Since 1989, James M. Jason has orchestrated a radical “genetic mutation” of his craft, evolving from a traditional metal band into a total avant-garde entity: the Gothic Multimedia Project (G.M.P.). Rejecting the conformity of modern digital platforms, Jason utilizes his “Unholy Trinity” (Sound, Image, and Word) to create immersive experiences where the audience must act as a participant rather than a passive consumer.
With his latest opus, Only Bruises Through the Port-hole of My Mind, he invites us into a five-step descent into psychological violence, conceptually coded in deep red. Jason accepted to answer a few questions to help us decode the “mysteriosophic” riddles of a project that prioritizes unsettling the soul over pleasing the ear.
James M. Jason, for those entering your world for the first time, how would you describe the soul of G.M.P. in just a few words?
Unsettling, cryptic, uneven and highly unpredictable. We don’t provide any reference point to our listeners/readers/viewers/users because we want to make them feel a sense of estrangement so they can reshape their own identity in an uncharted world suspended in time and space. That world is the chameleon and ever-changing soul of the G.M.P. The only North star is mental darkness, marking a total reversal of the alleged values sticking people to their comfort zones. When all certainties fall, the mind awakens to find new solutions: G.M.P.’s core lies in this stretch of path toward a new balance. A coveted but unattainable balance.
You define the shift from a band to G.M.P. as a “genetic mutation”. Looking back at the demos produced between 1989 and 2000, what was the exact moment you realized music alone could no longer contain your vision?
It was a lengthy evolution that began during the making of “Cold Winds of Suicide”, the 9th Gothic demo, when David Bosch joined in, developing through the production of “Fleeing the Rainland”, the 10th and last demo of Gothic as a band. Nothing was planned and even David and I were completely unaware of what we were doing or what we wanted to achieve.
Nonetheless looking back at “Cold Winds of Suicide”, there was a song (“The last dream”, originally titled “L’ultimo sogno”) whose lyrics represented the first poetry I ever wrote for Gothic. The Fleeing the Rainland painting by David Bosch was something more than a cover in the common sense of the word. It was the visual translation of the music featured in that double-CD.
When we started working on “Grim”, the first G.M.P. release, I conceived a video where music, art and poetry could be synaesthetically “experienced” by the listener/viewer/reader. It was around 2001 and when we filmed the Forlorn video in December 2003 the concept of “multimedia project” started falling into place. The Théâtre de la Mort 08 video manifesto, released in 2005, definitely turned a vague intuition into a steady purpose.
Why does “Red” specifically represent psychological violence in your pentalogy, and how is this translated into the sonic textures of the new suite?
When you think about the Red colour, passion or blood are the first things that come to mind. On the one hand psychological violence and on the other hand dreams of revenge arise just from the combination of blood and passion, meant as a strong desire to cause damage. The first one is nothing but a primitive instinct of abuse by those who do harm whereas the second one is a self-defence by those who endure harassment, vexation and injustice generally speaking.
The theme of psychological violence finds its expression throughout the poetical novel underlying the suite far more than in the music itself. The topic of revenge is clearly expressed by the aggressive music of the secret album, likely our most brutal musical work to date.
How do you balance the “anti-art” spontaneity of the Fluxus movement with the extreme precision required to build a five-level advergame?
Good question. Unbound spontaneity is the fuel to design our works while painstaking precision lies in the production process of the opus.
As a matter of fact the five levels displayed in“Only Bruises Through the Port-hole of My Mind” have been the achievement of a long process. When I started I had a blurred vision of what “Only Bruises” had to become. That vision became more and more focused when I finished to write the musical part.
Unlike “Beneath the Snow – Piovono Ombre” and “Clam, Dolenter”, where the user had no choice but to embark in a world where sound, image and word couldn’t be considered independently of each other, here I wanted to give the user the possibility to make up his mind and decide how far he could go in this journey that includes a musical suite comprised of eight parts with no predetermined order (first step), a poetical novel made by eight chapters that can be freely assembled in a random sequence like the musical suite (second step), an advergame (third step) where you have to find your way to discover a secret album with its artwork (fourth step) and a video-art stage play (fifth step).
Your history is marked by periods of “long silence”. How did this decade of stillness shape the complexity of the current opus?
I would define it as a decade of “silent work” more than stillness. To be honest the production of “Beneath the Snow – Piovono Ombre” was emotionally draining beyond imagination and I had to catch my breath after the most gloomy opus I have ever worked on.
