In the midst of our conversation, I pressed
Tesseract vocalist Dan Thompkins
to qualify their music. He took a few
seconds, stared at an abandoned beer
on the table and called it "Meshuggah
meets Textures meets Michael Jackson".
I gaped, but we were running out of
time and I couldn’t ask for specifics.
As an artistic engine, Tesseract puts out
music driven by wildly disparate influences
and motivations. If you are looking for
some kind of guiding ethos, the closest
you could come to identifying one would
be a brand of introspective honesty. They
do what feels right for each concept
they are exploring in collusion. For Polaris,
Dan's harsh vocal throttle was discarded
in favour of more brooding exhalations.
The harshness has returned on their latest
album Sonder, but has been deployed
with an almost calligraphic prudence.
Their albums are very distinctly "concept",
obsessed with crafting worlds out of ideas,
each tracing a prolonged meditation on
some human tragedy or psychological
wonderment. What do I mean? "Sonder"
denotes acknowledgement of the fact
that other people build and experience
lives as immediate, as pertinent and
as vivid as one's own. Essentially, it is a
deconstruction of empathy, done with
the intention of dismantling self-centered
delusion. A sentiment drawn from passing
through numberless unfamiliar lands,
the band weaves the idea into a sonic
combination of belligerent precision
and stark minimalist withdrawal.
It is hard to have a lukewarm opinion
about the band, because they offer
no lukewarm fantasies. Despite being
what guitarist James Monteith calls "still
very much a bedroom-based band",
their melodic offerings exhibit an
effortless dexterity. Either they rehearse
endlessly, or familiarity with complexity
is just part of their creative zeitgeist.
In conversation, they offer generous
expansions on ideas that they have
possibly talked about far too often. On
stage, they partake of stunning spectacle
that invites exaltation. The headbanger
standing right next to me in the 2018
Mumbai gig had brought his girlfriend who
clearly hadn’t caught these guys before.
She tried to slip away from the jostling
crowd, but he pleaded with her to not miss
Deception. Within a couple of minutes,
she was trying to slip into the moshpit.
Here’s what the band had to say when
they carved out time for us in Mumbai.
We are aware that you don’t
like to identify or label your
sound as exclusively ‘djent’.
But since you tend to be
as considered one of the
bands representative of the
genre, what do you think
of the state of the genre?
More specifically, what do
you think of the word in
relation to your music?
Dan Thompkins: I’m slightly
conflicted. I like the word, but I
also don’t like it. Oversatured,
I think, is a good way of
explaining our reaction to it.
There’s a lot of bands doing it;
playing within this genre. You
can see, throughout time, how
different genres have come into
being on the back of each other.
They’re doing one particular
thing, and then it grows as a
genre. And djent has become,
almost like a small version of nu-
metal. I don’t think, necessarily,
that any of us would ever refer
to ourselves as ‘djent’, purely
because every record we have
created sounds very different
from the first one, which was
definitely more djent-sounding.
We kinda have different sounds,
and it is hard to conform to the
particulars of a single genre.
Tesseract is known for
expansive, evocative
storytelling, which is
reflected in the length of
your albums. In the light
of this, why is Sonder only
limited to 36 minutes?
Dan: Quality over quantity. It is
one of those artistic ethics that
we have always adhered to. Also,
we like to do things differently.
To put it simply, people expect
large albums. Whenever I listen
to an album that is 30 or 40 tracks
long, I get bored, sometimes
straight away. For an album of
that length to sustain the quality
of music is also quite rare.
I also feel like the replay factor
of Sonder is quite high, even for
myself. By the time I get to the
end of The Arrow, I often feel like
I want to listen to it all again.
During the making, that was
a certain aspect that we quite
liked about Sonder, and one we
haven’t explored in the past.
Of course, that’s not to say that
from now on, every album we
release will be 36 minutes long.
But we are trying something
different, thinking and crafting
outside the box, trying to be
creative with as many facets
of the music as possible.
Who knows, the next album
might actually be 20 songs long.
But it is still very much
a concept album.
Ironically, it is possibly the
most conceptual album that
we have ever created.
Which one of you went
to The Dictionary of
Obscure Sorrows and
found the word Sonder?
Dan: That was me. I came across
the word about 6 or 7 years
ago. I mean, I discovered The
Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
a couple of years ago, but I
have been aware of the word
‘Sonder’ for several years.
I just remembered the word,
and I revisited it by googling
it. I realized that it was coined
by John Koenig (the Swedish
storyteller). The word has a
feel, a vibe which each of us
have experienced as touring
musicians passing through
different lands, different
cultures, traveling the world.
And often, we are bystanders,
perhaps driving through a town
that passes quite quickly.
It’s an interesting way to be,
looking in on other people’s
lives like that. What are
they doing? Where are they
going? What’s happening in
their day? Are they worried
about something that we can’t
relate to, or something that
we can relate to very easily?
I also think it was just a nice
way to include our fan base
in a more creative way.
Right. You also invited your
fans to send in recordings,
some of which have been
incorporated in the album.
Dan: Yea. So, it wasn’t just
the concept of Sonder that we
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