Jah Wobble | Matt Connarton Unleashed

0:00 Speaker 1: Oh, let me bring this up, John Able, is that you?

0:03 Speaker 2: Yeah?

0:04 Speaker 3: Sorry about that?

0:05 Speaker 2: You know, I've got my phone on, got my headphones on ready, and then I'll say, miss Cole, I've not on anyway.

0:14 Speaker 3: Are you great?

0:15 Speaker 1: Great? No, It's wonderful to have you. I'm excited that you're here. I love the I love the album. Uh, you know, I listen to the whole thing. It's it's absolutely excellent, and you know it's it's very interesting, it's very very topical obviously. And can you tell us about about this collaboration with John Klein. Uh? We played Uh, I'll tell you what we played from it so far this morning. Uh, this collaboration Automated Paradise. We played Fading Away, Who Wins? And Make It Stop? And I told our audience, I said, make sure you're paying attention to the lyrics of these because, uh, you know, these guys are saying a lot.

0:55 Speaker 1: But can you tell us about this project, this release Automated Paradise, and and what the theme of it is?

1:01 Speaker 3: Well, dystopia is the theme.

1:04 Speaker 2: I suppose the world Samsara is really heating up and everything's pretty crazy now, isn't it.

1:11 Speaker 3: There isn't any.

1:13 Speaker 2: Sense of that you can take refuge anywhere in this world and find peace everywhere is s troubled it seems, you know. So we had dead time in the studio. Me and John. I started a community project for music in an auth of England quite a few years years ago, moved it to London where a very good friend of mine is involved with a local council and he's very good friends with John and I met. I met John fuss All actually doing a He came to video a show that we did. He's a very good video maker. John's got all the qualifications, even makes corporate video sometimes that kind of stuff.

1:54 Speaker 2: So we met, we became friends, started working on a community project, built a studio, so we have lots of times together to record and hang out and we get on very well. We did first the first thing we did together like that, I think was metal Box Rebuilt in dub Okay, and that worked really well and we've just continued and this We had some dead time. Every time we had some dead time, there was a decent drummer about and that actually makes a huge.

2:22 Speaker 3: Difference, you know, to a session just having much.

2:24 Speaker 2: My son was was around on one occasion when we had this Japanese girl with Zumi was around on another occasion, and a really modest Italian guy called Gilberto, and just having a real druma not spectacular, not tribes spectacle, just just a good drive to k it.

2:40 Speaker 3: Gives it a bit of air to begin with.

2:43 Speaker 4: So you have a bit of a real vibe.

2:44 Speaker 2: You can't you haven't got the options to go and change because it is what it is, and I just felt, this is what it is.

2:51 Speaker 3: This is in the moment for.

2:53 Speaker 2: Once, let's look at the external world rather than the inner world to find inner lights or something, which you did. Actually just sensible things to do and write about how crazy things are.

3:03 Speaker 3: And it's very easy actually for me to write about how crazy things are and not offer a solutions vid the one you know, I wish I could, well, the.

3:12 Speaker 2: Only thing that would be turningside. There's no refuge in the outer world matter. It's an insane time that we're living in. You know, so much information. I find it hard to read a book. Now I can read a book, but I find it difficult to sit down and allow my mind to settle in a calm fashion because they're so used to fragmented intomotion.

3:37 Speaker 3: Coming at me from the bloody telephone, You're not.

3:39 Speaker 1: I think that's part of what I really enjoy about the album and what I'm sure that people who listen to it, one of the things that they relate to is well that it is so relatable because so many people feel that way the way that you just described it. And that's interesting. What you said too about reading a book. You know, even that can be difficult because how do you calm your mind and not think about everything else is going on in the world. Then you also mentioned too, we have more access you know, for better or worse.

4:04 Speaker 1: We have more access to information more quickly than ever before, and you don't even know if the information that you're accessing is correct or not. And you know, with the rise of AI and deep fakes and all of it, and it's and I think that I think the album really kind of speaks to that sense of overwhelm. And as you mentioned too, you know, there's no there's no solutions necessarily offered, because what is what is the solution? I don't know, and it doesn't sound like you do either. I don't think anyone really does necessarily other than to just try to unplug from it.

4:37 Speaker 3: All.

4:37 Speaker 1: But that's that's pretty challenging in this world in which we live.

4:41 Speaker 2: Well, I mean you just what you did there was make a build up for me to Buddhism. Actually Budgies, I mean, older religions have something to offer. I think the biggest religion of our time is materialist ittheism with coats. That's the actually the biggest religion that between to it with not a huge amount of information but cleaned desperately that there's there's nothing. You know, in a nihilistic kind of way, you could say, but I think we're Buddhism. You know, Buddhism actually teaches that Samsarah.

