For KEN mode’s Jesse Matthewson, his band’s new album, NULL, was a direct reaction to all the emotions and craziness that had come with living through the COVID-19 pandemic of the past few years. In fact, he doesn’t see why most albums coming out now, aren’t a reaction to this current, life-changing, global event.
“Are there any albums coming out this year that aren’t in some way a reaction to the pandemic? Actually, maybe that’s a stupid question, as I’ve seen plenty of albums come out where the artists seem to be ignoring the elephant in the room, which to me, seems absolutely insane,” Mattewson says.
“This was a collective trauma that everyone in the world had to deal with in one way or another, and the effects are continuing to reverberate through every level of society to this day. This album was written and recorded in a bubble—from the early stages of the pandemic, through to the whole omicron variant super spread to cap off 2021.”
In fact, Mattewson was dealing with a whole slew of personal and professional demons, along with his bandmates, which include his brother Shane on drums, percussion, Skot Hamilton on bass and backing vocals, and new, full-time member Kathryn Kerr on saxophone, synths, piano and backing vocals.
They were all hit hard, but Jesse even moreso.
“Well, all four of us work in the music/entertainment industry outside of actively playing music and touring, so all of our regular income streams were very directly affected by everything that went on during the pandemic. Canada, and particularly Manitoba, had pretty restrictive lockdowns for about nine months total from March 2020 through June 2021 and creating music was definitely a lifesaver for me, from a mental health perspective,” Matthewson says.
“But, historically speaking, making and performing music has only really been half of my general approach to regulating my own personal battles with clinical depression. I practice Muay Thai as the other half, and needless to say, neither live music nor fight sports were going to be a thing during the pandemic. The lyrics for this record are a very direct emotional response to this internal struggle for the last two years.”
As far KEN mode record’s go, NULL, is more of a “Jesse” album, where he took the lead on writing a majority of the music and lyrics. There wasn’t as much collaboration going on with the rest of his bandmates as on past records. This led to NULL being more about his direct response to his situation in regards to both the lyrics and music.
“Due to the nature of the lockdowns, we were only able to collaborate directly in pockets between COVID flare-ups, so large parts of the material were written by me in isolation from the other members. I wanted this material to feel honest and raw, and as a result, I stripped away much of the relative pretentiousness that I’ve dabbled with in the past when conjuring up lyrics. Many of the pieces were written in much more of a stream-of-consciousness style. NULL, especially, is the most “me” feeling album I think we’ve ever made,” Matthewson says. “The last several albums I’ve made more of an effort to collaborate with my bandmates from both a songwriting and lyric writing perspective—As ultimately it is more rewarding when everyone is contributing to a project, and to a lesser degree, my own focus has seemed perhaps more splintered in the last ten years than it had been prior. The pandemic forced me to refocus on what songwriting means to me and to experiment freely, as ultimately, at that point in time, none of it mattered. We couldn’t play live. We couldn’t record in a studio. Maybe none of it would ever get heard by anyone? This was all for me,” he finishes.
NULL adds some new wrinkles to their dense sound. Kerr’s sax and synths are definitely key ingredients, but you also get hard-edged, industrial sounds that are definitely influenced by early Swans and Einsturzende Neubaten. Though, it is still very much a KEN mode record. They’ve just expanded their sonic palette, which could alienate some of their fan base, just like their Success album did back in 2015.
But Mattewson is not concerned with any of this because for him, the whole point of the band is to keep pushing their music forward; otherwise it becomes boring and creatively stagnant.
“It wasn’t so much as a conscious decision as it was serving our own egos. Alienating fans can always be in the back of your head, at least once you get to a level where you can actually have and retain fans—and it is entertaining in hindsight how we did the ‘Success’ album the way we did on the heels of getting the most industry attention we’ve ever had.
