Name: Ken Mode
Members: Jesse Matthewson, Kathryn Kerr, Scott Hamilton, Shane Matthewson
Interviewee: Jesse Matthewson
Nationality: Canadian
Current release: Ken Mode's Void is out September 22nd 2023 via Artoffacts.

If you enjoyed this Ken Mode interview and would like to stay up to date with the band and their music, visit their official homepage. They are also on Instagram, Facebook, and twitter.



Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

At this stage in my life, it’s a necessity that seems to keep away depression. Unfortunately, I get consumed by album cycles – the production / marketing / touring phases all limit the amount of time I have to continue being creative, from a writing perspective, and inevitably I take too much time off from actual creating, and get depressed.

When that starts to happen, I always acknowledge why I’m feeling that way, and have to then kick start the writing process again … painstakingly finding time to do it in. It’s hard to balance that at this stage in life, because there are always excuses to keep working.

Different inspirations often have little to do with the actual stimulus for creating these days. It had a huge part when I was a young man, but has very little to do with it now. I just need time.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

There is no balance at the beginning. We always try to visualize a little at the beginning stages, but acknowledge that the subconscious coming to life will dictate everything in the end. The hardest part is always reconnecting with it, so I can feel that I’m producing work that is worth exploring.

As the ideas start coming out, and I feel that they are worth keeping, that inevitably starts to dictate where the project is going to go. It’s always a complete stream of consciousness kind of thing. I never have ideas in my head that I try to recreate, and I think maybe it’s this purging that in the end feels so satisfying. It’s all chance in the end.

Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?

No, not at all. It’s almost always just me, a guitar, and a blank slate. That’s more or less where we are right now.

I’m trying to “riff farm” on my spare time. As much as I can, while feeling relatively inspired, I’m just laying down riff ideas that I hope can fit with previous ideas to eventually piece together songs with.  

Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?

Not particularly. Sometimes if I’m doing a concentrated writing session with my bassist, I’ll take a micro-dose of psilocybin, just to see if I can chill out a little – as those circumstances demand a degree of cooperative creative collaboration, which is not really the way I come up with my best ideas these days.  

Otherwise, I really just require all of the things that I normally do to function on a day-to-day basis. I need a relatively clean diet, regular exercise, a proper amount of sleep. Getting into the best creative space for me really requires a profoundly boring lifestyle.

What do you start with? How difficult is that first line of text, the first note?

That first idea is usually extremely hard to get out. How does one push out an idea that isn’t boring right off the hop? I always have that hurdle to overcome out of the gate.

Most initial ideas feel trite, rehashed, soulless, and stock. I usually search for a chord, or note sequence that I can play around with that feels exciting – then start seeking a rhythm, possibly a shift in keys. I play around in this space for a while before something feels right to me.

When do the lyrics enter the picture? Where do they come from? Do lyrics need to grow together with the music or can they emerge from a place of their own?

Lyrics are usually their own entirely separate entity at first, and I approach them in a very similar way to writing the music.

Lyrics start as their own independent piece of poetry, also usually written in a very stream of consciousness style. We will usually completely write the piece of music first, and then I have to create the lyrics out of pieces of poetry that I subsequently format to make the vocal parts from.

Some song lyrics come as the result of a massive edit job of many different batches of poetry that have been hyper analyzed and broken down to make vocal arrangements that fit the songs in a very specific way.

What makes lyrics good in your opinion? What are your own ambitions and challenges in this regard?

There needs to be an honesty and a poetic flow that feels natural. A real expression of emotion, that requires a degree of self awareness.

This is hard to really qualify, as I feel like a lot of artists’ lyrics are absolute trash, and I won’t pretend like I’m a gifted writer or anything like that … but I do feel like I do a pretty good job of accomplishing what I’ve set out to from an artistic standpoint when I write lyrics.

To quote a question by the great Bruce Duffie: When you come up with a musical idea, have you created the idea or have you discovered the idea?

I feel like it’s a little of both. My subconscious has come up with it, and my consciousness has discovered it, or even molded it to fit a form that is ready to be interpreted by others.

It’s a collaboration between my two selves.

From your experience, are there things you're doing differently than most or many other artists when it comes to writing music?

