Passive/Aggressive

Blue Lake – Weaving soundscapes with the zither (interview & mix)

Mixtape January 17 2025, af Alexander Julin
Photo: Alex Kozobolis.

Mix by Jason Dungan. Interview by Alexander Julin Mortensen.

A delicate mixture of compositional structures, atmospheres and melodies reminiscent of both folk, jazz, contemporary music and ambient. If you had to cling to rigid genre boundaries, this would make a fitting description of Amager-based American musician and artist Jason Dungan’s project Blue Lake. The project, which started around 2010, changed over the years from a recording-focused project to being more live-oriented as well as being centered around his home-built string instrument – reminiscent of a zither – which he began working on around 2015. The instrument turned out to be an essential part of the project as it, in Dungan’s own words, “(…) encourages a very open-ended approach to playing”.

With 2023’s album Sun Arcs, Dungan’s project started to gain increased international recognition and began touring in a live constellation consisting of him and other musicians from the Danish experimental, jazz and contemporary music scenes. 

The transition to being a live-project is evident on his new album Weft, where different tracks feature live recordings as well as instrumental contributions from members of his live setup on the track “Tatara” in the form of Carolyn Goodwin (bass clarinet), Pauline Hogstrand (viola) and Tomo Jacobsen (double bass). But while changes have occurred in the creative and recording processes, the album nonetheless feels like a natural follow up to his previous album Sun Arcs. It’s an enriching and genre-blending affair, which is both compositionally ambitious and an intuitively comfortable place to stay in as a listener. His latest Blue Lake-releases, including Weft, have offered me some of my most comfortable listening experiences in recent years. But while I often associate comfortable art with also being potentially rather boring, this is far from the case with Blue Lake, where there are new facets to discover in the compositions throughout many dedicated listenings.

Today, Passive/Aggressive brings an interview with Dungan about Blue Lake as well as a new mix of music that inspires him.

P/A: Congratulations on Weft, which has just been released by the British label Tonal Union. For those unfamiliar with your music, how would you define the essence of Blue Lake as a project?

Jason Dungan: “Blue Lake has been my solo project for many years. From maybe 2010 – 2018, it was a solo project, completely focused on recording, and mostly unreleased or with a few things posted online. In those years, the music was focused on combining guitar and other acoustic instruments with found objects and materials, often recording in a country house in Halland, Sweden. I conceived of it as a kind of non-genre acoustic music.

Since my move to Copenhagen in 2015, I began conceiving of Blue Lake as a project that would put out records and play live. Around that time I also began building my own string instrument, which resembles the zither, and that instrument, along with the guitar, have become central to the music. Since 2019 there have been several LPs and a cassette, and I have begun to play live, both solo, and with a band comprised of Copenhagen-based musicians. The music is, for me, something very personal – it reflects my interests in the American music forms (folk, jazz, country) that I experienced from growing up in Dallas, as well as the music that I’m immersed in living here in Denmark.”


P/A: Weft is your first release since 2023’s Sun Arcs. Could you tell a bit about what led up to this release?

JD: “My general process with music is that I am kind of always playing on my main instruments (guitar and zither) so new ideas and forms tend to bubble up along the way, and gradually I work at developing these ideas, make initial recordings, and then develop them until an album forms. Sun Arcs was my first record with a label, and this led to more opportunities in terms of performing live, particularly internationally. Up to that point, I had only played as Blue Lake in Denmark. So the months after Sun Arcs came out meant that I was playing more, and also was working with the band to develop a live set based around the Sun Arcs music. That LP was recorded entirely solo, so to play it live required myself and the band to work out live arrangements for the music.

We spent some days at Andersabo, a house in Sweden where I have organized some residencies for many years, and where much of Sun Arcs was recorded. This little mini-residency allowed us to not only work out how we wanted to play Sun Arcs, but also generally how we could work together as a band. The band at this point had solidified as myself plus Carolyn Goodwin (clarinet and bass clarinet), Tomo Jacobson (double bass), Oliver Laumann (drums), and Pauline Hogstrand (viola).

One of these pieces, “Tatara”, found its way into the live set, and felt like it could be an exciting track to introduce the band element of Blue Lake. It features a live recording of bass, viola, and clarinet, together with me playing the zither and then switching to guitar. There’s a flow and dynamism to the music that I love from playing with the band.

