Welcome to a parallel universe…
A sprawling meta-province littered with technology that has multiple limbs and lavish grins. Magnificent winged sausages glide overhead while sublime looking burgers rise high like houses.
Snake people lurk in some shadows. Monkey people lurk in others. Weird grotesque fat cats can be found in one corner while many other mutations can be found in between. Some are just made of bone. Some have horns. Others have impossibly long and slender legs. Stick around and pry through enough windows and you might just spot a squid-like creature attacking its room mates.
It’s a universe that’s both familiar yet totally bizarre and strange. Aztec-like patterns imprint on steam punk schematics with surreal results and everyday objects from washing machines to organs are given their own unique soul and character.
And slap bang in the middle of it all? We have the life, death and eventual rebirth of Kaptain Karnival.
Some critters in this make-believe cosmos believe he’s an enigma. Others say he he’s a deity. No one truly knows… Besides Jem Penufnik, a man also known as Jem Stone. It’s him who brought this whole universe to life. Not just visually but musically, too, as The Legend Of Kaptain Karnival is fully immersive feast for both ears and eyes.
In accompaniment to the stunning high quality coffee table hardback graphic tale that you can lose yourself in for hours and find something new on every occasion, the sonic side is just as bewilderingly subversive and funk-fuelled. Sometimes sleazy, occasionally creepy, always quirky and full of surprises, it’s the type of future music that our hippie foreparents may have imagined in the 60s. Just like his illustrations, it’s both ancient and way ahead of its time. It sounds a bit like this…
Of course there’s a high chance you’ll already know what it sounds like. Jem’s been part of the UK beat tapestry since the mid 90s and was a founding member of the Finger Lickin’ Records crew – one of the most high profile and consistent labels to dominate the breaks movement of the 2000s. Anyone who’s picked up a record by the likes of the Plump DJs or Drumattic Twins, to name but two key acts from that era, will have held Jem’s artwork in their hands. And his musical output as both one half of Soul Of Man and now as a solo artist for the last 10 years, has been just as prolific and distinctive.
The Legend Of Kaptain Karnival, however, is a whole new level. Not just his most ambitious project to date, but also a very deep and meaningful self-finding journey. Find out why…
Credit: Chris Lopez
Take us back to the inception of this project…
I’ve always told stories with my art, in one way or another. Whether it’s answering a brief or recklessly playing music and translating that into something visual, I’ve always loved the whole process of being able to articulate a story. So it was a lightbulb moment during lockdown as I started to piece this album together. I already had one or two tracks under my belt and I was looking for an interesting narrative to tie it all in. I didn’t want to be literal, just find ways of bringing it all together in my own head. Something visual. It was a very sudden, ‘Why didn’t I think of this sooner?’ moment.
From there I started visually imagining the story, and so musically it developed at the same time. These things kind of grew together… Even though I wasn’t quite sure what I had when I started, it began to crystallize throughout the process. Towards the end it was very clear exactly what the concept was and how these pieces, a lot of which were very subconscious, came to light.
Brilliant. The whole creative process is fascinating in that way. It’s almost out of your control…
Totally. Once I knew visually what I wanted to do, it gave it a sense of purpose. That said, I did want it to be an album first and foremost. And the idea of the book inspired me because I really missed that tactile aspect of an album. I really wanted to make something that you hold and pore over the same way as I did for the first time with albums by the likes of Pink Floyd or Emerson Lake & Palmer. Something you can really hold and sit down and immerse yourself in.
Yes! Having followed your work since the early Finger Lickin’ days, this level of bringing your art and your music together kinds feels like this is the project you’ve been incubating your whole life?
It really has been. As you mentioned, I got sucked into the whole Finger Lickin’ thing and that properly utilized both my visual and musical interests. When I came out the other side of that, I really wanted to do something like that, but I was still very affected about what I had done before. I was questioning things a lot. What’s it for? Who’s going to listen to this?
