Interviewing FFFFest: Joseph E. Martinez of Junius Talks Catastrophe and Inspiration

You have concept albums, and you have Concept Albums. From loose song cycles about hot dogs to in-depth portraits of 18th century diplomats, an album with a theme can offer cohesion while delivering a great story. Sometimes the creation of such a record is painstaking and deliberate, and at other times the themes appear almost by accident. In the case of The Martyrdom of a Catastrophist by Boston rock outfit Junius, we’re most definitely talking about the former. Sequestering themselves away from family and friends in confined spaces including shacks, and farms - and as we learn here, a storage space in Austin - the band set about creating a musical document of the life and hard times of philosopher and controversial scientist Immanuel Velikovsky. We spoke with lead singer and guitarist Joseph E. Martinez about the inspiration behind the album, eliminating distractions, and what influenced this nuanced and varied collection of songs. The band will be playing the black stage on Sunday at Fun Fun Fun Fest at 1:05 p.m..

Tell us about the recording of this album. You were, at some point, recording in a warehouse here in Texas and a shack in Louisiana? Why so many odd locales?

Initially when we were writing the album we were on tour all the time, and we didn’t have a set place or a rehearsal space. We just decided to tack on a writing sessions before or after tour, so we’d meet up, maybe two to three weeks prior or after a tour and just sit around. Basically we rented an apartment in Shreveport on a swamp, and we were in a storage shed in Austin for a month - wherever we all could stay together in one spot without having any distractions. We all lived in Boston, but we all had our girlfriends, and we all had jobs and distractions, so we decided just to get out of town and concentrate. Basically the four of us would just sit in a room - and that was another rule we set for this album, was to not bring outside ideas into the room - and just kind of come up with everything as we’re playing. Doing it that way definitely added more of an intense isolated vibe to it. All we could look forward to was playing music, and not going home to our girlfriends or seeing family or anything. It worked out, and we kind of did it on purpose and kind of out of necessity. I don’t know if we could do it again. Being in a small, confined space for weeks on end and just leaving to eat, basically…it definitely got a little intense. I think it comes out on the album, too. I think it was really good for the album, but I don’t know if we’ll ever do that again. (laughs)

Sure. It seems like a one-time approach, and my next question was going to be if your different settings impacted you…but it seems like the focus was all in what you came up with in a room.

We wanted to do something out there, and this was our first real album. So we said, “Let’s just do something out-there, and really conceptual and do something weird before we write our pop hit,” which was a joke we had. I was reading a lot and I came across Immanuel Velikovsky. So I was like, “We have to write about this guy”, and I bought all of his books and read everything I could find about him, and there was plenty of inspiration and story here that we could use. We did a basic template for [the album] but no music was written. We were just writing and wrote with focus on his birth to death and I just highlighted the points in his life that were substantial for becoming this catastrophist. We just kind of honed in on certain sounds that seemed to highlight that kind of feeling.

What about him resonated with you? What about his story needed to be told?

To be honest, I was grabbed by his theories at first. He believed Venus was near the earth at one point and joined our orbit, and this orbit disrupted our solar system and caused the deluge and everything in the Old Testament or Egyptian texts. That’s what he believed happened, and I thought it was crazy, out-there cool, and something cool to envision. And he was a well-known psychoanalyst, he was a scientist, he started the Hebrew University. He was a serious guy, and he decided to kind of abandon all that to go along with this crazy theory…something he truly believed in. And you read his memoirs and his correspondence, and he put his whole life into it and it was a struggle. He just wanted recognition for this idea, and he was banned and boycotted and called names and shunned by the scientific community. And it’s kind of interesting ‘cause, just like anybody trying to do something in art or science or life in general…something comes over you and you have a passion for something and it becomes an obsession, and there’s this great hope you’re working for something greater than yourself, and then it comes out…(laughs)…and… It’s always like you have those movies where it’s like Einstein coming up with the Theory of Relativity, but there’s dozens of other stories with a guy like Velikovsky who waits…aaaannnnddddd…doesn’t get anything.

When you guys were together and writing, aside from these ideas, was there any band or aesthetic on which you all could agree? Something you all liked?

Ummm, I’m trying to think. We all have similar influences. I think for Dana [Filloon, drums] and Joel [Munguia, bass], it’s a little different for them, maybe? But Mike [Repasch-Nieves, guitar] and I have similar musical tastes. For me…I want [our music] to feel almost classical in a way - as classical as rock can be without being like repetitive post-rock. I listened to a lot of Philip Glass while we were recording.

Junius: [website]

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