Chopstick & Johnjon's New Album Will Soothe Your Soul

This full-length offering, which will be released on the German duo's own Suol Recording, is still packed with a certain amount of punchy groove, but vocals from Chopstick & Johnjon's confidant Chris James wrap the music in a layer of breezy melancholiness. Inspired by the extreme seasons of Berlin, their home base, Chopstick & Johnjon put their heart and soul into their debut album—the dedication to detail and narrative couldn't be more apparent. We're thrilled to be offering an advanced stream of this lovely LP a day before it's released to the world. I'll surely be spooning with many of these tracks when the stresses of staring into a computer screen for ten hours makes me want to go all Kanye on my monitor.

THUMP: How are you guys doing?
Chopstick & Johnjon: We're good! We're just in the studio now working on our live set for our show this weekend. But we're still a bit hungover from last night.

Oh yeah? What did you guys get into last night?
CS&JJ: Well Chris [James] came over and he's going to be a dad in April, so I think he just wants to drink before he can't have any fun. He took it out on us!

That's hilarious. So you guys are based in Berlin and it seems like there's been a lot of changes in the city over the last decade. What's you take on the scene right now?
I think when we moved here it wasn't just for music. Back in the day a lot of cities in Germany were very expensive to live in and during that time Berlin was so cheap. That was one of the reason for us to go—you could live an artist life pretty easily. You just meet so many people who are living in Berlin or moving to here, so we learned it was really great for the label [Suol] and business to be here. You run in to so many people and for that it's perfect.

Is there a lot of creativity in the city right now?
Well I think ten years ago it was a bit better. It's still a melting pot for artists and has a big subculture, but now we think that it's not as focused as it was five to six years ago. Back then everyone was moving to Berlin and nowadays so many people have their base in the states. In LA or San Francisco or New York—or maybe Barcelona, but there are still a lot of people here in Berlin doing music and art-y stuff.

What type of inspiration do you get from the city in a non-musical sense?
I think the inspiration we get from the city is that it changes so much. Every city is beautiful in the summer, but not as beautiful in the winter. Berlin is just extreme. The winter is so horrible that people move away during that time. It's ice cold and has Russian winds. There are no sunny days here in the winter—it's dark and grey and you feel like you only have a couple hours of daylight. In the summer it's beautiful, so you really feel these harsh changes. The winter gets everyone depressed. The happiest person might even be sad.

On the other hand we get so inspired by what we've built here. We have our studio here, our friends and so many people we can collaborate with.

What was the overall vibe you were going for on the album?
I think when we started we didn't have an overall vision, but the main thing we decided before we started was that we would have a different work flow. Normally, we start a track and finish it and it's done. This time we decided to gather a lot of ideas and get musicians in, like Chris, and record on these rough ideas. We would put it all to the side for a few months and then get back on the material and finish it in one go—so that was different. The whole idea and vision of the album basically came as we were recorded it and as we discovered what we liked and what we didn't like. At some point we realized the direction we wanted to go and eventually we finished it all in one take.

So there was a lot of experimentation going on?
Oh yeah! Some of the first track ideas we had are totally different from what's on the album. So there was a lot of transitioning and experimenting while we tried to figure out where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do.

Is that usually your tactic when you produce or was that type of process more geared towards an album?
Well it's another reason why we thought the album would be a really good idea. Our workflow throughout our careers is often pretty perfect and we became so fast at making music. We wanted to break that mold. It works, but at some point you're still a creative person and you realize that it can become boring making tracks that way. That's why we took on the album and really tried to change our process of producing.

The track names kind of have a theme—you have titles with words like erase, dreading, dissolving and pining. It seems there's almost a theme of suffering or at least a lot of "negative" words. Was there a purposeful theme?
Honestly, before you just mentioned it I had never noticed that. Now that you say it I guess that's true. The overall vibe of the album is not really happy and is more melancholy. It's mainly due to the singer, Chris, who wrote all the lyrics. We really feel like the vocalist has to transport the emotion and feeling of the songs. We also left it up to Chris to come up with the names of all the tracks.

Can you tell me about a moment in your careers where you took a step back and just felt, Wow.
Last year we were in Detroit and decided to check out Movement Festival, even though we weren't on the bill. We just starting drinking some beers and were in the crowd dancing and feeling like kids again. We walked over to see Maya Jane Coles' set and decided to stay for a while. She'd given us some great promo feedback on our last EP, which featured the track "Listen." About ten minutes into the set, she dropped the track and everyone in the crowd went fucking mental. We were just standing their in disbelief like, "What the fuck is going on?" We never really realized how popular the track was at that point. That was a great moment.

That's awesome. Can you guys tell me one embarrassing fact about each other?
[Laughs] Why does everyone always ask us this! OK. There are a couple embarrassing things about the two of us together. For example, if we are in an airport for a layover we both go for a shit at the same time, so it's like were next door neighbors on the toilet. We starting making a list of all the places we did it. Paris—done. London—done. Berlin—done. Then we stopped. So that's one story that's weird—taking a dump at different airports. Sometimes it would take us a while to find toilets next to each other, so we could still have a conversation.

Oh man. Have you guys ever seen Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle where the two girls play Battle Shits? You need to watch that ASAP. One of the best scenes in movie history.
[Laughs] No, we haven't seen it, but that sounds amazing—Battle Shits!

David really does think Harold & Kumar is one of the best films ever made. @DLGarber

Be sure to check out Chopstick & Johnjon's video for Pining Moon streaming on THUMP!