5:10 Speaker 2: All the stuff we're talking about, this external manifestation, how we perceive things. We in fact we make this world, We interact with it, we make it so the the only the foreheads of Buddhism. On the first one, all phenomena lacking here in existence. A second, all phenomena la.

5:34 Speaker 3: That they're in.

5:34 Speaker 5: Permanent permanent, and thirdly or condition phenomena are suffering because we suffer because we cling onto things thinking that they're definite and they're real and they're stable, when they're not.

5:47 Speaker 3: Nothing is the world.

5:49 Speaker 2: Is constructed real concepts in the way of course the nirvana, so that once once you's go beyond.

5:58 Speaker 3: That, once you see beyond that, you're you're in pain.

6:01 Speaker 2: So price is possible, I think, actually, but it's not a prostlyizing record.

6:06 Speaker 3: It's a record where I love.

6:08 Speaker 2: The negativity and the craziness and enjoyed pointing fingers and and and being being an angry man. I'm enjoyed its plan of role.

6:21 Speaker 1: Yeah, I think who Wins especially, uh really kind of connected with me because you asked, you know, you asked the question, Well, you know, we have these people who are in power, these politicians and whomever. But but in the end, who wins? And of course we know who wins. The only ones who really win are the people in power, because you know, as they continue to amass more power. But I think that distrust and power structures. Again, I think it's just very relatable for people regard regardless of where they sit ideologically.

6:47 Speaker 1: I think everyone can connect with that.

6:50 Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I think I think a lot of people fed up with ideologies. Now.

6:53 Speaker 2: I was very left wing kind of guard when I was younger, and then it's actually you, so you're for this kind of bar bones ideology. But that roadmap doesn't fit anymore in the modern world, so you know. And then on the other hand, you have what's called right wing kind of nationalistic as well. And if you apply it with this country, where very angry at the way the country's turning out, and this, that and the other. But the very hero that they followed, Margaret Thatcher, was the person who deregulated everything, attacked the working class, smashed the unions, sold, made sure everything council houses, what you call projects in America could be sold off, and we sold our utility works so become everything was as probably as privatized as America.

7:44 Speaker 2: The public basically you probably you know, just about as privatized as America. And of course people at the time make a little bit of money. A lot of people were able to own their own home and all that. But eventually, of course it catches up with you and the rich get the richer get much much richer, seems to be the demographic, you know, and the poorer get really poor. In the middle class, it's not even the American middle class is very squeezed now financially, is it, you know. So and of course you know, there's one.

8:17 Speaker 2: A lot of the world leaders now remind me of that comic book film Sin City.

8:23 Speaker 3: You know, there's sort of you know, you.

8:24 Speaker 2: Look at all of them, they all they're all they're all kind of parodies. They're that bad, you know, they're all parodies.

8:32 Speaker 1: You know, well, certainly, I mean when you look at American politics, it's especially easy, too easy to see that, you know that they're they've become caricatures of of what what I thought a politician was growing up. It's it's it's unbelievable.

8:47 Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I remember coming across one or two Labor so that's the rough approximate the Democrat Party in America.

8:55 Speaker 3: And of course I always grew up. I grew up in a very very.

8:58 Speaker 2: Left wing area, very left wing, and you had you probably had to wade of votes rather than count them. It was it was hardly anybody voted voted for the other parties.

9:11 Speaker 3: It was all labor.

9:12 Speaker 2: And you look at those guys from the Labor Party, but even some for the Conservative they'd seen the horrors of the depression, the terrible, terrible poverty and what they did to people, breaking families up, terrible things happening, and they and they'd seen the horrors of the Second World War, so they really had a municipal They had a thing in them that really wanted to put something back in and make a better society. At the end of the war, Churchill would have been the big wartime leader. It was heavily defeated, and the Labor Party, the Socialist Party got in, you know, because people just wanted to change at that point.

9:55 Speaker 2: You know, when you compare the ploy titians we have now with the politicians, then they come up very very short, because a lot of politicians, whether on a big level or a lower level, are just kind of hustlers. Politics is a hustle obviously, we know that. You know America, America, you know, so it's pretty ugly. But the more of us, it's kind of nice, I think, to put a voice into the world saying yeah, if there's any message in the record, it's like, yeah, this is all it's too shell pass.

10:28 Speaker 3: It too shell pass. One way or the other, it will pass, you know.

