Name: Jolle
Members: Martin Mann (guitar, bass synth, vocals), Enrico Semler (drums, vocals)
Nationality: German
Occupation: Instrumentalists, songwriters
Recent release: Jolle's Wirtschaft Arbeit Technik will be published March 10th 2023 via Crazysane. You can already listen to their recent single, "Digital Bullshit World" here.
Recommendations: Martin: Read Alexander Berkman: ABC des Anarchismus; listen to Endlich komplett betrunken by Bärchen und die Milchbubis; Go to exhibitions more often.
Enrico: Listen to Laughing Matter by Wand

If you enjoyed this interview with Jolle and would like to find out more about the band, visit them on Instagram, and Facebook.  



When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it?

Enrico: We went to school together and formed our first band when we were 16/17 years old. It was a Jimi Hendrix cover band. I don't know how it came about, but we and our friends were really into it. We listened to a lot of music from that time and at some point got fully into Canterbury and Prog Rock.

After a tour with our then prog rock band Minerva (now Eat Ghosts) we wrote our first songs and played gigs as a duo. All this must have been 10/12 years ago.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?

Martin: I like to get lost in small details, sounds, that's why I prefer to listen through headphones. Here I can really immerse myself in a sound world. Such a condition works best when it is dark outside and I have headphones on. Then there is only music. It can also be a bit scary at times because the surrounding sounds disappear and I feel like I'm in a parallel world.

I also think there are albums that work particularly well when you listen to them with headphones. For example, The Lemon Twigs - Do Hollywood has so many funny little sounds in it that I wouldn't even notice if I heard them through speakers.



But also completely natural recording noises, such as a foot pedal, the creaking of the piano foot pedal or drum sticks that are accidentally not placed quietly on the snare, come into their own. It's like you're right there in the recording room.

Albums like Silence Is Sexy by the Einstürzenden Neubauten carry a certain tension over the headphone sound. Blixa Bargeld's voice sometimes sounds like, he's sitting in your ear.



But how do such factors influence my own musicality? I think it's just exciting to become aware of the own effect of sounds and that the perception can be so different.

I can't really tell if my music touches me deeply. I have a deep connection to it but maybe other people feel touched by it more than I do. I hope so.

How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?

Martin: I think everything happens in phases and is influenced by what is happening around us and inside us. I see finding a personal voice as something very long-term and as a major process that will perhaps last a lifetime, since one is constantly changing.

It has been a great process for me to write lyrics that I can read through or listen to without feeling ashamed or making me uneasy and dissatisfied. It's only now that I'm finding access to the German language in singing and I've noticed that I can identify with it much more than the word sung in English. Of course it's much more familiar for me to sing in English as I consume a lot of English language music. The identification is therefore very close and an English text sounds much more familiar and appropriate at first.

However, I notice that I feel German lyrics a lot more when the lyrics are good. I can perform them much better and are therefore better transmitted to the audience. That's how I found my personal voice the most.

Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.

Enrico: Because I used to listen to a lot of progressive, arty rock, I often focused on the instrumentation when listening to music. It was only later that I learned to listen to songs as a complete work and, above all, to perceive them together with the lyrics.

Even though this has always spurred me on as an instrumentalist to become better and to refine the sound of the guitar or the drums, etc., today I rather look for the point where all the parts of a song don't seem so important next to each other. Maybe that's why I started listening to more punk and post punk.

For me, a bass, a piano, a voice only sounds really good in the context of all the other instruments of the song and only then unfolds its role. So a song does not fall apart into the importance of its parts but works as a unit. At that point it radiates an emotion that grabs me at best.

With Jolle, there is an incredible amount of space for both of us to get exactly there, since there are only the two of us.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?

Enrico: It might sound a bit corny, but first and foremost we just have a lot of fun when we write songs together or present them on stages. We have a very smooth workflow together, which we somehow underestimated ourselves for a long time.

As good friends, we exchange a lot of things that are on our minds, that make us depressed or glad, and it's fun for both of us to express that with songs together - Wirtschaft Arbeit Technik is a lot about wage work and the stresses that go with it. It is a balm when we reach people who find themselves in it and feel represented.

As a proven stylistic device for Jolle (at least on Wirtschaft Arbeit Technik, who knows how it will look like with the next songs) one thing has established itself: “Stumpf ist Trumpf” (Blunt is trump) and we think that works quite splendidly.

How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?

Martin: I'm not really interested in inventing anything new or creating new sounds. I'm just too technically amateurish for that. But it's also not about preserving traditions and consciously committing to old structures.

