Although Cong Josie burst onto the Melbourne music scene in early 2020, the project and persona had in fact been brewing inside the head of Nic Oogjes for some time. From the beginning of our conversation, it is clear that Cong Josie is a very personal outlet for Nic, and that developing the character is a continually cathartic process for him. With the character intrinsically linked to his true self, so much of what Nic knows and understands of the world is poured and distilled in his creation of Cong Josie, and in a way, this seems to allow Nic freedom than ever.

After years of playing in bands in the Melbourne music scene, most notably as a core member of loved ‘heat-beat’ collective NO ZU, it’s fitting that Nic’s first solo outing is both as personal and assured as this - across his debut album Cong!, we’re offered a perspective that feels simultaneously larger-than-life and intimate, as it shapeshifts constantly over tangles of outsider post-punk, imaginative new-wave and warped doo-wop. Having been born from therapy sessions, Nic is hyper-aware of the personal nature of what he is doing, and throughout our interview, he does not shy away from this as he explains it is his way of making sense of the world. 

TJ: I’m going to start off broad, can you tell me about Cong Josie?

CJ: Cong Josie came about probably in late 2018, so I’ve actually been living with it for quite a while even though it’s a very new thing to the world. Or the fish pond that I inhabit anyway, it’s a bit grandiose to say the world. It kind of came from a period of... bit of a cliche, self discovery, sitting with things I was a bit uncomfortable with about myself and reassessing relationships around me. I got into a creative block, I really didn’t know what I was going to do, I was still kind of doing NO ZU, we had just finished a tour. I think I was a bit overwhelmed subconsciously and then I started seeing a therapist, and within a few months or so Cong was born. And to take all the mystery away from the start, Cong Josie is an anagram of Nic Oogjes, which is my name. First one that comes up in an anagram generator and is good symbolism for the whole project because it’s this hyperreal version of myself, it’s myself just jumbled around. It’s been a period of excavation of the things within me, musically and thematically as well.  

Do you feel like Cong Josie is a character or persona you put on when writing songs, or how much do you feel is autobiographical?

It’s a persona but it’s not someone that isn’t me. I don’t know if I can have my cake and eat it by saying that, but all the elements of what might come across in a music video or in a song are elements of myself. Maybe that’s true of all performers in a way but I’m very conscious of it - that within a song, one line that might sound very fantastical is rubbing up against something that is really close to the bone for me. Whether it is wishing a parent was closer to me at a certain stage of my life, and then the next line there could be a joke about Tom Jones’ song ‘Sex Bomb’, which is in ‘I Want a Man’ for example. 

I’ve listened to Cong! and there is a lot of humour that runs throughout it - can you speak to that, using humour as a mechanism?

Yeah, I don’t think about it too much. I remember when I first embraced humour and it was probably years ago when I started getting really into post-punk in my young adult life in particular, and listening to The Birthday Party Junkyard era, and all this absurdist imagery and all this hyper over the top imagery. A real humour there but not comedy, I know that you can kind of skirt the lines but some acts... and there is quite a proliferation of them these days and it’s not a judgement thing between but some acts almost verge into comedy or full caricature.

But for me having that absurdist humour is a really good communication tool. For example, in ‘Leather Whip’ I do some world play on “raining men”, which is obviously a reference to The Weather Girls’ ‘It’s Raining Men’; not that you can hear it in the song but I’m spelling it as in a horse rein and poking fun at macho culture, gambling culture and animal exploitation without sounding too highbrow about it. That’s where the humour comes in because it’s a lot more palatable. It’s something you can recognise without needing a sermon or to deliver... I've always had an aversion to straight up earnestness as well, so that’s the other end of the spectrum. I feel like if I can counter a line or two, I spoke to someone recently and they mentioned about the tropes allowing people into the music and it made me think, for example the start of ‘Peresphone’, with the woooo [starts singing], which is clearly a played-out “be-bop-a-lula” 50’s rock n roll thing, but by giving tropes or references that everyone understands, it’s a level playing field and humour works in the same way.