I doubt it. I don’t feel like my process is particularly unique, it’s just what seems to work best for me at this particular moment in my life.

Finding the pathway that gets you there with the most effectiveness and efficiency seems to be the key, especially as you age and have less time to dedicate to your craft.   

Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process, certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

I do like to follow things where they lead me, even if they don’t end up fitting the overall aesthetic of the initial project ideal. I prefer for creativity to have that organic aspect to it, and to not deny whatever muse may be taking the reigns.

Maybe you’ll use it, maybe you won’t, but at least you saw that idea through to a degree. It was an honest expression at the time that you didn’t stifle, or deny.

Often, while writing, new ideas and alternative roads will open themselves up, pulling and pushing the creator in a different direction. Does this happen to you, too, and how do you deal with it? What do you do with these ideas?

It happens all the time, especially when your goal is to write something that specifically fits with a pre-existing part which probably fails the majority of the time, forcing said new idea to get recorded as a new separate idea – which who knows where that will end up fitting.

In the early stages of writing an album, I feel it’s important to document these ideas and keep them in easy to access places so you can try to reference them in the context of different works as you are progressing in the writing process.

If the idea is solid, it’ll eventually find a home.

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally? Is there an element of spirituality to what you do?

I’m not a spiritual person, at all – but, yes, this is the closest thing in my life that I could consider “spiritual”. It’s an exercising of a certain energy, or spark that is absolutely incomparable.

It is the most exciting feeling I’ve ever experienced, and I suppose that’s why my life has been dedicated to chasing that feeling.

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece? What does this process look like in practise?

There is always a shelf life on letting it lie, but obviously even that approach is on a piece-by-piece basis. There have been plenty of songs that I whipped together over two hours that were perfect in their simplicity and required no after-thought, and plenty that have gone through many revisions.

I have a couple examples from both of our last records – from NULL ‘A Love Letter’ went through many revisions …



… while ‘Throw Your Phone In The River’ was banged out in an afternoon …



VOID – ‘Painless’ was a two hour job …



… while ‘A Reluctance Of Being’ grew over a long period of time to become what it is now.

What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? How involved do you get in this?

Production is a huge part of the finality of a song at this stage in our careers. This is the statement to the world that is basically free for consumption. With our NULL and VOID albums, my whole coping mechanism for the pandemic was writing and pre-production – understanding how the songs came together and needed to be presented when it came time to hit the studio proper.

I was the one manning the ship on pre-production, and I was extremely involved in the studio – bouncing idea around with Andrew Schneider, who also produced / recorded / mixed the album.  

For over a decade now, we’ve been working with the best producers in the world for the style of music we play, so clearly, we care a good deal about how we filter our finished songs.  

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

Huge sense of emptiness, haha. It’s also hard to get right back into writing, especially now, due to generally having a pretty busy life. I simply do not have enough time to balance all of the marketing and tour planning that goes into an album cycle while trying to maintain a writing schedule. The time and energy are just not there.

I also find, it’s a little helpful to give some space after finishing an album, as you need to have an empty slate to build upon. I don’t necessarily want my mindset to be the same starting a new album, as it was at the end of finishing the prior one. There needs to be a shift. Enough time needs to pass that other new music needs to pull me in different directions. I want fresh inspiration, as opposed to ideas that I’ve already ruminated on.

Returning to creating once enough time has passed is always difficult. It’s just like getting out of shape physically. You have to force yourself to get into a practice of trying to do the thing, generally for a while, before anything worthwhile starts to come out. Get your creative self back in shape.

It’s a brutal cycle, especially for busy people.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you personally feel as though writing 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?

It’s massively different, at least in my life. I don’t exactly feel like I’m expressing myself emotionally when I prepare a French press coffee in the morning, or cooking salmon at night. I’m not putting any unique stamp of my personality, at least that I value.

You could argue that you are expressing your own personal touch on anything you do the least bit different from any other individual, so I suppose it all comes down to what you value in the end. I fundamentally value music in a way that I don’t value most other things in my life, so my ability to express myself and create in this medium is arguably the most important part of my life and my being me.

To get to that kind of level with anything is, legitimately, a special relationship – and I hope every person is able to find a “thing” that gives their life a degree of purpose.