1. Hi Jon Chang! How are you these days? What are you doing now since Discordance Axis had broke up? Any history about the tragic missing of Discordance Axis?
Well these days I work for an animation company. I write, storyboard, and direct 3d animated films. I also model and design levels for video games. Presently I have 3 major projects in the works. The only one I am discussing at this time is Scratch Trigger Era. STE is an all out action/comedy "anime" that's...unusual. It has a lot of action...almsot like a kung fu movie but with giant robots and guns haha The series also has some dramatic elements and a deep story...If I had to make a comparison to existing stuff, I'd say FLCL meets Otaku No Video meets The Good the Bad and The Ugly meets Hardboiled. My company Studio Grey is currently producing this series in conjunction with an animation company called face2face animation... You can check out the trailer at: http://www.f2f-inc.com/downloads/STE_small.mpg" title="http://www.f2f-inc.com/downloads/STE_small.mpg" target="_blank"http://www.f2f-inc.com/downlo.... Of the other projects, one is a live action series and the other a video game. Neither title is announced yet. Muscially, I do a thrash metal band with the guitar player of Mortalized, that specializes in old style Japanese metal sped up to modern day thrash speeds. I also sing for War Chalking, which is a band with Dave Witte (former D.A.), Steve Procopio (former D.A. tour member and Human Remains) and Ted Patterson (former Human Remains). War Chalking is more grind style music but it's very different than the stuff we did in D.A. I'm not sure how D.A. fans will like it. The first War Chalking track will be available on an upcoming D.A. CD titled "One More Final", which has covers of D.A. songs by several bands as well as some remixes and rare D.A. tracks (like our unreleased "Sega Bass Fishing" cover).

2. How old are you now? I do believe that you have your own daily job.. how you separate your time between job and scene activities?
Well I never was involved in the scene or any social activities. I'm a work-a-holic. When I'm not at work I work on my own stuff. That includes research, writing, drawing, etc. Presently I am 30 years old.

3. You're doing some artworks yourself right? Also some of Discordance Axis releases being decorated with your art, what makes you come up with the ideas to make those artworks?
Well everything has unique inspiration. I can't really cite a specific influence. Sorry ^_^

4. I do concern with the simplisitic yet futuristic sounds and the complexity yet jazzy musical structures delivered by Discordance Axis... and the lyrics had been written is way too deep for me... sometimes the words play with some metaphor that made it just like a work of poem. How long does it take to make songs like that? How much time consume Discordance Axis to finish a complete set of LP/CD etc?
Well TID took quite a while. 2 years to write it and about 2 years of writing before I even heard the music...A lot of the DA lyrics were written before the songs and then I would go back and adjust lyrics to what Dave and Rob wrote. With War Chalking the music took Steve 2 years and me about 1 year to write the 1 song. With the new thrash band I just got the first track and I've been working on it about a week? It's tough because I want everything to be in Japanese like Sex Machineguns, Loudness or Mephistophles ^_^

5. Where does Dave Witte now? Do you still keep in touch with him? Or is there have any band with him been built since Discordance Axis has disbanded? War Chalking? Tell me how it sounds look a like.
Well Dave moved away so I rarely see/talk to him. He does Burnt By The Sun now full-time. War Chalking is a project for him. Me and Steve are much to slow to make that a full-time band haha. As for War Chalking, I can't really explain it. I'll post a sample when we get the song recorded ^_^

6. I'm still wondering, what's Jouhou actually? Pikadourei.. what's that? Sometimes Pikadourei reminds me to the noise act from Japan, Nikudorei. Any connection with the person behind Nikudorei itself?
Jouhou means information. I saw it at the end of a Japanese news cast and liked how it sounded. Pikadourei means Slave of Bright/Joy. I made the name up when I did a collaboration show with Nikudourei once. I also love Pikachu and I am his servant ^O^

7. 'The Inalienable Dreamless' LP/CD still remains one of the best of many grindcore releases throughout history for me. Is that the final release of Discordance Axis? Do you still working with Hydrahead?
D.A. isn't planning on writing another LP. Both War Chalking and the new thrash band I'm doing will be released on Hydrahead.

8. Concerning to the 3 way split with Corrupted and 324 released by HG Fact.. i feel the out put of it was pale as i assumed that wasn't the best of Discordance Axis as there only 2 songs being delivered. Need your comment and explanation here.
We originally planned to record 2 more songs, but Rob's health was so bad he couldn't play more than 1. Actually though I really like Ikaruga and Berserk. I think Ikaruga is our best song overall ^_^

9. Are you considered yourself political? Did Discordance Axis a political band? How about your new band? Is it still walking through the exact same line like the way Discordance Axis had been conducted?
D.A. went through a lot of changes. Some of the subjects early on were very political but as time went on I wrote things that were more personal to myself. I feel my older lyrics are very poor in general because they are very superficial and really not very risk or open, like good art should be. The new bands are totally different than D.A. I don't want to keep doing the same stuff again and again.