What are some of the real influences/inspirations in terms of Cong Josie’s sound? And everything to do with Cong Josie? You can take that wherever you want. 

Yeah cool, I’ll start with the sound… There’s the post-punk element which comes across in the more atonal aspects, or the more rough and ready aspects, and the less polished delivery in regards to the only way that I can sing. But then the other big elements are like 1950’s and 60’s rock ’n’ roll, rockabilly, girl groups; that period of time which is kind of the most comforting period of time for me which I think it stems from a childhood thing… you know, back to the therapist thing, the old cliche, looking at the way you grew up and I kind of had this focus which I’d ran away from about looking at my childhood, for better or for worse.

Pairing that with the fascination I always had of loving certain songs when you’re too young to be too critical or analytical of music; why does a kid love ‘Unchained Melody’ so much or Roy Orbison when he came back and did ‘You Got It’? I still feel the hairs on the back of my neck prick up with that song.

I love that element because it just takes all the cynicism away, or a pretentious way of looking at music. I really wanted to bring that in, so like referencing “be-bop-a-lula” or like in ‘Wedding Bells’, a tragedy female spoken vocal that is straight out of ‘The Leader of The Pack’ by the Shangri Las, with an Aussie infliction on it so it could only happen now and here. The other side which I think would be really obvious to most people is probably like Suicide or Alan Vega, who kind of paired some very post-modern sounding electronics with the similar era doo-wop and rockabilly influences and then also like EBM like German acts like DAF, anything kind of industrial… which kind harks back a bit to NO ZU in that sense of muscular electronics; muscle electronics is something that was in me as well and it all kind of came out in this way.

What was it like stepping away from NO ZU and doing your own thing? Especially when I feel like acts like Cong Josie and NO ZU really lend themselves to the live setting, what has it been like starting a project in COVID times when playing live hasn’t really been a thing?

I kind of have just gone with my subconscious, I didn’t really expect Cong Josie to happen. And NO ZU is still happening, I’ve got recordings that I’m supposed to be working on. I have to mention here that there was the tragic passing of one of our band members, Daphne, which has definitely coloured everything in a whole other way yet again. Before that I had it all there, but maybe subconsciously I felt overwhelmed by the number of people involved, which I’d always been turbo and working hard, but I think something in me that I didn’t even recognise was like you need to take a break, and then just off the side in my periphery Cong Josie kind of just happened, and it felt like this real release valve cathartic thing.

Then to tie that into the live element, live stuff is just important to me and I always envisioned every song in a live way. I always envisioned each song as we did it, whether it’s a ballad, dramatically being stooped over at the side of stage, right in the audience to sing that like a classic melodramatic trope of Elvis’ Las Vegas period or James Brown with the jacket over him. Show biz elements like that but then there’s the very DIY nightclub 3am smoky room, stalking around the stage with a cowboy hat, that’s how I thought about ‘I Want a Man’, definitely. Still same thing as NO ZU, I wish I could use a better word other than cathartic, but I want it to be a really special moment in time where we all get super sweaty.

The freeing thing for me now is that, I used to carry a trailer load of percussion and all sorts of things around, but now, something as simple as promising myself that I would only have a microphone, is so fun... And we can play so many places now that NO ZU couldn’t really play. We could play a bar that might hold a couple of hundred people and although NO ZU could do that, if we were going to that much logistical effort we might as well play that larger festival stage with the better sound system. Always wanting it to be bigger and better in terms of the live experience for the person watching and now I’m really excited about playing any small place, at any time. 

That’s really interesting, it sounds like Cong Josie is really personal, it’s scaling things back for you, but there’s obviously a collaborative element of Cong! - what was putting Cong! together like for you?

I’ve made this admission so many times, and I never feel great about it, but I’m not really a musician at all. Like I don’t know scales, I don’t know much musically. I kind of have visions… not visions, I’m not psychic or anything… I feel I can create worlds maybe, I know the whole world and I know the rules of the world, so I think Cong and everything that ended up on the record was all sitting there. I just had to pick that reference from that film that I’ve always loved, and nothing else, so that’s really easy.