Furthermore some negative events took place in our personal lives, slowing down the entire production process of “Only Bruises through the Port-hole of My Mind”. The more I slowed down and the more the sophistication of this opus increased since new ideas, new details and more artistic contents were added, enriching even more what was already a complex work.
In the last three years the work became more and more hectic because I was feeling the urge to close this huge opus before it could close me in a game of mirrors, losing myself.
Regarding your collaboration with David Bosch, how do you ensure the visual “glues” align with your music without one medium overshadowing the others?
After so many years of collaboration with David, our partnership is so strong that there’s no need to ensure his artworks blend in with my music. It’s a spontaneous synergy and a mutual understanding that make our vision effortlessly converge without talking too much about it.
I never feared that one medium could overshadow the others. In “Grim” the lyrical part was as crucial as music, in“Clam, Dolenter” the graphic part was paramount while in “Beneath the Snow” the film was the golden thread. Here music is more relevant than other media but without the novel and the video-art stage play loses a large part of its meaning. Gaming is likewise the only way to access the fourth and the fifth step and so its importance can’t be diminished.
By making the audience “win” access to the secret album, are you commenting on the devalued status of music in the age of free streaming?
We think art, music included, should be something to be achieved through commitment and knowledge. Far be it from me to be clubbish but combining Gnosticism and Nihilism, our art, music and poetries turn to a goal, a harbor, instead of being a starting point: they can be achieved through crooked paths where there’s no truth, no certainty, no landmark. Only the inner demons from your Subconscious can be a valid guide.
That being said, streaming platforms are the commodification of music and free streaming stands as its degradation. Music became a means of entertainment in our current consumer society or, worse, a sheer background under the noise of the everyday life.
Only Bruises… consists of eight movements that can be assembled in no particular order. How do you manage harmonic tension in a non-linear composition?
It was not easy. I had to ensure to be on the same musical scale in all the start and end points of any of the eight movements in order to shape a seamless interplay between them. You can assemble the eight movements in a random sequence, even in an ever-changing loop or you can piece them together following the logical order you will give by combining the titles of each movement.
These eight titles are actually the lines of a short poem of mine so… make your own poem as I wrote mine. The musical shifts of the suite will be a consequence of this choice. In this way everyone will listen to a different suite and will have his/her own experience of “Only Bruises”.
The second step of your work is a poetical novel. What “clarity” does the written word provide that music and gaming cannot?
In “Only Bruises” the written word serves as a beacon in the tangles of notes and noises contained in the suite. Music and poetical novel are means of artistic expression, gaming is a bridge between the suite with its novel and the secret album with its artwork.
However the beacon of the written word doesn’t light up the shadow: it sends a code to crack. The lyrical style comes mainly from a revised version of Hermetism mixed with elements of Neo-Surrealism but there’s a very subtle storyline you can build to get through to the video-art stage play, in case you will travel so far.
Does the final video-art stage play act as an “exit” from the pentalogy, or a loop back into your recurring themes?
It acts as the last step of this five-step downward staircase which is “Only Bruises” and “Only Bruises” is the fourth G.M.P. opus within a Negativity Colours Pentalogy yet to be finished.
Lyrically speaking, the final video-art stage play is the completion of the poetical novel. That’s all the more reason the user needs to go all the way down… to understand. The recurring usage of the maze motif in every G.M.P. reminds us that there are no final exits because we craft closed worlds you can travel across more and more times.
The deeper you will dig the more you will find new things you didn’t notice before: you get lost or you find yourself in the maze, that serves as a metaphor for the mind, source of wisdom and evil at the same time.
Why is it important for you to stage a scheduled, singular YouTube event in a world of “on-demand” content?
As all of our works offer a unique, custom experience of art, music and poetry, in the same way the singular YouTube event where we’ll present “Only Bruises Through the Port-hole of My Mind” to the general public will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get a half-guided introduction to this opus.
Uniqueness, being unrepeatable is a constant in all of our works, as shown in the Théâtre de la Mort 08 video manifesto. G.M.P. songs have a non-linear structure without any recurring verse, chorus or hook. Any G.M.P. opus is completely different from the previous one as for music genre, artistic style, lyrical theme as well as a means of expression.
Our mission is to make truly interactive multimedia art, where the user can be the artist who shapes the opus where he/she’s engrossed in. We reverence our public as an active performer rather than a passive audience because Total Art is a demanding challenge but it can be highly rewarding.
Editor’s Note:
The multimedia opus Only Bruises Through the Port-hole of My Mind is a private, encrypted experience. To gain perpetual access to the code and explore the “five steps” mentioned in this interview, please visit the official G.M.P. shop. If you want to get more information about the launch, please visit our dedicated event page.
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