Ready To Bounce

With just a handful of singles and no album as yet, Jagwar Ma have become the international buzz band of 2013. Formed in November of 2011, the Sydney duo consist of creative team Jono Ma and Gabriel Winterfield. Ma was previously a member of Lost Valentinos, whose alumni also include the controversial Kirin J Callinan and Midnight Juggernauts' Daniel Stricker, while Winterfield played in the Modular-signed post-rock band Ghostwood. Their first collaboration using the Jagwar Ma moniker took place less than two years ago, though the friendship had been slowly festering in the background for years prior; a combination of mutual connections and their projects sharing the stage together. “To be more specific it was actually through James West who was the drummer in Ghostwood,” recalls Winterfield of being introduced to Ma for the first time. “James used to tour with Lost Valentinos and we became friends because Ghostwood needed a drummer; we were using a drum machine at the time. It wasn't actually through the band, it was more through friends. We used to hang at each other's houses before we got to know each other through the band.”

Their partnership and indeed friendship has become fruitful, striking a balance that complements their songwriting abilities. “It's been amazing,” he says of his bandmate. “We both did work together on the songs and we live with each other so we have a really good relationship. It's been working really well. We're good friends, so it's nice and familiar.”

Drawing on each others' influences and immersed in electronic and live sounds, the Jagwar Ma sonic approach is complicated. Hyped by NME and Pitchfork and heavily embraced by the blogsphere, music scribes across the world haven't shied from hyperbole. Listing J Dilla, Aphex Twin, Joe Meek and Bo Diddley as their personal influences, Jagwar Ma's broad musical palette has been met with equally as expansive labels, referred to as everything from psychedelic-techno, chillwave and Madchester revivalism to dance-pop and acid rave. There have been comparisons made to Screamadelica-era Primal Scream right through to the harmonies of The Beach Boys and just about everything else in between. Though modest, Winterfield takes it all with a grain of salt. “NME and Pitchfork have been really supportive and it's been great that they've been nice to us, but it can also put pressure on you. I kind of look at them,” he says, of reading reviews of his band, “with one eye closed, squinting, and am like, 'Yep, it's good'. But I try not to read reviews.”

Upon hearing UK's The Guardian reported their album recording process as “…spending the summer holed up in an abandoned chateau in France, surrounded by sunflower fields and in earshot of a local hardcore dub sound system,” Winterfield laughs in hysterics. “Chateau might be a bit of a stretch,” he pauses, crushing the fairytale. “It was on a farm, like a big property and we just wrote the record there together.”

The groundswell, unanimously positive and appeasing Winterfield's discomfort, hasn't been from the media alone. There have been glowing tweets of endorsement from The Horrors and Warpaint, Foals and The xx have handpicked them as supports and tastemaking DJs have been spinning their singles in clubs across the world. It helps too, when you're surrounded by a proven team of record label executives, producers and management.

Sharing the band's futuristic aspirations, they have partnered with UK-born, Berlin-based electronic producer Ewan Pearson to mix their debut album, which Winterfield says, will be released by “the end of May”. Then there are the record labels. The pair have recently signed internationally with new label, Marathon Music, run by Frenchman Philippe Ascoli, who is most notably known for launching the careers of Daft Punk, Phoenix and Air. Locally, the group have inked a deal with Future Classic, the home to Sydney electronic producer Flume, whose self-titled debut reached top position on the ARIA charts.

Currently touring with Foals in Europe, including sold-out shows in Belgium, Holland, Germany and France, the musical pairing of the two extends beyond their musical similarities. Ma's brother, Dave, has creatively been involved with the UK group since early in their career, shooting their promotional photographs and directing their film clips, including the video for NME voted 'Best Track of 2010', Spanish Sahara. Ma himself, in 2010 teamed up with local DJ Franklin Furter to remix the band's single Miami and a year later, and weeks prior to their performance at the St Jerome's Laneway Festival, spent time with the five-piece in Sydney's Studios 301 recording demos for their latest album, Holy Fire. “It's been really good,” says Winterfield, of touring with Foals. “They're lovely guys and it's always nice to tour with a band that you really like and they're actually nice as people as well.” Remaining coy on their close connection, he adds, ”They also like our music. When we first did some stuff, I remember sending the demo of Come Save Me to Yannis [Philippakis – vocals/guitar], to see what he thought and he really liked it. So we just kept in touch.”

With their singles flying around the internet, the glaring omission from the band's initial arsenal was their live show. In spite of exploding onto the music scene in 2011, their public emergence came in the European summer of 2012, playing their first show at Club Voerweg in the Netherlands. The transition from studio to stage was neither calm nor subtle, with NME and local media attending and reviewing their second ever show at the Midi Festival in Hyeres, France. Their first Australian performance came in the form of a sold-out show at Sydney's GoodGod Small Club in January of this year, before touring nationally with the Big Day Out a week later. As the momentum continues to grow and the accolades rack up along the way, the band will return home to headline their first ever national tour this month. Fortuitously it comes a week after they open for lauded UK group The xx during their sold-out capital city tour. Notwithstanding the enormous amount of hype that now follows them, Winterfield isn't nervous about returning home, nor headlining his first shows in Australia. “I think we've got a good show. I think it's real. It's been honest right from the start, which I think is cool. We haven't been trying to write pop songs. We haven't been trying to do something that was going to work, we just felt like it did because it felt real. The end result, the record, has to be as honest as when we started. There has to be that sincerity otherwise it won't connect, and that goes for the live show as well.”

Now based abroad, Winterfield admits the touring lifestyle has left the band with no fixed address. “We haven't really been anywhere for very long,” he jokes. “We've got management in the UK and our label is a UK label, well actually French but they're based in the UK, so I guess we're based between France, the UK and Australia,” he says, with a sense of contentment; an honest joy that hype can't buy.

SOUND FOR ANY SITUATION

Along with admired remixes and his inventive production work that sits somewhere between a Phil Spector-like Wall of Sound and the cut and paste collage of The Avalanches, Jono Ma has also been involved with composing music for television and cinema. His credits include co-writing for the ABC's successful drama series The Slap, for which his team picked up 'Best Soundtrack Album' at the 2012 Screen Music Awards and contributing the haunting closing number End to the 2010 Australian crime drama Animal Kingdom. Completing his a degree in Media Arts & Production at the University of Technology in Sydney, over the years Ma has worked with Chris Colona (Bumblebeez), Nick Littlemore (Pnau) and Kim Moyes (The Presets) and developed his own inimitable style. Ma has produced local artists including Last Dinosaurs, Cassette Kids and Teenagers In Tokyo, as well as his own projects. The once guitarist/keyboard player for Lost Valentinos is a quiet genius and according to his Jagwar Ma bandmate, Gabriel Winterfield, a pleasure to work with.

“Jono and I liken our songwriting to a game of ping pong,” says Winterfield. “It might start with a song that I'd just written on guitar and with a vocal, and I'd literally sing it to him and he'd be like, 'Sweet', and then record the vocal a cappella, build a beat around it and then produce it all together. Other times Jono would be up at four o'clock in the morning and the next day he would be like, 'Gab, check this out', and he'd put together this fucking amazing beat that I'd then sing over the top of.”

In a bizarre twist, Jagwar Ma's What Love has been featured on the video game, FIFA 2013. The game's makers, EA Sports, said in a press statement that within the first two days of its release the game had amassed international sales of 1.23 million copies and 4.5 million by the first Friday it had been on shelves. Despite Jagwar Ma's music being everywhere in 2013, you've probably heard Jono Ma's songs before, whether you know it or not.