10:33 Speaker 1: Right well, assuming it doesn't continue to just get worse with each generation. I don't know. I mean, you know, everything's.

10:41 Speaker 3: Everything cycles.

10:43 Speaker 2: You have relative you have relative levels of peace where every with with the with the Cold War, everything felt very static. There were literal walls in place. You had the Soviet system, you had the Western system, and then there's China was always this fowl, scary place, you know that even clash with Soviet Russia. So you had three kind of you know, world power, but the two main well ours obviously Soviet Russia and the West America and the West. And now of course that's all with Trump's attitudes of beauty, that's all breaking down, the NATO alliances severely weakened, and everything fills in a state of flux.

11:20 Speaker 2: But you're still essentially you're dinner with constructs and ideas in your head of how the world is. You know, when the Romans invaded Britain and eventually all the rebellions kind of died down, there was a long period of relative peace until until you know, the Roman Empire started to fall. The barbarians got in through the gate, so to speak. And normally the barbarians, I think, are invited in actually to some extent in history. You know, the thing itself have a cell by date and wants are change.

11:53 Speaker 2: Does that make sense?

11:54 Speaker 3: You know?

11:55 Speaker 2: And the West has been going for I think you get two hundred and fifty three hundred years of of these these civilizations, Chinese dynasties, they all fall. It's it's how do you fall? You know, what do you fall into? You know Plato's with the republic into you know, He's very clear you have democracy. Once democracy goes, then you get into plutocracy, rich people run in the world, and then comes totalitarianism. Well, it looks a little bit to me like that's how we're going right now.

12:30 Speaker 1: It does to me as well. Now what is UH? If you're just joining us? Of course we're talking to John Wobble about his UH, the brand new album, his collaboration UH with with John Klein, Automated Paradise, which is just fantastic. I can't recommend it enough. What's the touring situation for you? Are you are you playing these songs out live or or do you plan to?

12:52 Speaker 2: I've got a show tonight. I'm playing all the time, a playby of Invaders at Heart. We will play this live if there's a if there's a demand, me and John will go out play it because it's not not too difficult to pull off. We made an album a couple of years ago called last exit, and we were dreading being asked to play that live. In fact, it's called a brief history of now, a brief history now. We dreaded that because it was quite involved the production. Whereas this is eminently doable, you know, so if there's a demand, will go out and do it.

13:24 Speaker 2: But yeah, I planned tonight. I've got a big tonight. It's lovely day, year, lovely spring day, very warm. I'm playing shows all the time. Was in America a couple of years ago. Twenty twenty four was the last time we toured. You know, traveling's now getting kind of difficult, you know, one word, even going into Europe because we have to have a customs can't again because of Brexit.

13:49 Speaker 3: Which was ridiculous.

13:51 Speaker 2: But even the last time in Belgium, we get there and we find out we need a go box. If you've got a commercial sized vehicle it's not that big a bus, emercial side group, you have to have a go box to allow you to go on the highways in Belgium, and that means you have to have the log book, ownership registration at the van, the insurance details everything you know, all the engine number, the works. Wow, I come out to join the tour manager, who's a very good tour manager, who's just on the verge of tiers.

14:26 Speaker 2: For the frustration of this, you know, so everything you know, traveling, everything gets more and more to the eurocracy gets worse. Traveling becomes more of vassal. Whereas in the nineties with Brexit, we had open borders in Europe and you felt you could travel. At one time before ninety eleven, I had an indefinite visa for America.

14:47 Speaker 3: You know, it's incredible, and the border some guy or at the MBC eight it's jammed.

14:54 Speaker 2: You go into America a lot of times, you never make any trouble.

14:58 Speaker 3: Is a We're going to give you a multiple Can you imagine multiple? Indefinite? These are you.

15:04 Speaker 2: Know and level. When I was living in a north of England and I would run, I'd get to the airport fifteen minutes before the plane left and they'd play to the eighth the flight to British Airways, the flight to Heathrow's not left you You want to get that, yes, please, We'll call the gate tell them to hold. You know, it was incredible and you zoomed down to London really fast. You know now obviously we know flying is not right, you know, And and I was lucky enough to use Spirit Airlines when I was in America, and that was was like right, I thought Ryan Air was hardcore.

15:46 Speaker 3: Yeah, Spirit Spirit Airlines was like wow, oh goodness, this.

15:51 Speaker 2: Is budget flying was It was quite memorable more than that.

