Norwegian quartet Pom Poko make intense music, marked by jagged, unpredictable grooves and structural switch-ups. Guitarist Martin Tonne is a jazz-schooled shredder whose fuzz-laden leads and wild use of effect pedals strafe their art rock songs.
Previously influenced by the multitude of ideas found in K-pop and hyperpop songs, Tonne says his band decided to base latest album Champion around the sound of four people playing together in a room.
“We thought a lot about rock bands that sound natural,” he says. “We wanted to keep things a bit less cluttered, idea-wise and production-wise.”
The music hasn’t been simplified, though, and Tonne’s playing hasn’t been defanged – instead, it’s been distilled, so we see a sharper focus on what makes Pom Poko such an intriguing prospect.
It means there’s little reliance on traditional drum beats or off-the-peg chord progressions. Meanwhile, Tonne’s playing is eruptive, with a barrage of atonality, and a focus on dynamics, from spindly, quicksilver licks to roaring chords.
His technique delivers buzzes, metallic rattles, squeals and moans, utilising deadened strings and harmonics as often as traditional notes. At times, such as on his excellent solo album, Perita, his guitar can sound more like a trumpet (Coral Pt. 2), while on Champion it sometimes feels like it has more in common with a keyboard (Pile of Wood).
All of which is to say that Tonne has a uniquely diverse ear as a player. Like the other members of Pom Poko, he has a jazz background and, while you might not hear it immediately, it’s played a key role in developing his approach to playing and writing.
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“I don't think we would write our music as it is now if we didn't have that influence,” he says. “We have stuff that comes naturally to us, or ways of playing, that wouldn't come to us if we hadn't played jazz.”
You can hear it in action on the likes of Pile of Wood, as vocalist Ragnhild Fangel sings a descending run and Tonne quickly mimics it on the guitar. It’s like two jazz soloists reacting to each other, but refracted through the prism of Pom Poko’s “noisy, sugar-coated pop”.
“There are certain chord sounds and certain melodic things that make you think about jazz immediately,” clarifies the guitarist. “That kind of stuff we avoid quite consciously.”
There are certain chord sounds and certain melodic things that make you think about jazz immediately. That kind of stuff we avoid
A more distinct influence on Tonne comes from West African guitarists. He points to the album Mauritanie: La guitare des Sables by Moudou Ould Mattalla as a particular recent highlight.
“It’s an electric guitar record but that technique comes from a much smaller instrument with two or three strings that you play with your index finger,” explains Tonne.
“So he is playing like that, but on the guitar, with these trills between two strings. I don't understand how they do it, but lots of the phrasing in that kind of music is super-inspiring to me.”
While the band’s influences range far and wide, so too does their writing process, with Tonne, Fangel, bassist Jonas Krøvel and drummer Ola Djupvik all sharing writing duties.
“This is the only band I’ve played with where it works to write with as many as four people,” Tonne explains.
“Most of the times I’ve tried doing that, it ends up being a huge compromise… That doesn't mean that we don't work really hard [in Pom Poko], but we have this philosophy that we're going to make the songs that we're going to make.”
It’s this freedom that yields Champion’s rich barrage of styles and genres, from pop-punk, to country, to math rock, and beyond. Tonne says tracks can either be a Frankenstein’s monster – comprising parts written years ago and kept on the shelf – or they’re written in a matter of hours. There is no in-between.
As a result, songs like Go are a single idea carried to an endpoint, a sonic sugar rush with fast tempos and jackhammer rhythms; while in contrast, Growing Story and Big Life morph and evolve, having been allowed to stew.
Amid it all, Tonne often occupies his own outpost – he veers away, carving out space or pushing into tight corners.
He says his achilles heel is an addiction to buying new fuzz and distortion pedals. On Champion he used, among others, the Way Huge Conquistador Fuzzstortion and Z.Vex’s Fuzz Factory, as well as an amp from the 1960s by a Norwegian brand called Telrad.
“It's got this super, super-weird top boost kind of distortion thing that's really special," enthuses Tonne. “It’s like a fizzy distortion when you push it, so I used that for lots of songs.”
I put everything on ‘10’ as a base sound with a lot of short slapback delay that has a modulation to it. I got a real kick out of that
The other formative part of his Pom Poko tone is his electric guitar: a Danelectro ‘67 offset, which he picked up just after the band formed and would have spent its life on the shelf, were it not for a quirk of fate.
“I bought it really cheap because I thought it looked nice,” admits Tonne. “I put some really heavy strings on it – because I like .13 or .14s – but the bridge couldn't handle it, so it intonated terribly and was impossible to use. I just thought it was a crappy guitar and I didn't use it for a long time.”
Later, when Tonne’s go-to Telecaster broke, he re-strung the reject model with “normal strings” and found the intonation issues were fixed – the Dano’s day had come.
“It sounded good!” remembers Tonne. “We were preparing for the first Pom Poko gig, and I was playing with my Blues Junior amp. I just put everything on ‘10’, distorting it a lot, as a base sound.
“I had been playing country music before that, so I was using a lot of short slapback delay that has a modulation to it, so I got a real kick out of that sound. I just tried to play stuff that sounded nice with that. It automatically ruled out big harmonies and full chords with that much distortion.”
It’s a nice analogy for the way Pom Poko have created Champion: a tried-and-tested format put through the ringer, mangled and reimagined, that ends up creating something truly unique.
- Champion is out on August 16.
