Jordan GCZ interview: “I can’t say no to Terrence Dixon”
How jamming helped the techno survivor deal with the pandemic
Like he has done almost every day during the ongoing pandemic, Jordan Czamanski is sat in his attic studio in Amsterdam. This time, though, he’s not tapping out rhythms on one of his drum machines, layering up keys or playing improvised solos as part of a daily jam session; instead, he’s sat in front of his laptop, ready to discuss two major projects: a collaborative album on Rush Hour with legendary Detroit techno producer Terrence Dixon, Keep In Mind I’m Out of My Mind, and his long awaited debut solo LP as Jordan GCZ, My Brain’s Brain.
Both albums will be released this spring and offer light at the end of the tunnel for the long-serving producer after two years full of anxiety and dread. Typically, though, he refuses to wallow in self-pity, preferring to see the bigger picture. “Obviously it’s been tough for everyone, but maybe less tough for me than some because luckily I have a studio at home and a partner who could support us financially throughout it.] What can I say, it’s been a crappy two years but I’ve been trying to stay as busy as possible, stay as sane as I can and count my blessings. Hopefully I’ll get through this in one piece mentally and physically.”
Many artists, particularly those whose careers are based around touring and performing, have struggled during the COVID-19 era, not only financially, but mentally. Czamanski admits that his anxiety, a constant over the last decade, intensified during the pandemic, but that his decision to commit to live-streaming daily jam sessions during the first lockdown improved his mental health.
“Doing those jams really kept me grounded and helped me through the toughest part of it, when we were all in the most panicky mode,” he says. “It kept my creative juices flowing. When I get in a good jam it’s very similar to the feeling after a good 30-minute meditation. That was the goal, just to feel better. I was really on edge, and I didn’t want to take a ton more Xanax pills and smoke a ton of weed. I mean, I did, but I didn’t want to get out of control.”
To provide further focus and replace a fraction of the money lost from the cancellation of live gigs – his major source of income – Czamanski launched a Patreon project early last year. “I really tried to think about what I could offer in terms of music,” he says. “I concluded that I could give teaching a shot and share my process with producers that want to use improvisation as a tool in the studio. I also launched a cheap subscription offer, where you get a jam that I’ve recorded live to tape and an exclusive track. I feel like I have a built-in audience and once a month I have a performance that I record for them. It’s not the same as a live performance in a room full of people, but we are in a pandemic I suppose.”
He chuckles at the thought, as if he’s realised how ludicrous such statements would have sounded before the pandemic took hold. Czamanaski’s desire to reach out to others during lockdowns and get the support of a community of listeners and fellow musicians, is not unusual. What is unusual – at least within dance music – is his willingness and desire to collaborate with others, often using the improvisation techniques he first picked up as a hobbyist jazz pianist during his late teens and early twenties. It was these collaborative jazz jams that birthed his long-time production partnership with Gal Aner as Juju & Jordash, with the pair embracing electronic music after falling in love with techno in the mid 1990s.
With Aner living in another country and rightly prioritising parenthood over music-making, the pair’s collaboration has been on hold for a few years. Thanks to the pandemic, Czamanski’s stream of regular and occasional collaborations (he’s worked at various times with Move D, Max D, Willie Burns and Jonah Sharp, amongst others) also dried up, leaving his daily studio jams as his only meaningful creative outlet.
“I have definitely missed that interaction,” Czamanski sighs. “It forced me to exclusively jam with myself, which can sometimes be dangerously masturbatory. I also learned a lot, particularly how to jiggle that danger and deal with it. It’s not the same thing, you know. I think that humans who collaborate or make music together, there’s always going to be this extra magic that a collaboration births.”
In fact, the last time Czamanski spent an extended period in the studio with someone else was in September 2019, when a meeting with Terrence Dixon in Amsterdam – suggested and set up by Rush Hour co-founder Antal Heitlager and the label’s head of distribution Mark Cremins – resulted in the pair spending five days jamming in the studio.
“Antal dropped him off at my studio and we hit it off immediately,” Czamanski enthuses. “Then we just pressed record in the studio and spent five days jamming and having a good time. think we spoke less than five sentences inside the studio that whole time. It was chemistry, just like I feel like I have with David [Moufang, AKA Move D] or Gal [Aner]. It’s just, ‘press record and let’s go’. I guess it just flew naturally.”
You’ll soon be able to hear the results of those jam sessions on Keep In Mind, I’m Out of My Mind, Czamanski and Dixon’s first collaborative album. A perfect marriage of Dixon’s deep, hypnotic and futuristic Motor City techno grooves and Czamanski’s subtly jazz-tinged, deliciously psychedelic and often off-kilter approach to house and techno, it’s a set that proves the immense creative possibilities of club music improvised using drum machines, synthesizers and effects units.
The success of the project, and the way the pair got on outside the studio, inspired Dixon to ask Czamanski if he fancied releasing a solo album on his recently launched label Minimal Detroit Audio. Naturally, Czamanski said yes and set about scouring his archive of thousands of studio jams for material that could be edited and subtly knocked into shape. It’s a brilliant development – at least for those who have admired his trademark brand of unusual, off-kilter and blazed mutations of techno, ambient and deep house – but one that many expected never to come.
“I was just too damn busy before,” Czamansnki asserts when asked why he’s not released a solo album as Jordan GCFZ before. “I put all of my energy into Juju and Jordash, that’s the honest answer. There was room for an occasional EP or 12″, but no room to focus on an album… no way. I was also gigging. But I’ve had two years of sitting on my ass without anywhere to go, so I had the time, the mental space and the right outlook. Also, I can’t say no to Terrence Dixon.”
Due out towards the end of February 2022, My Brain’s Brain is a dizzying and kaleidoscopic snapshot of Czamanski’s musical mind and unique sonic outlook. It’s not a set of straight-up club workouts, but rather a heady, intoxicating musical journey full of unusual twists and turns, druggy ambient soundscapes, jazz-flecked psychedelia, leftfield techno visions, dystopian electronica, intergalactic dancefloor jams, immersive electronic hypnotism and deep, meditative escapism. It’s genuinely brilliant and the kind of album that rewards repeat listens. As debut albums go, It’s a doozy.
“Thanks,” Czamanski enthuses when this feedback is passed on. “it’s a good representation of where I am I guess, all things together in a mish-mash. It’s different flavours of the things I’m feeling these days. I know you could cut 12 inches from it that maybe DJs would play but I looked at this album in a very holistic way from the beginning, not like ‘this is a hit track, I’ll put it in’. It was more like, ‘out of the 100 tracks I have on my hard drive, how can I make a coherent album, as an album’. There were other tracks I’d recorded that I wanted on there, but they didn’t fit in with my subconscious narrative while building the album.”
That Czamanksi has made a coherent, impressive and entertaining album is not in doubt. The only issue is how to describe it accurately; after all, it’s hardly a bog standard set of house or techno tracks. Fittingly, when asked how he’d describe his musical style, as detailed on My Brain’s Brain, he struggles too.
“I don’t know,” he says, before pausing for what seems like an eternity. “I mean, to me it’s all techno, it’s all house, it’s all jazz. I don’t know what the difference is between the sub-genres or whatever. This album is a particularly tricky one, because you can’t really describe it as dance music even.”
Matt Anniss
My Brain’s Brain by Jordan GCZ will be released by Minimal Detroit Audio on March 11 – pre-order it here
‘Keep In Mind, I’m Out of My Mind’ by Terrence Dixon and Jordan GCZ will follow on Rush Hour, also in March.