Rather than art for art’s sake?
I guess. I mean dance music is very functional isn’t it? It’s something you listen and dance to, it’s also something people use to mix into other pieces of music. After years of working within club music, and having that dancefloor heritage, I think it was impossible not to wear that approach heavily on my sleeve but to me an album is being able to step back from that.
I totally understand that. Although I’d say the Jem Stone sound isn’t functional in that sense. It’s still totally for DJs as much as music lovers but maybe more the DJs in the weird back room or that strange tent in a weird corner of a festival that you walk past and go, ‘Hold on, let’s have a little look in there’ Vibe.
I love that comparison, thank you! That’s pretty much how I see it, too. That kinda off-the-beaten-track, halfway down that little mushroom path that you went down at wrong o’clock and wondered how you got here, type of thing. So there’s definitely that. And there are also themes in the book I wanted to explore and hopefully people will resonate with.
Well there are two really clear themes for me visually. And that’s food and sex. Burgers and long legs popping all over the shop. Maybe that says more about me as a reader. Which theme shall we start on?
Firstly it’s brilliant that you picked up on that and there is definitely that in there. But start wherever you want to!
Okay, well I’m not too sure if Kaptain Karnival is dead? Or if he’s just going on an ayahuasca trip? Or he’s going right the way through the afterlife and being reborn in a way? Perhaps it’s literally just a dream of his or something? But on the food and lust side of things I wondered if maybe there’s a seven deadly sins thing going on here…
You’re on the right track with a few of those things. Especially the deadly sins. For me Kaptain Karnival is an enigma. He’s someone who has played a part in your life, or on Earth, or in the universe, at some point. He was once celebrated by an ancient civilizations. Maybe he’s a godlike figure? Maybe it’s more frivolous than that?
The whole concept started with this image in my head of a circus monkey skeleton with his broken rusty cymbals. I don’t know where that image came from but it was so striking to me because it was something that was once joyous and celebratory and fun, and had now been lost to time. So that’s generally the theme of the book, really. This sense, or feeling, or atmosphere, that there’s something special that’s been lost to time and the consequential desire of trying to seek it out and reincorporate it into our lives.
In this sense it’s magic, it’s mischief, it’s lots of things. For me that says something, speaking as someone who’s middle-aged and feeling adrift in life a little, working out what I wanted to do next. But that perspective and sense of time will be very different to others. I wanted to keep the narrative quite ambiguous in that sense so it resonated with people in their own personal way. Tell me about your food observations…
Well, the more I was looking at it, the more it kind of popped out to me as a dominant theme. I love food, especially the food you’ve incorporated into your illustrations so I wondered if you were playing with our desires of it perhaps Kaptain Karnival was maybe the devil on our shoulder urging us to you know break the rules or do something or take risks in that type of way?
Yeah, you’re right, the food is very much that temptation thing. Fast food is quick, naughty gratification, but it is delicious. You indulge in these things even though we should know better at our age. It represents something.
And the line between food and erotica? Like the sausages which are very phallic. Or to me they are anyway!
Haha, well yeah it’s this crossover isn’t it? With that sense of carnal desire and erotica and food. Whether to gorge or whether to be sensual with it. The track Voluptuoso is all about that. And you’re right when you say about perspective and focusing on things. Everyone will see different things that appeal to their desires.
How about Late Night Check-In At The Neon Tuxedo Hotel? Looking into all of those windows, I’ve focused on something new in that image every time I’ve looked, which is about 40 times now!
That’s right at the end of the book. A period of reflection. A realization that whatever it is you’re wishing for might not be what you wanted it to be. The world is full of strife and anger and jealousy, but it’s also full of life, abuzz with everything and everyone mucking on. It’s full of joy, it’s full of hardships and everybody has their own drama. It’s very easy to make presumptions about people’s stories, about whether they’re sad or happy, but we never know unless we know them, right? I guess if I was to take this artwork further, like a full animation or something, then I’d focus in on each of those windows.