It is actually quite simple. I want to be satisfied with my creative process and keep writing new soundscapes and songs for myself. I want our records to sound different. I don't want to reproduce our debut. I'm also willing to completely throw things in the blender and bring different forms of artistic expression together. Whether it's theatre, film or painting.

Just don't let it stagnate.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?

Martin: That is very easy for me to answer. I write most of the songs first on the acoustic guitar in a really raw form. When I get the feeling that it works, ideas automatically come to me on how I can implement this song with Enni. But the acoustic guitar has to come first.

This is probably also because it requires the least effort. I don't need to wire any electronics, turn on an amplifier, or boot up a computer, just pick them up and fire!

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.

Enrico: I honestly have my difficulties with routines, haha. I don't know, lately band projects often involve too much time on the computer. Writing mails, social media, booking shows - I wouldn't be mad about being able to hand that off.

On a good day, I drink a perfectly pulled cup of black tea in the morning, get three to-dos off my list (including a chunk that's been nagging at me for weeks), cook myself a nice lunch, and have a band rehearsal in the evening to write a new song.

Oh yes and in between still wage work ...

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

Enrico: We recorded Wirtschaft Arbeit Technik in our own studio with our friend David Seyfahrt. It all went super smoothly and especially the overdubbing was a lot of fun, because we had all the time to tinker around a lot.

I can still remember how we recorded the song ‘Love Long Dead’. Like all songs, the basic tracks were recorded live and the song already had a strong energy then. When vocals and a few more guitars were added, it grew into a real force. Last but not least we asked our good friend Johannes to add Rhodes and synthesizer on top and from then on the song really flashed me.

I love that about recording songs - those nuances that you add up to fine tune the song and it keeps growing. Live, the song is already a lot of fun and always captivating for me and on the record it really blows me away. It’s a relatively simple song with basically two guitar licks and it just grows over its 5 minutes – I love it.   

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

Enrico: I enjoy both songwriting alone and collaborating. Most of the time, however, the songs come from a mixture.

I like to do the first sketches or rough structures by myself. Therefore it helps me to switch instruments when I can't get any further with the other. When I stagnate on the guitar, I think about what the drumbeat could be like and if that doesn't go any further, I pick up the bass and so on. Each score brings me new ideas and that's how the song grows.

But I find it particularly exciting when other creative minds come along. This can open up new paths for a song and completely change the sound. When you write alone, you have full control over what kind of song comes out, which has something quite intimate about it. However, I am convinced that control is not only conducive to creative processes. You either need "chaotic" methods or other creative perspectives.

With the songs on Wirtschaft Arbeit Technik, I was able to think further about ideas that Martin had brought with him. This role is also a lot of fun. Making ideas of the other work musically and complementing them.

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

Martin: Hui, I think that music, quite pragmatically, cannot cause any conflicts or radical social upheavals. The power of the music is not enough for that either :-)

I think that music is still an important element to connect people. I'm so thankful for how many people I've met through music. A large network and such different realities of life that are connected through an interest in music.

Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

Martin: Wirtschaft Arbeit Tod

How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?

Enrico: Wirtschaft Arbeit Technik

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

Martin: Making music is an everyday thing for me, but not as everyday as sleeping or having breakfast. A songwriting process can sometimes take a long time for me and there are probably around 20 versions of a song until it is the way it ends up on the record.

I see the everyday in the fact that I think a lot about song structures, lyrics and feasibility in everyday life and a songwriting process not only takes place in the rehearsal room or on the instrument, but also, for example, on the bike to my work. A nice meal tastes good and of course a good tea or coffee too, but it doesn't come close to the sense of achievement when a song has been created that you yourself think is great.

In songwriting I can also break out more than in everyday life. Everything is possible within the framework of the technical and textual possibilities. Just the other day I sang a phrase in Swedish because I always wanted to write lyrics in Swedish :-)

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?

Enrico: I always understand music as a conversation. Kind of like an acoustic letter, when a songs is written and recorded and heard by other people and in its most direct way on stage with the audience - and vice versa!

I notice how with strong songs sometimes a change in harmony or a single line from the lyrics is enough for me to get the feeling of having been understood. That melody, that phrase, that vibe somehow resonates with my brain. I'm reminded of a feeling or a struggle I've had or am stuck in, or the sound fits a situation I felt very comfortable in.

As is well known, this can take many detours in the brain and address synapses at all ends. That's how I imagine the audience-artist interaction and I think it's kind of a basic need to feel understood.