10. How about political condition in your place when concerning to the cultural activites, daily life, the system, the people etc. Are you financially stable? Do you find it hard to keep on living in the New Jersey? Have you been involved in street protest lately?
Well life is a lot of waves. Sometimes good and sometimes bad. Now I'm very happy and doing well. I haven't been to a street protest in a long time...I was at a gathering about 3 days after 9/11 in Jersey City. There was a candle light vigil to remember the dead. Actually I didn't even know it was happening. At the time I had no job and was volunteering to help organize/load supplies for the emergency workers in NYC. I got back from a run into Manhattan and the entire waterline was filled with people holding candles.

11. What is favourite food? Tell me some worth bands to check out from your hometown. Do you like reading books/zines? Tell me your favourite one. I do believe that you have your own favourite list of bands, mind to tell me?
Hmmm fav food these days is vegetarian duck panag ^_^. I read lot of books and magazines but I don't have a favorite really. Time is pretty good overall though. I don't really like too many bands. Mostly I listen to Slayer, Sex Machineguns, Mephistophles, Melt Banana, Mortalized and World. I like a lot of film and video game soundtracks too.


12. Do you consume drugs? Beers? Are you vegetarian/vegan?
No, no and vegetarian ^_^

13. Tell me your opinions about the condition of mother earth nowadays. As it slowly down to rot, what's thing come to your mind that you think deserved to be heard by all those evil-richness-scumbag that keep continuously sucking those mineral greedily out from the soil?
We live in a technologically advanced time and even if solar or HE-3 or hydrogren could be harnessed for reusable clean fuel source, it would still take decades to switch everyone over. It's a very tough problem with no easy solution. Clearly pollution needs to be addressed as aggressively as possible and money needs to be channeled into clean energy research. But that's always the problem, right? Money. In the US there are a lot of initiatives for clean energy transportation and we've seen maybe 2-3% of the market switch over. This trend will increase as gas prices rise. Once again, money driving things...I think it's the nature of the world unfortuantely. People are ultimatley very selfish and have a tendency to see only their surroundings. Even if they can see beyond their horizon, what will they have to sacrifice to try and make life easier for others? Why should they? What ties people together? Ask yourself, would you die for a stranger? Would you give up a measure of your comfort for someone else you've never even met? For most people, the answer is no. I think over population drives the demand for these resources. Some people are saavy enough to take advantage of this. Life is full of taking advantage of other people. I often wonder what even defines good and bad? Is it religion? Or state? Or ??? Our personalities are all developed by exposure to others... This is an impossible question to answer really.

14. Your future plan? Any plan about making a 'come back' for Discordance Axis soon?
Continue to work and develop my different projects... I don't think we'll ever do D.A. again.

15. After years you get involved in this phenomenon called 'scene', what you've got through this? What you've expected to gain in the first place when you've decided to entered in before? What made you interested to get involved? What's the condition that you hope for to be adapted and to be practiced logically/practically in this grindcore scene?
Hmmm I really have no idea about scenes or cliques. I am not a very social person. I don't like being around other people very much. Not to mention, in our area no one liked our style of music so I really didn't talk to or associate with anyone in to this music except for letters and later on e-mail.

16. Which shows you played enjoying a lot all these while? Discordance Axis had played at the Slap A Ham's Fiesta Grande festival. Did you find it something like 'very special' show to be played with as there are many 'extreme sounds' that have similar characteristic gathered and people from almost everywhere will come and see?
Well the shows I really enjoyed playing were mostly in Japan. It was also the only place that we played that I felt the bands were on the same area as us. Bands played nothing but fast and had all their emotion in the music. America, by contrast, was mostly bands playing short spurts of fast stuff and then a lot of mosh parts in between. When we played in Japan I got to see bands that were really into the same style as us...Gore Beyond Necropsy, Senseless Apocalypse, SOB, 324, Melt Banana, Multiplex, Ruins, Mortalized, and many others. It was also very exciting to play with these bands because after seeing them we wanted to play harder and faster because their energy inspired us. I personally didn't really care about playing the Fiesta Grande to be honest. Rob and Dave were the ones who wanted to do it and oddly Rob quit the band before we went haha. Actually at that time I was so pissed off in general I didn't really want to do anything haha. I have to say that my performances in Japan in 97 were very good mostly because I hated doing the band at that point and I was so angry at everything all the time. But there was a turning point, when I saw "Evangelion:Death Evangelion:Rebirth" at a theater in Osaka my entire perspective about music/art changed. In many ways that work saved my life. I owe Hideaki Anno and the people at Gainax a lot for that.