Oh that would be amazing. How far do you think you will take this?
Who knows? I love the concept of immersive theatre and performance art and imagery like Kaptain Karnival might lend itself to that. But it’s all baby steps, this is the first time I’ve done anything like this. Or even seen anything like this. My original idea was to do a vinyl box set but the budget wasn’t working for me. I was lucky enough to stumble on Velocity Press. It was quite a journey and then great luck finding someone who understood my vision and willing to take it on.
Having managed and co-written book projects, I was going to ask about this! There’s no big profit to be made unless you’re selling major units. How much did the reality of costs and production impact the size or ambition of the final release we see today?
Oh I’d done all the artwork and written all the music by the time I’d connected with Velocity and they’d agreed to release it. Obviously the sky is the limit in terms of publishing quality but we found a good solution that worked for everyone. For me the main thing was to find a platform I could work with who understood me and could promote it themselves. Self promotion, for me anyway, is soul destroying.
Yeah even shopping something around is painful isn’t it?
Right. And finding the right person to release this was really painful at points. I’d almost given up hope really because musically I’ve always hit this problem that my music doesn’t really fit in any specific genre or a specific sound or ‘scene’. Even when it comes to DJ promo I have no idea who I should target my music to. But what’s great about Velocity is that there’s a club culture theme to all of their output which will expose my art, my music on a different kind of angle rather than it sort of going out to the usual the club crew.
This is really interesting as the club crew who you knew before in the Finger Lickin’ days would now have grown up, many no longer in clubs, but are at a point in life where art is something they might want to invest in.
You’re right, we are the ones now with kids or we don’t go out as much and may be looking for something deeper. What is lovely, since I returned to things like Facebook, is seeing how many people still appreciate my artwork or have tattoos of it and make the effort to get in touch. That’s something quite remarkable about now compared to before. Prior to these times you’d sell records and go on tour but the interactions were very one-way. The records got pressed up and sent around the world but I’d never hear anything about it again until we went to go and DJ in Australia or something like that. We never really got any personal feedback while Finger Lickin’ was alive and kicking. So it’s been very humbling to have people get in touch about things I did years ago which means something to them.
Let’s just big up the Finger Lickin’ legacy for a second. You created your own universe. Years before I became a journalist I was buying your 12s! I can still remember the artwork.
Well thank you. It was the combined efforts of Justin and Abel and everyone involved. It was a great time for a lot of it. It was such an amazing musical climate when we started and we were reflecting that. The wider sense of breaks, funk and hip-hop was the most appealing to me. Much more than the clubbier side of things. I’m happy that we stuck to our guns, though, and kept it fun. Many others in the breaks world streamlined too much for me. The whole sound got streamlined too much. But at that stage I knew I needed to find something else to inspire me creatively.
It sounds like you’ve been finding yourself or rediscovering yourself ever since?
Yeah. I’d often thought about whether I should be doing art or doing music, feeling jack of all trades but master of none. I was trying to find my place, trying to work out what it is that I want to do. Kaptain Karnival epitomized that period in its sense of curiosity or sense of exploration and questioning. The world became a very heavy place, during this time. We had lockdown, we had Boris Johnson, Trump, conspiracies, Brexit. There’s so much to feel disheartened about but I do think that there is some sort of underlying magic out there. And that’s what I’m trying to navigate whether that’s on a global level or much more personally.
Where do you navigate next?
I’ve got an idea for another book and album project, some other ideas in progress and many things that I want to do. Kaptain Karnival is the big thing for me now, though. It’s been my baby and a really interesting project which I’ve learnt so much doing, including on a nerdy side like spot-varnish and die-cut printing and all sorts of things that I’ve never done before. So yeah, I hope anyone who’s interested gets to find time to check it out and thanks to everyone who’s supported it so far.
Jem Stone – The Legend Of Kaptain Karnival is out now
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