In Conversation: Joy Guerrilla

Joy Guerrilla’s new album, The Park Is Closed, is available now.

Based out of Los Angeles, California, Magdalena Daniec and Adam Grab have been releasing music as Joy Guerrilla since 2016. Drawing on influences that range from ‘70s funk-fusion to electronica and prog, the duo sat down with The Eisenberg Review prior to the release of their latest album, The Park Is Closed, to discuss their music, creative process, influences and more.

Your new album, The Park Is Closed, looks to be a companion piece of sorts to your last effort, Skyline. The sounds of that album are very bright, idyllic and warm, conjuring the West Coast atmosphere where you reside. This record seems to take on a more of a plaintive and almost pensive sound to the instrumentation. Walk me through the creative process for the record.

Adam: I’d say some of the songs we probably came up with the bare bones ideas for around the same time as we were working on Skyline, but, something about it, I don’t know if it was intentionally or more of a subconscious thing, we just didn’t gravitate towards developing them into full-fleshed songs. It kind of happened when listening back to Skyline that, as you said, it had a brighter, kind of daytime feel, so to speak…. I feel like Skyline kind of evolved on its own into a very bright kind of piece, whereas this we went in more with the intention of really bringing up the darker elements and the night time, lower frequency energy.

Maggie: I feel like it shows not just from a songwriting perspective, but the production and recording as well. I think we already knew that it was going to be more dark and so, from the beginning, from how we kind of recorded, wrote and overdubbed all of the songs, that was the idea, to kind of contrast both records.

Is that how the creative process, Maggie, typically unfolds for Joy Guerrilla? What does the workflow look like between you, Adam and the other band members that you bring in? What motivates you? It is driven by immediate inspiration or do songs typically get shaped over a longer period of time?

Maggie: You know, it’s usually kind of a spark that happens in the moment and it happens really quick, so then we try to record it as soon as possible, like a voice memo, and then we’ll come back to it later and try to develop it and then we’ll get some musicians in. Usually we play with the same drummer and guitar player, or at least have for the past few years, so we usually bring them in and we kind of hash them out. Then we record the bass and the drums to tape and from there we take a few months to do overdubs. That kind of how the process has been working, wouldn’t you agree?

Adam: Definitely. We lay the foundation really tight with drums and bass on tape so they really gel nicely. We have the sequencing in our heads at that point, but we’re not 100% sure with atmospheric noises and the flourishes and the spatial arrangement of the overdubs, so yeah, as she said, that usually comes later and that’s a lot more tinkering and fine tuning and being really brutally harsh on our own takes. If we hate it, we cut it and we do the whole thing all over again.

Maggie: Right, deleting all of these keyboard parts and spending an hour finding the right synth part. 

Adam: When you’re working with analog synths, you don’t have preset patches, so it can be hours of tweaking the cutoff and the resonance until you have the exact synth lead that you think fits the song.

Absolutely, which begs the even deeper question: why do both of you make music? What draws you to the artform?

Maggie: I have to think about this for a little while… I feel like that is such a difficult question to ask because I can’t imagine not making it.

Adam: I feel like you should tell the decisions you made to continue doing music. I think that’s very important.

Maggie: I actually didn’t grow up in the United States. I grew up in Poland and prior to coming here, I was studying piano, classical piano, unlike the music we make now, and I had plans to be a physicist when we moved to the United States when I was 15. I didn’t speak any English and I just got thrown into high school in Orange County where I was just so extremely lost. Coming from a small mountain town in Poland to California, I felt music was the only thing that… remained the same. I was always really, really into music, but more on the listening part. I was really into prog rock and all different types of music, but then I got really into jazz and dove deep. That stayed with me for years to come, and I can’t imagine not making it now.

Which is as much an answer to the question as one could hope for. I think a lot of us are drawn to music because it speaks to something innate in us. Music is something that allows us to find our place in the world in a totally unique way. Adam, how about you, why do you make music?

Adam: I was very fortunate to grow up with a dad and stepmother who were both professional musicians of the working class, gigging variety. They played a lot of corporate events and a lot of wealthy LA weddings. They managed to raise me and my siblings on that income and it definitely helped to have people who were constantly practicing and listening to music in the household with a very discerning ear. I definitely was super fortunate to have that in my childhood environment. As I got older, I found in the garage a cheap Yamaha bass guitar that my dad had. I didn’t even know the difference between a bass and a guitar, I just thought “Oh, a guitar with kind of fat strings!” I just kept plucking away at it and sounding out songs that I liked. It helped that I can have kind of an obsessive personality as well, doing it for hours and hours and hours. It became kind of an innate thing, like you mentioned, but also kind of an escape when times were bad and nebulous. It was good to have it to always fall back on and mark my own progress. There are a lot of things we do where we don’t even see the progress and it was cool to be doing something where you can actually not just measure and mark your own progress, but be rewarded by being able to engage with other people.