“These tracks continued my interest in using the recording process to make music which employs some of the structure and logic of ensemble music, but is created through the recording process […]”

– Jason Dungan

At that same period, I had been working on a couple of other tracks: One is called “The Forest”, and the other is called “Weft”. “The Forest” started life as a track I recorded up in Sweden during the session for Sun Arcs, and featured a set of undulating, overlapping guitar patterns that formed a sort of pulsing mass of sound. I liked the track, but it didn’t quite come together for Sun Arcs. I ended up totally re-recording it, and was able to reshape the piece to something that I thought worked well. 

“Weft” was another solo track, that was very song-like in its construction, and had a sort of deceptively simple structure, which is actually a fairly complex scaffold of interlocking guitar parts. These tracks continued my interest in using the recording process to make music which employs some of the structure and logic of ensemble music, but is created through the recording process, allowing for guitars or other elements to be massed together in a way which is not exactly possible in a live setting. 

Next to this, I had two other tracks: “Strata” and “Oceans”. These are both either live or mostly live, and are more solo in their sound, using the zither and the guitar. 

As I was bringing these five tracks together, I felt like they were  a really great encapsulation of where the music was at post-Sun Arcs, in terms of beginning to bring other musicians into the recording process, but also continuing to explore the studio as a compositional space for me working solo.”


P/A: The title Weft is a reference to your partner and acclaimed visual artist Maria Zahle’s weaving practice, which is also featured on the album cover in the form of her artwork Torso. Could you elaborate on the relation between her work and the music on Weft?

JD: “Maria’s work is a huge influence and inspiration for my music in many ways. We met at the Slade School of Art more than 20 years ago, and have been partners since then, and have seen each other’s work develop over these years. She and I also have played in the band Squares & Triangles for many years, and I have collaborated on projects like the art space Polychrome here in Copenhagen. When we moved here, she began to incorporate weaving and plant-dying into her sculptural practice, and I think that willingness to investigate the most core elements of a practice also inspired me to begin building string instruments.

“Because of the way my zither is set up and tuned, it encourages a very open-ended approach to playing.”

– Jason Dungan

There’s a fascinating flow to weaving, where the loom becomes this kind of vessel for the production of the woven material as it moves through the machinery of the loom. I was interested in the ways in which the acoustic instrument could also be seen in this way, as something that produces a kind of flow, in this case sound. Because of the way my zither is set up and tuned, it encourages a very open-ended approach to playing. And when I started working with it, it kind of unlocked something in the music.

Maria’s art studio is next to where I make the music, so I’m often in her space, seeing the work develop. At the moment, she is making works where the woven material has other elements (yarn or metal) inserted into it, and she also paints directly on to the woven surface with plant dye. These works connect in my head as fascinating analogues to how different elements in music can both co-exist and interact with each other, creating an interdependent whole. So it seemed really natural to have one of her works for the cover.”

Blue Lake at Roskilde Festival 2024. Photo: Passive/Aggressive

P/A: Since the release of Sun Arcs, you’ve performed your music live as a band. Has performing your music live in this constellation influenced your own approach to writing the music on Weft in any way?

JD: “It has been incredibly rewarding to start turning the Blue Lake music into live music, and into something that can be performed and shared among a group of musicians. I had made the other records primarily solo, which meant that I hadn’t actually experienced the music as a live thing in the room. All the people in the band are very skilled, inventive musicians, so it’s been a huge inspiration and learning process for me to work together. So Tatara was able to have a feeling and range that are different from something I would record solo, and has a sense of communal feeling that is something I always respond to in music.

There are tracks on the record, such as Weft, which are made solo. But this track also started as a live piece Working on it together developed my ideas about the piece, even though ultimately I felt it needed to be built up in the studio. I think the track retains a feeling of liveness and immediacy which has been a big legacy for me of working with the group. 

I think another element that I love about working with the band is that we are all coming from different backgrounds and traditions. We have a range of ideas, and of sounds, that I think keeps a fresh input into the music, and this definitely had an impact on the overall feel of Weft.”

“For my whole life, I have been compelled by two forces: the first is to make my own music, or art; and the second has been to work at creating communal spaces […]”

– Jason Dungan

P/A: Besides your own musical work, you also co-run the record store and intimate art and music venue Polychrome together with Zahle in Amager, which is in fact a part of your own home – combining record releases, small exhibitions and concerts in your own garden. Has your activities with Polychrome and the way in which you’ve – at least from my point of view – managed to facilitate some kind of creative community meant anything to your music as Blue Lake?

