Limelight
A fortuitous loan of a drum kit has led to a meeting and melting of minds.
FEW ARE THE musicians for whom sharing their instruments with members of other bands is a pleasure, but for Reto Mäder and Dahm Majuri Cipolla the request from the latter to the former proved fortuitous – they ended up forming the psychedelic industrial behemoth JeGong.
“I was playing with Finnish avant-garde metal band Sum Of R on a European tour heading to the Roadburn Festival and, at the same time, Dahm was playing drums with experimental music ensemble Watter, touring Europe and heading to the same festival,” recalls Mäder.“Both bands played about 18 gigs on their tours, and in two clubs we were booked on the same evening. Dahm asked me if he could use the Sum Of R drums. So, on the one hand we got talking and, on the other, it saved a lot of time for the stage change between the performing bands. In turn, we could deepen our conversation and learn about our mutual interests in krautrock, film soundtracks and experimental music.”
And so JeGong were born. Though the band started without a specific musical objective, both musicians knew that their shared interests would create mutual sparks.
“We enjoyed so much of the same music and wanted to collaborate,” recalls Cipolla.
“It was like getting to know each other by expressing ourselves through a common, universal musical language,” expands Mäder.
Drawing on the influence of 70s German kosmische music such as Can, Faust, Neu! and others, their debut, I, was recorded remotely during the pandemic, an experience that produced unexpected results for the pair.
“It was a challenge, but in a positive way,”remembers Mäder.“Each of us had a different environment that reflected the same music differently and one therefore also reacted more individu
