INTERVIEW: DEJIMA
Photo by John Kim
NOVEMBER 2024 | BY TABITA BERNARDUS
Dejima, also known as Kaveh Hodjat, is a psychedelic indie-rock artist that is consistently following his sonic yellow brick road. He proves to have an impressive gauge on what feels right– whether that be building on a vision for a project all the way through, or following a gut-feeling into a new genre. We had the chance to talk to Dejima about his new EP Macdougal, the significance of New York City, the sweet surprises his instincts led him to, and the importance of sitting in the season you’re in.
For those unfamiliar with your work, which track from your entire discography would you say feels the most authentic to your identity as an artist at this moment?
I feel like every project is an exploration of something. Macdougal being like, ‘Oh, let me see if I could make an acoustic project.’ And Swollen is like, ‘Oh, let me see if I can make a very psychedelic rock, grungy project.’ But if I had to choose one, maybe just for fun I would say “Tastemaker” because I'm really proud of that one. Especially at the halfway mark of the song, there are a lot of syncopated moments where the bass, drums, and the guitar are all kind of fitting together. I think the way I listen to music and the way I play and make music is very rhythm-focused, and I think that's a rhythm-focused song.
Was there a song that you kept going back to, or an artist that you were diving into as you were making Macdougal that influenced its sound at all?
Yeah, definitely. I just bought my 12-string acoustic guitar when I started making this project, which is at the forefront of the whole marketing aesthetic– just me holding a 12-string. I have a playlist on Spotify literally just called ‘12-strings.’ A lot of Wings stuff. Wings was a big inspiration. There's a song called “Little Lamb Dragonfly,” and the way he uses the 12-string in that is really cool.
A lot of Simon Garfunkel, and a lot of modern stuff too. There's a cool band called Drugdealer, and like Sylvie and Kate Bollinger– it definitely feels like a world that all these artists live in, and I don't know how to describe it exactly, but they play with a lot of dry 70s sounds and 12-strings. Almost like bringing back the Laurel Canyon vibe, or a sound from the late 60s or 70s, but having a modern twist on it. I think that's kind of what I was trying to do with Macdougal.
There's also a song called “Soul of the Sea” by Heart, which is, single-handedly, the song that made me want to buy a 12-string. I recommend listening to that.
Talking about Macdougal too, congratulations on its release! It feels very warm and familiar which is a nice thing to play in my headphones during this season. What did the writing and recording process look like for that project compared to Swollen which I know spanned over a few years?
I didn't know it was a project for a long time, which I think kind of happens with most of my projects. These were four songs that had just been floating in my demos folder, and I didn't know what to do with them. I've spent the past year and a half working on my first album which is yet to be finished. I'm still working on it, but we've got the tracklist down.
And these were all songs that were in contention for being on the tracklist, and unfortunately just couldn't make the cut. Not because the songs weren't good, but because it just didn't fit the story and narrative we were going for, and like, the energy and the sound and that type of stuff. I realized they're a lot more acoustically driven, and it's always been a life goal of mine to try to release a more folky acoustic project. So that worked out really well.
That's kind of where this project spanned from, and then it became its own thing.
The EP is named after the street in New York. Was there a specific moment or feeling walking down that street that ignited an urge to immortalize it into song? Talk me through why you named it Macdougal?
I think it was multiple really good memories that were made there. Every time I would go to New York and visit– because Emerson's in Boston so that's where I made most of this project, and my brother lives in New York – I would take frequent trips down there. And I would always find myself on the street somehow. I don't know why.
I remember the first time I was ever on Macdougal Street, my brother was giving me a tour of this place, and we both grew up with extensive Beatles knowledge– Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, all that stuff. So seeing Café Wha?, and the street that Bob Dylan’s picture was taken on– just like all the iconic spots, I was like, wow. It was a surreal feeling walking through it.
Every time I came to New York again, I would end up on that street somehow, whether it was planned or not planned, and I'd be like, ‘Oh, I'm here again. That's funny.’ And then every time I was there, whether it was me with someone I looked up to, or with my girlfriend, or just me by myself with my headphones in and having a really nice coffee or something– there was always a moment where it felt like on that street I was accessing an alternate universe.
It just made me think about how you could always be thinking about what the best-case scenario is, and then it kind of makes you fall out of touch with what you have at the moment. Especially with being in my senior year of college and about to graduate, [I’m] starting to realize that all my thoughts are just about the future and thinking that like, ‘Okay, I could think about all these possibilities, all these places to move and like, where to go.’ But [instead] using that street as a way to contain those thoughts to a location and then be like, ‘Okay, I'll actually just be chill for now and not go crazy thinking about this.’
But Macdougal is a vision of a future that I'm aiming for.