17. What's your opinion on marriage and on having children? Did you find it necessary as a bond for a couple to keep on living together? Or is it such a state of mind (or psychology) in proving that they are already shared their life?
Hmmm well I don't really have an opinion. If people want to get married, have kids and take care of them, that's great for them. Unfortunately a lot of people take on this responsibility to lightly I think. I'm not ready or very interested in either marriage or children. Maybe I havn't found the right lady yet ^_-

18. As being an 'American', how you feel about the recent issue of US government getting involved on attacking the Iraq in the first place?
Well Saddam Hussein was clearly not an ideal "leader" of the Iraqi people from the position of many people living in Iraq or the USA. Should the US have gone to war to depose him? I think so. Unfortunately I think we should've dealt with this as far back as the first President Bush. His power base is largely a result of US backing and we had a responsibility to try and repair the damage we did to that country by backing him in the first place. In today's day and age, I do believe that the US still should've gotten rid of Hussein but I also think we have let our responsibilities in Afghanistan slide as a result of our presence in Iraq. Afghanistan is a nation in dire need of help. I do think Bush Jr. has tried to vastly simplify the issue of "terrorism" and the new war between the lines, a matter that is so incredibly complex I have no ideas in how to approach a resolution, and his solutions are not working very well. I didn't vote for him in 2000 and I will not vote for him in 2004 as I do believe he is the wrong man to be leading America. These recent explosions of violence in Iraq point to a lot of different things. Up to this point a lot of the anti-US violence has been carried out by insurgents exported from other Muslim nations. This is very similar to what happened in Afghanistan during the 1980s. Theocratic Muslim nations such as Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc. emptied out their jails and sent some of their worst elements off to jihad. (The French did something similar in Vietnam when they exported former Nazi/SS troops to Vietnam where they brutalized the countryside.) I have recently devoted a great deal of study to this matter, trying to elarn as much about the history of Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan as possible as well as trying to understand the origins and motivations of the players invovled. Wars based on money, religions and blood lines shame the human race as a whole, yet we continue to indulge in these affairs time and time again. I wish I could believe there was another way other than bloodshed, but it seems like there isn't. So much fall out from the cold war still continues to consume human lives with every passing day. But there is noerasing the past. We must figure out a way to deal with these probelms we face today before we descend into another cold war, if we have not already found oruselves there.

19. What's your opinion to plastic images of models in some fashion magazines that being appeared gloriously to promoting those wasted crap product towards readers/spectators, which is after many years human condition (especially in this globalization era!) being measured by those media that they're not cool enough, not beautiful, not fit enough, not included in 'selected circles', not this, not that etc... so that they (human) will keep consume those product in order to get those cool, beautiful, fit etc just like the images of those 'appealed models' that they've exhibited? Not just the 'normal' people being hypnotized, as we can see randomly there are also have numbers of people in the scene which care too much about what they've to wear, to act etc for their outlook rather than care about the way of their thought which sometimes leads to hc/punk is more likely a fashion show that have a dress code to be followed which I can see is all pathetic. Need your views here.
Well we are all measured every moment of our lives by every person we meet. In turn we do the same to others. It's unavoidable. We measure each other in different terms. Everyone's personality/fashion/style always comes from someone else, there is always a past influnece of someone who you measure yourself by.

20. Ok, Jon Chang.. i think that's enough for me to ask you. Anything left to say or something to add? Mind to asking me one question about something you'd like to know? Please state your latest address to be contact please. Thanks for the attempt to answer this interview and allow me to made this set of questions for you. Your participation is highly appreciated. Keep on grinding! Thank you.
Well my creative group, Studio Grey, is working on a lot of new projects we hope people will be interested in. We'll release information when we can (aka when something is good enough to be shown publically). I don't give out my mailing address anymore. People can contact me via the web. That's easiest ^_^. Good luck to you.

"dead bodies buried in the snowy tundra policed by black shelled mechsoldiers"

Jon Chang - Discordance Axis / Studio Grey :: http://www.studio-grey.com :: ender@studio-grey.com :: 

P/s: Some infos about DxAx http://www.metal-archives.com/band.php?id=2803" title="http://www.metal-archives.com/band.php?id=2803" target="_blank"http://www.metal-archives.com...