15:57 Speaker 1: You know, no doubt, no doubt. Well, Joe Wibble, it's wonderful talking with you. I'm glad. I'm glad you're able to join us this morning. We should definitely do this again in the future. But again, I love the album Automated Paradise. Are you do you have any anything else in the works with John Klein? I know you've always got a lot going on, But are you guys going to continue to work together?

16:20 Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, I'm absolutely certain. Will we get on? We have fun?

16:25 Speaker 2: Oh, I meant every week were recording because we run this community venture for tuned In, so we're we're running stuff all the time. We called in every every other Tuesday, we have sessions of people come in. Jenny Bell starts came in last week, so she's been coming to tuned in. So we did this suff Jenny Bill, so Meg Lee Chin who was around on that Chicago scene. Many is it and she comes and her hands out. There's a lot So we work with a lot of people from the community.

16:57 Speaker 1: So excellent.

16:58 Speaker 3: Definitely, the we'll definitely be.

17:00 Speaker 2: Doing some some some stuff over the over the years to come while the world's still turning. Yes, will be, will be, We'll be working together for sure.

17:12 Speaker 1: Yeah, excellently. No, that's good to hear. That's good to hear. And you know, as you're putting out new stuff and you know, it gives us a reason to have you back and we you know, would love to have you back soon. Definitely. And uh, where where's the best place to go online to keep up with everything that you're doing?

17:29 Speaker 3: Uh, Josh, I've got.

17:30 Speaker 2: Oh, I've got a bank camp page. I've got a website. Like a lot of people, I don't ever update it.

17:36 Speaker 3: It's terrible.

17:37 Speaker 2: Social media kind of took over. Yeah, so you know, sort of the combined social media kind of becomes a website.

17:45 Speaker 3: But I'm a real job. Weble on Twitter.

17:47 Speaker 2: I've got a Facebook, a Facebook page, so that's probably the best. Bang can bank camp page as well. There's a shop and e Bay shop. I can't remember the address a bit, Heather really nice one with called whatever runs.

18:01 Speaker 3: Out for me.

18:02 Speaker 2: We're doing something, doing stuff with my sons. All my sons have got a Banti and Ky. They're starting to get they're a duo. They're getting some traction now. They're playing Woemad this year and they come out with me and play live as well at times, you know. So yeah, we'll be we'll be doing stuff if you want to laugh. By the way, me and John did some versions for Cleopatra Records. Check out Start Me Up. We did a cover version of the Rolling Stuff, which so there's some fun stuff.

18:32 Speaker 3: We did Pink Floyd cover. There's a few couple of covers that are up.

18:39 Speaker 2: There on online. And I even Cleopatra set me up to play with rit Weightman and you believe.

18:46 Speaker 1: That, oh no kidding, oh wow.

18:48 Speaker 2: With Fusion Syndicate, Yeah, which is an amazing project that was going over there on the West coast. So if you check out Start Me Up, you'll have a good laugh. I will.

18:58 Speaker 1: I am going to check that out. I'm very very curious. I was thinking about, uh, I do want to play one more track At the end of our conversation today, I was thinking about playing Terminal. Terminal the end what do you think swearing.

19:08 Speaker 2: At the swearing at the very end, at the end, I used the F word. You know, I'm not I'm not proud of myself.

19:18 Speaker 1: I bet I gotta I gotta avoid that one. That it's FM American radio. What about read between the lines like that one a lot too? Did I play that one?

19:29 Speaker 3: HB? I was earlier? Yeah, that I was earlier doctor of HBO.

19:34 Speaker 2: It's a kind of piano, kind of tribute to HBO, which I love. I live in the HBO world. Was the earlier doctor of HBO, remember oz? I think was the first? Yes, the old production. I love American TV. I always loved American literature. That's kind of what the.

19:51 Speaker 3: Britishtory and aurial was about.

19:54 Speaker 4: And in a way, this is must I just need to it's between the lines.

20:05 Speaker 1: Oh oh cool, very cool. Yeah, all right, yeah, we'll play that, all right, joh wobble. We will let you go, my friend. Thank you so much for joining us today. We'll have to do this again soon, especially Matt.

20:15 Speaker 3: You've got good energy.

20:17 Speaker 1: Thank you for having me absolutely absolutely all right, take care bye.

20:20 Speaker 3: Bye, thanks Matte, thank you.

20:23 Speaker 1: I got it all right. That was the great Joh Wobble. That was wonderful to speak with him, and I'm glad that it worked out. So, uh, we're gonna play this track, and again, I really encourage everybody check out the album Automated Paradise. It is on band camp by joh Wobble and John Klein, and I really listen to the whole thing. It's really really good. But let's give this a spin. This is called a read between the lines.