KEN mode a success at bringing the noise

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This article was published 24/06/2015 (4105 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s hard to call a group that won a Juno Award as recently as 2012 and earned a Juno nomination a year later a musical fixer-upper.

But that’s what the Winnipeg metal group KEN mode did over the winter with their new recording, Success, which they will unveil at album-release party Friday at the Good Will Social Club.

In a way, they are starting anew with their sixth album, choosing to move away from the metal-hardcore sound they’ve been known for since 1999 to take a leap towards a stripped-down, no-nonsense noise-rock-inspired recording.

“I think realistically that’s where we were as artists and music listeners,” says guitarist-vocalist Jesse Matthewson, who along with his brother Shane, who plays drums, and bassist Scott Hamilton, make up KEN mode.

“I haven’t really been listening to a lot of metal or overproduced stuff, I’ve been focusing on the music of my youth and even some of the more noisy kind of punk things going on today. The sound is based on the environment we’re in right now.

“I consciously made it catchier,” Jesse adds. “We didn’t feel like trying to fit that square peg into the round hole anymore.”

The realization of KEN mode’s shift to noise-rock was helped, in no small part, by legendary engineer Steve Albini, the mastermind behind hundreds of influential albums over the past 30 years, two of the most notable being Nirvana’s In Utero and the Pixies’ Surfer Rosa.

You’d think a man with that kind of clout would be tough to get in touch with, but getting Albini to join in on the project was surprisingly simple.

“I emailed him,” Jesse says with a little chortle. “I emailed and asked him, ‘Will you take my money to record us?’ and he said, ‘Yes. I’ll take your money.'”

Albini records only one way — analogue. He refuses to use computers to make records and strives to capture what a band sounds like in a live setting. That was exactly what the members of KEN mode were looking for as they delved into creating a less modern-sounding album.

“Albini’s way of engineering a record… for me it’s very much the classic way an album should sound. He’s always been the high watermark for what I though the perfect record sounded like. We tracked everything live and essentially what you hear is what you’re gonna hear from us as a live band. There’s really no studio trickery going on at all,” says Jesse.

That what-you-see-is-what-you-get attitude carries over into the way Jesse candidly speaks about the music industry and the necessity for music lovers to pay for the art they enjoy in the format it was specifically created in.

“In a climate where people are used to stealing music, with smaller bands like us it’s really starting to hurt,” he says. “Industry opportunities shrink up when you don’t sell records.

“We’re really trying to stress people to actually pick up the LP, especially given that Steve Albini is like Mr. Analogue because it’s the way this thing is meant to be listened to.”

Erin.lebar@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @Nirerabel