“Most of that part of the industry is ‘over’ us at this point anyway, so we’re pretty free to do whatever the hell we want at this point,” Matthewson says. “We don’t do this band to make a living, and because of that, it is free to be a vehicle for artistic satiation. We are, at the core, a band of people who care about music, and the art of it, above all else—and respect the craft to an intense degree. Rehashing the same thing we did 10-20 years ago just doesn’t make sense for a band like ours. This all being said, it’s not like we’re playing pop or techno or making a dramatic shift here… We’re just trying to keep ourselves entertained within this framework we’ve built around the project that is KEN mode. We’re continually trying to express the noise inside of our own heads, with the goal of executing that vision better than we ever have before,” he adds.
Part of their sonic expansion included bringing on past contributor Kerr as a full-time member. This helped free up Jesse’s writing because he knew he now had a multi-instrumentalist who could help bring this vision for the new album to light.
“We first started working with her on our Loved album, where she provided saxophone for three songs. It didn’t really make sense to bring her on tour with us for that album cycle, as she’d only have something to do on two of the songs in the set, and we aren’t exactly the kind of band that rakes in money to pay for another person to be out there for two songs,” Matthewson says.
“In 2019 I’d started messing around more with synthesizers, and as the pandemic kicked into full gear I started to explore what I could do sonically with these instruments, particularly as I’d begun learning how to work modern DAW’s (digital audio workstation), due to having time to do so, and zero access to the old jam room approach of writing, which was what I was used to. Historically, we’ve been able to work instruments like piano, cello, saxophone, and synth into our songs, but only ever as light afterthoughts and never as extensively as I’d initially intended for them, as the bulk of the songwriting was done as a three-piece band.
Every time I wanted to experiment, we’d already used up most of the sonic space for the songs. The denser a composition gets, the more strategic you need to be in where you’re adding additional instrumentation, and be very cognizant that it’s adding something or not. Being able to construct songs on my own, in isolation, just me and my DAW, I could make said space from the beginning. Knowing Kathryn was both a multi-instrumentalist, and interested in touring with us, made the decision easy… I was going to make her position in the band the hardest of all to pull off live as she jumps around from triggering synth patches, to playing piano, to ripping sax solos, and back again,” he finishes.
NULL is the first part of a two-album arc for the band. Due to delays in the recording of NULL, brought on by the pandemic, they spent more time writing, and had more than a single album’s worth of songs. Instead of axing the extra songs, they decided they would keep them and figure out what to do with them once they were recorded. Doing a double album was out of the question, so they decided they would do two interconnected single albums. (The companion to NULL, VOID, is set to drop about a year after the release of NULL.)
“First and foremost, we just had too much material for a single album–But initially we had intended to record whatever we had finished in July of 2021. By May, we were still in a lockdown, and Canada hadn’t opened its borders to non-essential workers yet, so we weren’t able to bring Andrew Schneider up to Winnipeg, so we had to make the call to delay the session. We pivoted to October of the same year, but by that time, we had 75 minutes worth of finished material. We figured we’d record all of it, and figure out how to sequence it all when we were done mixing, and it just so happened to construct two well thought out records,” Mattewson says.
“We never had any intention of doing a double—I just feel like that’s a lot to expect from the average listener. I want this material to be heard. Plus, for the most part, the two records can be separated into batches of material written in 2020 vs 2021. NULL is mostly a 2020 album, while VOID is 2021,” he finishes.
Each album is its own beast in terms of sonics and lyrics. They compliment each other to form a complete picture of what was going on in Mattewson’s, and the band’s heads, during this crazy time in the world’s history.
“There are distinct voices coming from each—NULL has a more frantic, confused, and crazed feel, while VOID has allowed everything to set in; it’s decidedly more melancholy—with a sense of great disappointment. We played around more with melody, and some of our more goth/post-punk influences were allowed to shine from time to time. We are very curious how both will be received, though much of the sentiment will surely resonate with a great deal of listeners, if they’re given the chance to hear it,” Mattewson says.
Photo by Brenna Faris