Photo courtesy of Joy Guerrilla.

That makes total sense and speaks to an undercurrent that I hear in Joy Guerrilla’s music. I hear almost a searching in the music that the two of you make that seeks to break free of the overstimulation that we all experience  based on the way we consume art and media. You astutely admit to not being immune to that, so, I’m curious, if you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about how music is consumed today, what would it be and why?

Maggie: Something that we talk about a lot is that nowadays so few people are encouraged to develop their own taste. They’re just being told what to like.

Adam: Not to come across as high and mighty, because we literally are all subjected to this and it's impossible to avoid. That’s the power of marketing that speaks to the human caveman brain.

Maggie: Right, but it doesn’t even have to do with one specific genre. I feel that even being around jazz musicians in school, people will look up to people who they don’t even fully understand, they’re just being told they’re great. Obviously it comes from people we look up to, but I just wish there was more encouragement for people of all ages as they develop to really figure out what you really like and delve deep. I feel like that is missing from a lot of people’s lives, not just in music, but in designing their own lifestyle.

Adam: To piggyback on what Maggie is saying, I think a big part of being honest with what your tastes are is that you have to be okay with being solitary. You have to be okay with introspection, whether you don’t like what you find or do… With the overstimulation in particular from social media, but even before that with technicolor advertising that blares in your face and the kind of constant media bombardment that our generation as middle-Millennial going back to Gen Xers and even Boomers experienced, it’s tough to even find a place where you can be alone and actually think about what you actually like. Oftentimes what you actually like is a reflection of being able to assess your own strengths and weaknesses. I do think people aren’t even given that space and it’s not any fault of their own… It could very well be the bombardment of marketing, media and all these things that just hammer down on them what you need to like in order to, I don’t know, have access to whatever the in group feel like is the preferential mode of appreciation. When people don’t actually have time to introspect on what they truly like or dislike, then of course, you’re going to fall prey to whatever is promoted as the thing to like and dislike... I know it’s a bit of pontificating. We don’t believe we’re better than it at all, but it’s something that we have to consciously tell ourselves… Have a little bit of skepticism when something is pushed on you. Am I reacting to the thing, or an image of the thing itself.

Pontification is good. It’s how we develop these aspects of self awareness in our own musical taste. In listening to The Park Is Closed, it seems as if part of your answer to this overstimulation is in nature. Is getting out into nature and removing yourself from that stimulus part of the message here?

Maggie: That’s definitely a part of it. We have a little school bus that’s our band bus with solar panels on it, and getting out into nature is one of our favorite things to do. It fits a bed and is a self-sustaining kind of thing. It’s how we like to reset our minds and spirits.

I think the world needs more of that, certainly. Are there any artists who come to mind that really inspire you?

Maggie: I would have to say George Duke and Herbie Hancock, as far as players, especially the ‘70s-era Herbie. All of the stuff he did on Headhunters. Those are the two biggest that come to mind, but obviously there are so many more.

What about you Adam?

Adam: I think I’m probably in the same camp as Mags. Because we do the primary writing and production, I probably admire people who are producers and songwriters more than specific bass players, so I probably would also say George Duke and Herbie, to be honest. Even as a bass player too, George Duke’s Moog bass is some of the coolest most tasteful bass phrasing even when compared to other bass players. So, on two levels, George Duke would probably be up there… Growing up in Los Angeles, when I was fresh out of high school was when a lot of the LA electro-beat scene was getting big, like the Brainfeeder crew and Flying Lotus. I do think their sonic sensibility did have a huge impact on the way I like things to sound.

I hear a lot of that as I think about the sound of The Park Is Closed and I think listeners definitely will too. I want to close, Adam and Maggie, by asking the question I always ask artists when I first meet them: what are three records that you’d recommend to the audience and why?

Adam: Definitely Don Blackman’s self-titled album from 1982. You take the elements together - the time period and the styles of music that he was fluent in and coming from - and you would think, “Oh, it’s a smooth jazz album,” but it really marries funk and jazz and really solid groove in the most unique way… Dennis Chambers on drums, the rest of the band was from Jamaica, Queens. Amazing album.

This will be so cliche, but it’s got to be Aja for sure. Steely Dan’s Aja. It’s a very Boomer answer, but production-wise, songwriting-wise, and also in terms of us connecting on music, it was one of those bands and albums that we both had from our childhood from a recording and songwriting sensibility.

Third one, what do you think Mags?

Maggie: Let’s do Arthur Verocai… There’s just something in that record that is so haunting and so magical.

Adam: It’s one of those records where you listen to it, and even without any of the backstory, it really hits you. The fact that some of the singing and some of the instruments aren’t perfectly in tune, but as a cohesive picture it works so well.