JD: “Yeah, I think that running Polychrome and also the residency space Andersabo up in rural Sweden had a big impact on my music, in many ways. For my whole life, I have been compelled by two forces: the first is to make my own music, or art; and the second has been to work at creating communal spaces, whether that has been Polychrome / Andersabo, or booking bands at my college radio station in Vermont when I was younger. We decided to move to Copenhagen in 2015, and one of my early interests after coming here was seeing shows at Mayhem, and also by seeing bands like Selvhenter and their Eget Værelse collective. I was inspired by these things musically and creatively, but also by the way in which they contributed to the larger community of art and music.

When I moved to Copenhagen, I was actually working as a visual artist, and music had been a passionate side project for many years. So when we moved here, I decided to focus exclusively on making music and organizing, initially through running the Andersabo project. Working as an organizer allowed me to help a range of really exciting projects happen, and to be exposed to a wide variety of brilliant musicians. I think just being around peoples’ energy and ideas kind of inspired me to dig deeper into my own thing, and to also feel confident about releasing my solo music on record.

My ambition, really, was just to be a part of the Copenhagen scene, and participate in the wider ecology of music here. And I have always thought if you have some access to a space, for example, that it’s meaningful and important to think about ways that the space can serve the wider community, as well as one’s own work.”


P/A: As I experience your music, it seems to encompass a variety of rather different genres, both in terms of compositional structures, aesthetics, instruments and the overall atmosphere; folk, jazz, ambient and even contemporary art music from time to time. Do you think about challenging genre boundaries or combining intuitively different aesthetics when composing? Or is conceptualising your music in terms of genre categories rather something you try to avoid?

JD: “I think it’s actually relevant, but in the sense that I am quite interested in approaching the music in a deliberately non-idiomatic way. For me, this is not “anti” genre, but rather being open to sounds and structures and ideas that do not need to immediately settle into a genre format. When the music is done, I think it obviously sits in some kind of venn diagram a bit like you’ve proposed, somewhere between folk, jazz, ambient, and art music. I listen to these genres and take a lot from them. But I think I’m also interested in things like using a slide on the guitar, which is often associated with country or blues music, and maybe thinking about it as pure sound. 

In the end, it of course connects to those other genres, but there’s a potential in slightly dancing around those edges that appeals to me. And I think building the zither kind of connects to this – it’s an instrument of my own making, which although it connects to a range of other string instruments, is slightly different in its sound and playing style, and very literally doesn’t have a history. So the zither also allows for a kind of cross-pollination across these lines.”

P/A: According to the press release for Weft, you‘re also working on another album scheduled for 2025. Can you tell a bit about what to expect from that?

JD: “I basically started a big process of writing as soon as Weft was done. The idea for that record is that it would be recorded in a studio (rather than my home space) and that it would more extensively work with the band in developing and recording the music. So those two elements have brought in a lot of new dimensions to the music. We’ve been recording in late autumn, and will be finishing the music here in January. I feel like it sounds like a natural continuation from the last two records, but also definitely uses the possibilities created by the studio and by the band to do some new things that I’m excited about.”

P/A: You’ve compiled a new mix for Passive/Aggressive. What’s your thoughts behind it?

JD: “The mix reflects two general poles of my listening. The first is that there are some records or songs that I listen to over and over again, which could be brand-new music or records I loved as a teenager. A fairly recent record by Itasca has been something I’ve put on frequently – it’s guitar-oriented, singer-songwriter music, but has an unusual drift and flow that I find really interesting, with great singing. Manos is an album by the band Spinanes that I loved as a teenager that I still listen to quite often – guitar / drums / vocals sort of rock music but also rock music as a deconstructed exploration of sound.

The second area of things I listen to a lot at the moment are records that I have been finding on trips to Oregon, where my parents live. They live in a college town, which actually had a small-scale electronic music studio at the university. So there has been a series of small scenes there, and the local record stores have absorbed all kinds of small-press records documenting DIY electronic music, obscure guitar records, and things like Christian folk. These records are also fascinating because they document moments and bands that were active and involved in their communities during a pre-internet era, so really the records are the main tangible element that’s left. They are continually surprising and challenging to me, and also offer a good alternative to the consensus and interconnectivity of streaming.”

Tracklist:

Chris Proctor – An Introspection

Strings ‘N’ Things – Golden Morning

Roscoe – Song for the Little Feat, take A

Scott Blair – Dance Pacific

Jonathan Richman – Neon Sign

Joni Mitchell – Morning Morgantown

Chris Proctor – Late Again

Itasca – Milk

Spinanes – Dangle

Ezra Feinberg (feat. Mary Lattimore) – Get Some Rest

Emily A. Sprague – Synth 1

Josiah Steinbrick – Full Bloom


Info: Weft is out via Tonal Union today, January 17.