One of my favorite tracks from your EP is “Enjoy Yourself,” and it's filled with crunchy guitars and holds an air of embracing who you're becoming. Talk to me more about that track– how it came to be and what it was like to collaborate with your friend Will.
That was the first song that me and Will wrote together, and it's the first of many. This album that we're working on– almost every song is us two together.
Not last summer, but the summer before that, me and Will and a few other people all did a one-week songwriting trip together to see how many songs we could make, and hopefully a project would come out of that. In that contained week, we realized that us two really bond songwriting-wise. From that trip came “Enjoy Yourself,” and we wrote it in, like, 15 to 30 minutes in his backyard. It was very light-hearted and on a summer day. And we wrote it, but we didn't write the lyrics. So we [just] had the melody and the composition.
Fast forward one year later, this past summer, we were gonna perform at an open mic that our friend was throwing, and 15 minutes before we went on, we were like, ‘We need to perform the song, but we don't have lyrics yet.’ So it was a great writing exercise because we knew that people were going to hear it– it was like 40 to 50 people in this room, so it had to be really good. But we had promised ourselves that we were going to play it in front of people in 15 minutes, so we couldn't overthink it because we needed to finish it. It was a really good songwriting trick, or game to play.
Those were both notably days with really good weather, and I think it affected the sound of the song a little bit because we were both in really good moods. It’s the song off the EP that is telling the listener to chill for a second and just enjoy what you have.
That’s cool. I like how you acted on what you thought was right for that moment too and felt like you needed to do that song right then. Was there any other song– it doesn't even have to be within this EP too– in the past that you have made by instinct or on a whim? Or do you feel like your process is more structured?
I have two ways I usually go about writing, and it's how I organize my music on my laptop. One is a “serious folder,” and another one is a “messing around” folder. “Serious” is when I'm sitting down and I've composed the whole thing on a guitar or piano, whatever I'm writing, and the vision's there. I get this vision down, and I have the lyrics down, and when I go into the DAW, it's just a matter of matching what I'm hearing to the vision that I have in my brain. But “messing around” on the other hand, has no expectations– I'm literally just experimenting. It usually starts in Logic and I'm just going through sounds and being like, ‘Oh, this is cool.’
A lot of songs will start with me just messing around, and then halfway through, I'll be like, ‘Oh, this could be something worth releasing.’ “Tastemaker” was a song that happened with. I think from 11pm to four or five AM the whole thing was pretty much done, other than the saxophone. But from like 11 to 12 or one, I was just messing around with the electric drums. And then by two or three AM, I had the second section done with the bass and the structure down.
I was just not eating, not sleeping, not drinking, anything– just sitting at my desk.
I know your discography has various flavors to it. You can go from psychedelic rock to, like you said, kind of an acoustic, folky sound to it. Considering your ever-changing sound, who would you say is your most unlikely influence that people would be surprised to hear?
That's a really good question. I want to say Tyler the Creator, but I feel like that's pretty expected, mainly just because he's rapping
Actually, there's this jazz vibraphonist named Cal Tjader, and it's just like, fully instrumental. Just a dude shredding on vibraphone, and he has a band behind him. He has an album called The Prophet, which I really love. I don't know how much jazz comes in my music, like how much people can detect it, but it has an influence on all the stuff I do. So I would say either that, Tyler, or like ASAP Rocky.
While we're in your Spotify playlists, if you could come up with a dream festival lineup, with yourself being one of the performers, who would you like to see on the list with you?
Tame Impala would be up there. I've yet to see him live. Actually, the day I was gonna see him live was the day the lockdown happened. He played LA and then was going up to San Francisco, and I was leaving with my friend to the show when we got the alert that everything was shutting down.
Definitely the Beatles– that would be an obvious one. Another one that I've really been into recently would be Mid-Air Thief. I don't know how he would play his stuff live, but that would be really interesting to see. And then my last pick would probably be– I'm gonna go with J.J. Cale.
I know you're a filmmaker, because you've done some amazing short films for Swollen. Do you foresee any more projects coming out that involve visual images that go with your new music at all?
Yeah, definitely. I think that's where my most passion lies– the intersection of film and music together. Something we've discussed is an animated thing. I don't know what that would look like, but one of my managers, Luke, is really passionate about animation, and that's cool. I think that would be really fun.
I mean, with Swollen, we had no idea how we were going to pull it off, and we pulled it off, so I'm sure it'll be fine. But yeah, I think that's what I think is the coolest– how we can combine my music side and my film side. And it all goes down to storytelling. I think that's just the core of it. And finding new ways to do that is what I hope my career can be.
What are you hoping your fans take away as they listen to this new EP?
I hope that they can just chill for like, 10 minutes. I think from Macdougal, that's the vibe. How I definitely was forcing myself to chill was by making this, and so I hope I could share a little bit of that. Especially with the election and everything that's happening, I think we could use some chilling out very soon.