Q&A by Bec Harbour
Jim Moginie’s contribution to Midnight Oil cannot be denied, as a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter he wrote or contributed to most of the band’s iconic songs. Moginie’s other projects include touring/recording two albums with The Break, a surf/space rock outfit featuring members of Midnight Oil, Violent Femmes and Hunters & Collectors, plus six solo works with the latest being Murmurations.
Murmurations was written specifically for electric guitar and was inspired by a natural phenomenon that Jim witnessed in Ireland, the massive gatherings of starlings that occurs during winter evenings. This quiet music, played live and completely solo, resounds with ethereal tones that comfort and surprise.
We had a quick Q&A with Jim about Murmurations, how it sparked a new creative process, what to expect from the upcoming shows and using Col Joye’s vintage EMT reverb plate to get some of the beautiful sounds on the new record.
Murmurations is a very beautiful word, and the act of starlings in their ‘murmurations’ is also very beautiful as they wheel across landscapes. Talk us through how the act of murmuration inspired your latest album?
The movement of murmurating birds is amazing to witness. I first saw them in Ireland during winter, and we’d go to the same spot night after night to watch them at the end of a farm road. It was addictive. Often they would gather over a wooded area and swoop down in contracting, expanding and twisting clouds. There were literally thousands of them. I tried to make the music echo that, trying to imitate nature, so I flatter myself to think I could come close, but the Irish birds were in my mind as I played, and the improvisations that make up this record certainly twist and turn, repeat but not quite repeat.
I love how each day has a piece of music assigned – your Monday is very gentle but with somewhat of a ‘creeping feeling’ like a Monday – do you find your music atmosphere/mood changes with the days of the week? And of course impacts your creative process…
Thank you. I named the improvisations after I did them only because Monday felt like Monday, Thursday – Thursday etc. It’s also a celebration of the ordinary, as the birds do these aerial ballets every day around the same time. Each day was different of course, as they are, but this idea of honouring the quotidien each day with a piece was a sweet thought. And then one day, the birds were gone, heading up to colder Scandinavian climates as the weather was starting to warm up.
Is it easier or harder to write without lyrics? Some artists I know write the music to the words they already have…
It sure was was a different process to the songwriting that Midnight Oil did. I never had a lyric first/music first methodology anyway that I would strictly stick to.
This was a real departure for me because it was completely improvised. During lockdown, I was one of those people that played music online as a phone video, as a way of keeping sane and hoping others might be helped too. I did around 140 of them, and put up one a day, but at the end of it I went into my studio in Sydney with a great recording engineer and put down a few more improvisations properly, with good microphones and some nice analog equipment, and a vintage EMT reverb plate that used to belong to Col Joye.
I didn’t really listen to them until I came back from the Oils world tour last year. I found that I really liked the character of the pieces. They had an unguarded, wayward and fresh quality, and I realised they hung really well together as a quiet record you could play at home, or talk over at dinner. I like to call it a late night party record you’d play after everyone has gone home.
The lack of lyrics and a voice makes the listening experience more open, less being told what to think. It’s solo electric guitar all the way, and it breathes because I never tried to repair it or tighten it up. It is more in the jazz/ambient world, like a Bill Frisell or John Scofield kind of thing, but I wouldn’t neccesarily file it under that, its just me being me and the sum total of all my influences flying long on the guitar. It took two days to make but I was 66 years preparing for it. So in that way, it was an easy process, and is one of my favourite records.
Other projects – you have so many other projects during and after Midnight Oil, and they are all a bit different – do they all satisfy different creative points, or is it the person/people you create with that drives the project?
Yes I do. Not so much as a persona, but a life in music can go down many roads and by-ways, and my curiosity is the thing that drives it.
Touring for Murmurations – what can we expect from the shows?
Well, it’s two Jims for the price of one. I’ll be doing the support as well. The first half will be the Murmurations record on electric guitar with accompaniment in the form of visual pieces by Robert Hambling. The second half will be me on piano and some other instruments, which is what I call my Tip Jar mode, singing and playing songs I like, and have written with Midnight Oil or as a solo artist, plus telling a few stories, and a few well chosen covers.
Tour dates
BRISBANE – THURSDAY, 19 OCTOBER – OLD MUSEUM (STUDIO) https://www.oldmuseum.org/event/jimmoginie191023
MELBOURNE – THURSDAY, 26 OCTOBER – BIRD’S BASEMENT www.bbjazz@birdsbasement.com
ADELAIDE – FRIDAY, 3 NOVEMBER – WHEATSHEAF www.wheatsheaf.com.au
