I’ve met along the way.

S13: Lastly, your cooking show is great! Is there any specific reason why you don’t want to eat in restaurants ever again?

JW: “Thanks, I started eating more healthily and started tasting the undesirable shit that was being added unnecessarily. I got a hot plate and started cooking on tour.”

All Hits: Memories is out now via Drag City. Purchase from Bandcamp.