Freeness is kiffness

Your new track, Zombie Guts, is a breath of fresh air. What's the story behind it?

Bakaman: Kieron (Soundproof) came up with the beat and I came over to his place and listened to it while I was playing a Playstation game and shooting stuff, not zombies. To tie them together, I've always appreciated the idea of zombies and the place they have in horror.
Soundproof: Everybody hates zombies and everybody is okay with zombies dying, so it's okay to kill zombies, to back it up a bit.
Bakaman: Go get them, kill them, shoot them in the head. Go for gold!
Soundproof: We made it very quickly, about two days' worth of work. We were a little bit surprised that people liked it, because normally we will work hard on a track for about a week, and then a month playing it and refining it.

Still on the topic of Zombie Guts, we are pretty stoked that you guys decided to make it a free download for your fans. We believe that this kind of new-age thinking will change the music industry for the better. What do Jam Jarr think?

Bakaman: It depends who you speak to. I think that the music industry has been robbing people for a long time and it's getting its payback right now, releasing full-length albums of just "throw away" songs, but I think that's why we're making our EPs, because none of the songs we make are "throw aways" to us.
Soundproof: If music isn't free, it will become free, because of the Internet. We know that free music is the best way to get to people. All our EPs are free for about the first two weeks, then they're for sale afterwards for a ridiculously cheap price. Getting people to listen to them is more of our concern than getting paid.
Bakaman: In a way, it's kinda like us holding our hands up and saying: "It's free!"
Soundproof: Give up, just take it. Freeness is kiffness.
Bakaman: Freeness is kiffness!

Your most memorable gig to date?

Soundproof: The Earthdance gig comes to mind. That's when we realised there's more than a handful of people that like our music. But there have been a couple.
Bakaman: The Earthdance gig was a watershed one. I love playing at the Mystic Boer in Stellenbosch. It's always fun to party there. I also like festivals, they're big and fun.
Soundproof: Yeah, like Oppikoppi. That was pretty interesting.
Bakaman: We played live to a lot of people there that had never heard of us - and they took very well to us.

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

How long has Jam Jarr been in existence and how did you guys meet?

Bakaman: About four years. We met at The Village, an outdoor trance festival.
Soundproof: At The Village a mate of mine was organising Paul's (Bakaman) other music project, Chamber Concept, and they performed with a guy called Thando X-Pand. I was his sound engineer. We met up again sometime later and Paul came with lyrics for a track called Lazers and Vaginas and I was like, "This is the shit!" So then we made a cool track, and then another cool track, and then another cool track.

Spaceships and vaginas - what's that about?

Bakaman: Spaceships and vaginas is a sexual hunch as told through the metaphor of a space race. Kieron actually named the song when he gave it to me.
Soundproof: It's about as abstract as you can get. Like a Hollywood movie that's gone nouveau, like gone really off the beaten track.
Bakaman: It's fun and enjoyable, exactly the reason why I wanted to get into music.

Any crazy things ever happen during a gig?

Bakaman: I now know myself well enough to know that if I get too drunk before I perform, then it's gonna be a disaster. There was one time this happened in Grahamstown. Within the first three songs, like 15 minutes into the set, I just completely blacked out and only woke up the next morning. After that I decided to stop drinking for a while. So now we try to keep it pretty normal. I've been alcohol-free before gigs since then.
Soundproof: This one time we played in Camps Bay, at a fancy venue surrounded by smartly dressed people who were eating at tables right in front of us. That was pretty awkward.
Bakaman: "Larneyness" is strange to me.

What do you think the significance about 21 December, 2012, is and all the hype surrounding it?

Soundproof: Sync Into The Sun was one of our first tracks and it had to do with the sun and how it coincides with the Mayan calendar in 2012, and we played on that because, personally, I find it interesting. I do not know what will happen, but a big part of me hopes that nothing will happen.
Bakaman: It wouldn't be the first time, as they say: "The world is forever nigh"THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH?it's always this calendar, that calendar, whatever the case may be. The world is definitely changing, though, and it's happening a lot faster in our minds than in actuality.

Where does Jam Jarr see itself in five years?

Bakaman: In heaven.
Soundproof: We'll both be dead, assassinated for making such underground music.
Bakaman: Crimes against the state (both laugh).
Soundproof: Hopefully, in five years' time we'll probably have a home base in Europe, somewhere around London or an easy transportable place - right next to Heathrow, with a nice phat studio, definitely.
Bakaman: All the other cities in South Africa we'll still love to play. I heard Bloemfontein gets down! Ideally, just playing all the time.
Soundproof: A big part of me hopes it's almost exactly the same as now.

What's your favourite flavour of jam?

Soundproof: I'm a conventional strawberry jam lover.
Bakaman: Strawberry. Not so much apricot, when I was at school we called it "camel snot".
Soundproof: Is marmalade a jam? Probably not ...
Bakaman: The marmalade connoiseurs would be offended by that! Our name means "to jam inside of a jar", it's contained, it's all there.

When did you stop using red Rizla?

Soundproof: I haven't really. It just always seems to find its way into every store that's closest. They are everywhere. They're so thick you can look at the sun through them and actually see what's going on there.
Bakaman: They have got lines like a cigarette as well. OCBs makes a big difference, they're just a big bed for you to arrange whatever it might be in there. So many reasons to stop using red Rizla!
Soundproof: So many reasons you could write a song about it and let everyone know that it's not the route to go.

Remember the name - these guys are going places. Check Jam Jarr out on Facebook and SoundCloud.

Originally published on CityLifer