Interview: jberr
Jack Berryman began releasing music online under the name jberr in 2021. Each of his releases so far are made up from synths, drum machines, and effects from his studio outside of Melbourne, Australia.
After hearing his latest four track collection Garden Variety Sounds, released in October 2022, I contacted Jack to hear a bit more about his work and hear what else he’s been listening to.
How did you get started producing music? Is it something you’ve been doing for a while now?
I’ve been doing it kind of forever. I did music through school and played in orchestras and the classical music kind of childhood thing, then I went to the VCA for a year or so after high school, but just completely got over the classical music route. But in school I got hooked into the early music making stuff that was available on the home computer and I spent years just mucking around with it as a little side thing, and then ended up working in sound, in post-production, for a studio in Melbourne. It was a big post-production house for film and TV, but I ended up working in the sound department on commercials there for about five or six years. Which was kind of weird, you know, recording voiceovers and mixing sound in ads for car commercials and beer commercials and things like that, something that I hadn’t necessarily studied for.
But yeah, I always just wanted to make tunes really and I was kind of keen to get into more experimental sound design as well because I’ve always had interest in musique concrète and field recording. So, I’ve been doing it for 20 years or something, but I’ve never really put stuff out as an artist so much as I have in the last three or four years. Since lockdowns basically. I just thought, what am I doing with all of this stuff? So now I’m just getting it out there and seeing if people will listen to it.
I had a university lecturer who was a musician but also made music for advertisements, and they said after a while they couldn’t make any songs that were longer than 30 seconds.
Oh, it’s so true. It just wrecks your attention span. It’s all about making the next thing happen and it’s just the antithesis to making a long song basically. That’s something that I’ve been trying to get better at, but I am inclined to wrap things up after two and a half or three minutes, because I feel like that’s enough.
I was curious about that. Because you’ve got three releases on Bandcamp, and I don’t know if you would classify them as albums or EPs, or there’s one that’s two tracks, so I guess that’s a single. Do you still think in those terms when you’re working on a release, and does it have to have a certain number of tracks and be a certain length?
I mean, I would love to get an album together. But I also feel like I would just never get anything out there if I was waiting for the 12 perfect songs. I’ve got millions of ideas and songs on my hard drive but not that many of them that I ended up being happy with after repeat listens. So I think these small releases probably are a way of getting stuff out there finally after procrastinating with doing something with them for so long. I also just get overwhelmed by the amount of music that is out there now so I feel like with the smaller releases, I’m going to try and keep it kind of constant. As a constant stream of things moving out there in the hopes that I can get more ears on them.
There’s an artist I follow who just released one song every couple of weeks with very similar artwork, so it seems like it’s a collection of related work. But on Bandcamp they’re all singles. Things like that have made me really curious about the idea of the album in the last few years, especially because there is a pressure to get stuff out and still be seen or heard.
Yeah, absolutely. I’ve heard a few people doing that and I kind of like that because I love the album format. It seems so intentional, and so thematic, and that’s kind of the way I like to work. And Bandcamp is a nice environment to make things consistent, even if it is across a number of releases. For me, I do try and keep things thematically kind of similar and I suppose the jberr thing is a bit of a project in itself.
Have you got another username you releasing other music out there that is separate from jberr?
I haven’t for years. I did one called Plonk and I did all kinds of stuff, but I never really had a consistent sound. Like I was into hip hop for years and then drum and bass, and I think the jberr thing is just me trying to come up with a consistent sound, and a finished thing. So, it’s probably the only one that I’m comfortable putting out there these days.
And you’re just on Bandcamp?
I just use Bandcamp for the minute, but I have got some ideas about starting an Instagram account under the same name and setting shorter pieces for shorter attention spans to videos. That’s a project where I want to work on soundscaping found footage, or taken footage, as well as interspersing that with kind of cross references to the Bandcamp releases as well. That’s in development. But I haven’t got it on Spotify or tried to get it on all the platforms. I’ve mainly just been releasing it and emailing people that are on NTS and hoping that someone will play it.
You’ve got three releases out now, and you said you were hoping to do regular ones, does that mean there’s another one on the way soon?
Yeah, probably. I think after New Year’s. I’ll have the guy that mastered the last one do it again, because he did a really nice job of making it sound good. So that process takes a bit of time. But yeah, probably sometime in the early New Year, get another three or four tracks out and then try and do a couple in the year, plus get this kind of more visual presence happening at the same time, and I think just try and get a bit of momentum and keep hassling people to play it. That’s the general idea. Because I put a lot of hours into it so getting some more listens would be good.
Would you do a physical release at all?
I would love to, but I find it difficult to justify the expense at the minute just because vinyl is so expensive. I did an earlier release that’s not on Bandcamp any more, than I took down, which was a cassette release.
Was that cassette of the ones on Bandcamp now or different?
No, it was one I put up that was basically four rough sketches over lockdown. But I took it down because thematically it just doesn’t really stack up with what I’m going for with the project anymore. But it was a good thing to do during lockdown, just to kind of see something through from start to finish, and it really has precipitated all of this work that’s happened since. It was a good process.
How do you see the project evolving? Your most recent release has, not vocals, but it’s got voices in it. Is that something you’ve wanting to include, to experiment with different instruments, whether it’s samples or voices or more gear?
I think getting organic sounds into it will always be important, and I really like the synth and the machines, so I don’t want to make it just like a completely organic thing. I wouldn’t want to get the cello out, although I’ve got a piano in here now so I might try and integrate that a little bit.
Oh, cellos sound amazing. Have you ever put one through your effects?
I did a long time ago. I haven’t got the cello here at the moment and I haven’t played it in years. I was playing cellos in orchestras and kind of did that thing where I put it away and was like, I don’t want to see that ever again. But tonally it could fit pretty well with the stuff that I’m making now, and I think it would sound great on the tape machine too.
You mentioned you listen to NTS, but are there any local musicians you’re enjoying right now or any labels?
There’s the Efficient Space label, which I really like, but it’s completely not like the music I make. It’s mainly reissues. But I really liked that kind of random kind of library music approach to things and what they’re doing aesthetically and so forth. But I find it really hard to stay on top of current stuff. But I like Butter Sessions, they’re a really good local kind of techno label, a bit more club oriented music. Then there’s a band called Big Yawn that are pretty cool. They’re a live band with lots of electronics sort of stuff going on. But there’s so much good music out there. •
Keep up to date with jberr and at his Bandcamp and on Instagram:
This article was originally published in The Shadow Knows Issue #4, March 2023. Buy the fanzine here or read more at our website.
