Jonas, what was your entry into the music scene? Most crucial event, incident, religious revelation, perhaps, that brought you to music?

Like all children of anthroposophical upbringing, I started playing the flute very early in life. At the age of 6, I turned to the piano. Soon after I picked up the guitar and started singing to it. Later, as luck would have it, I joined the legendary Bar25 conspiracy working as a waiter with my days off on Sundays and Mondays. In Berlin, Monday is a weekend extension opening a temporal window for more music and culture. Association with the club and its fervent social milieu would lead me to incredible events far beyond the venue. Goldmund at the magical Biesenthal Lake particularly stands out as a formative wow moment for me. My first Fusion Festival and especially after-hours at the Nation of Gondwana at Waldsee reflecting the sublimity of nature combined with the beauty of human form, action, freedom, deviance, creativity, enthusiasm, togetherness. Massive emotional experiences at these events have rooted me in music even deeper.

Special personal influences on you over the years?

My friends have a major impact on me. Some have influenced me most directly and profoundly – through collaboration in making music. But also indirect influences: singer-songwriters Nick Drake and Elliot Smith among others. To name also Cat Power and Sufjan Stevens… Early works by Devendra Banhart and Coco Rosie whom I stumbled upon during my “bohemian” years in Paris. They actually encouraged me to produce music of my own and to be less shy or fearful of exploring my eccentricity taking it as far as it gets.

Speaking in terms of genres rarely captures the essence of music. How would you render your sound in words – what sonic phenomena should audiences anticipate at your gigs?

Speaking specifically about the Feathered Sun? Pinning it down in non-musical and non-performative terms is really difficult. Because even we do not know a priori how our shows would unwrap in each particular situation. The least problematic and concise definition would be something like “shamanic house” or “electronic world music”. Basically – apart from our shorter “playlists” which we throw together for the festival scenarios – every set we play is unlike the previous one. Repetition begets repetition and leads to boredom. We find much more artistic virtue in the novel and crave it. We arrange our pieces differently every time and deliver them in different constellations.

The common denominator – what marks each performance on the basic level –is perhaps the BPM which is notably slow-paced; and the ritual as a theme. Our music enthrals the audience making it part of our performance. The idea is to share the moment so everyone in and around lives it most fully and intensely. It’s the in-and-out kind of relation, perfect and genuine symbiosis: we galvanize the situation, the audience responds to our music and we respond to the audience, to the vibe it feeds back. At some points, when we feel the audience is falling into a trance-like state, we fracture the seamlessness of progression taking the experience into a different, sometimes opposite direction. At this point we may switch from mellow solo acoustic guitar piece to something boisterous and instrumentally complex.

It’s difficult to classify ourselves also for the reason that Feathered Sun is a rather loose and ever drifting conglomeration of individuals with all of them being talents in their own right. Having the repertoire drawing from the preferences of five members and in addition so often from those of various guest collaborators and many fellow travelers makes our output very diverse, diffuse and categorically ambivalent.

In terms of binary oppositions, in the optics of structuralism, what sort of phenomena (social, individual, musicological and so on) are you confronting and challenging with your music/poetry?

Our resolute strive toward interconnectedness clashes with greed; our letting go negates holding on; our freedom manifests itself through annihilation of fear…

Why underground? Why is this self-imposed anonymity? What’s wrong with being “famous”and “popular”?

Self-imposed anonymity is an overstatement. Things tend to grow naturally in time and we actually tend to them with love and care. Making our erratic collective into a commodity which would be easier to market is simply not our goal. We are not opposed to acclaim and popularity. We love our audience, we have a message, and would love to reach out to more people – so our performances are even more of an interaction, more of a ritual. But an artificial audience is not our target. Hype is counterproductive in our concept of artistic achievement. We believe in natural development wherever it takes us – heights or abysses.

People dance to it, but is it really dance music? It is definitely not the kind of music that shakes most clubs… It sounds dramatic and melancholic at times… Difficult in its rhythmical or harmonic structures, it seems to aim at something other than the standard somatic responses.

It’s definitely celebratory and groove-based. But as death is a part of life, melancholy as a leitmotif can’t be avoided or ignored. All arts aim at the interpretation of human feelings. The deeper the interpretation, the worthier are the arts. It’s a bittersweet dance music for the mind. I think the most important criteria of music is whether it hooks you or not. How honest and personal it is. I generally prefer tunes that are more subdued.

What themes guide your lyrics – what ideas or motifs do you find yourself returning to?

With Feathered Sun it is definitely about a journey back to our essence – it being part of nature. Literally and metaphorically, our music can be reduced to four elements: water, fire, air and earth.

How chance (vs. planning) is important in production? Improvisation vs. method…

85% of improvisation. 10% planning. 5% pure chance.

What do you think unites all the members of Feathered Sun?

Friendship, vision, complementary skills and all of the above.