Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on November 2010

l to r: Anton Toorell, Christoffer Öberg-Runfors, Jon Lennblad, John Lindell
Courtesy of Zankyo

Since the early ’90s, guitar bands have been enthusiastically stripping vocals out of their music, creating the styles we now know as “instrumental rock” and “post-rock.” But for Swedish quartet Yamon Yamon, things have gone in the opposite direction.

Named after the 1992 Spanish movie Jamon Jamon, the band started seven years ago with only guitarist Jon Lennblad and drummer Christoffer Öberg-Runfors. “At first, they played more like post-rock, but then Lennblad recorded a couple of tracks with vocals that got released on our Television EP,” explains bassist John Lindell by phone from his Stockholm apartment.

Lindell came in later, and lead guitarist Anton Toorell just recently, adding new layers of melody to Yamon Yamon’s matrix of intricate guitar lines and skittering rhythms. This interplay can be heard on their full-length debut, This Wilderlessness, which has just come out in Japan on indie imprint Zankyo ahead of their inaugural tour here later this month.

“No Depression” may be the best song on the album, with Lennblad’s vocals whispering above sweet, surging waves of pristine guitar that build to what Lindell aptly describes as “a long outro that really puts you in a nice vibe—that makes you really feel good, in a way.”

The album was originally called 665, a tongue-in-cheek reference to “the number of the neighbor of the beast.” “After a while we became used to it, but our record label said it was too unserious,” Lindell says. “Then Christoff, our drummer, came up with ‘This Wilderlessness.’ Maybe it’s a reflection of society: that you can’t hide—there is no wilderness in the world today. It’s just the internet, television, cameras… we are surrounded by information and industry.”

Lindell cites groups like Joan of Arc and the Chicago indie-rock scene as shared influences among Yamon Yamon’s members. However, one can just as easily imagine the group listening to a Japanese instrumental rock band such as Lite or té, whose members founded Zankyo to release less commercial but still worthy music—“ignoring profit,” as their mission statement puts it.

For an emerging Swedish band, the chance to visit Asia is a dream. “Japan is our first trip outside of Europe,” says Lindell, who has just gone freelance as an audio engineer to give himself more time to tour. “Zankyo heard our record and got excited and wanted to release it in Japan. We don’t know what to expect, but we’re very grateful for this opportunity—it’s not every day you have the chance to go to the other side of the world.”

It seems there will be at least a few Japanese fans eagerly awaiting their arrival, too. “We’ve had some mail through Facebook and MySpace,” he says. “You are really lucky sometimes when a fan writes to you and tells you how great the album is and what it means to them, and that they’ve listened to it a lot.”

After Japan, it’s back to Stockholm to begin work on a new album, which Lindell is very much looking forward to. “I think with the new guitarist, Anton, we have a fresh start and a different feeling,” he says. “We have a new song we played on tour that was born in the rehearsal room and we all had a part in it—it really seems like Yamon Yamon. The biggest change is that before, they would record the drums first. Now Jon comes up with a riff, but then we all start playing, and hopefully at the end of the rehearsal we have a song, and we all feel we have put our own hearts into it.”

Lindell is enjoying the band’s current run, but circumspect about the possibility of commercial success in an age when listeners hardly buy music anymore. “I hope we can continue releasing records, and we would like to increase our fan base so that we could be more independent from work,” he says. “I don’t expect to be able to live on our music, but if it could provide us with some form of support so that maybe we could tour for longer, record more professionally… Musically, we want to keep on evolving and to still have a lot of fun when we play—that’s the most important thing.”

Yamon Yamon
Experimental indie band from Stockholm and guests. Nov 25, 6pm, ¥3,500. Club Quattro, Shibuya. Tel: 03-3477-8750.