I’m really lucky to have a great friend Cayn Borthwick, who we call Johnny Cayn in the group. Cayn played in NO ZU and does great music under his own name. Just from years of playing together, I am going to say it now, just have like a telepathic relationship; we know each other’s tastes, we have the right personality styles for me to be able to go “I want to do this and that”, to give him a bad voice memo and not feel judged. Cayn was the main driver, and I would just bother him for two or three hours at a time and promise that I’d bring drinks or whatever and we’d smash things out. We had this rule - two takes is the most we would do basically with anything. That freedom thing made it feel so great, so lucky to have someone like Cayn around.

And then the other big element that I should mention, the female vocal elements throughout, and there are several people that sing on the record including; my partner Margarita, as well as, Katie, Cassandra, Simone, Mona. That was a really important element to me knowing that I don’t have a singers voice, it can be not very subtle in terms of my inflictions and affectations or whatever, and I thought that would be a really great foil, it brings in those girl group influences of course but also provide people singing in tune at times as well to make the whole thing more musically I guess is the simplest way of saying it... and just to have a foil to those more punky elements. It would be a bit much just having me yelping over everything for an entire record.

Within the world of Cong Josie you explore a variety of musical styles, how would you describe your sound?

With NO ZU I coined the ‘heat-beat’ term early on and pushed it, I stuck to my guns on that one. I call it ‘speed n roll’ music. It’s kind of an anxious thing, for me it references the past and my nature of… you know I’m on my fifth coffee right now, the uppers nature of my personality. But there’s probably a better term out there.  

What state do you feel like the listener or the audience should be in when they listen to your record?

That’s a really good question. It’s definitely a heightened state, I think it’s coming from the same place as NO ZU in that way. A few people have said this, I don’t know if it’s true, they thought that the album as a whole works together with those different moods rather than hearing a song out of context. It’s hard to say, I was going to say to immerse yourself but that’s asking a lot of the listener, but I think it’s heightened state but hopefully there’s enough relief if you’re listening to the record as a whole especially with ‘Peresphone’ or ‘Wedding Bells’, the more romantic moments. It’s body music, it’s not so much music for the brain as it is for feeling. 

You made the admission that you don’t feel like you’re a musician but it feels like music and creating is really essential to your being.

The best recipe for imposter syndrome on the planet is that I’m self aware enough to know that, but for some reason I’m incredibly driven to create these worlds to see it through and to express myself in the form of… well originally it was visual art but music has completely taken over, I think because I can have both in it. It can be this high visual element but also music, to me the lines are really blurred, it’s just creating. When I started seeing a therapist I realised this side of myself, whether it’s because I’m an only child, the reader can psycho-analyse me or the way I grew up. I have definitely placed importance on creativity to be validated or to be seen or to be involved in the dialogue of culture.

We're talking now, we've never met and it's because of this project, that’s how I become known to people. That’s all great, the downside, the opposite is that I’ve realised that I need to work on my relationships more and just be me more. I explore some of those things on my record, but maybe I’m just at the beginning of my journey. Also if you put such an emphasis on people knowing you for your output that’s a lot of pressure. Now I’m thinking out loud but maybe that’s what happened with the block pre-Cong Josie.

How do you find that pressure when you’re like, “everybody is analysing what I’m putting out there”, how do you find those moments?

For the output because I’ve lived with it, it comes from a genuine place where I’ve really excavated it. I actually have no insecurities about if someone doesn’t like it or if someone’s judging it, that’s taken years and years to come. Hopefully this record conveys it but my favourite music is music that sounds uncompromised and bold. I learnt that after some years in NO ZU - I often thought about it, I imagined it, being on a Cong podium in some kind of nightclub and there’s other people on another podium, you can only do the thing over here and people come to it. But you start feeling really bad about yourself if you're wishing or hoping that someone else likes it, or put thought into things that you can’t control. 

Can you speak to the idea of Cong being a cowboy and taking down masculinity tropes?

It’s a reference to a period of music that I really romanticise - the 80’s post-punk into pub post-punk era of Melbourne for example, where a bunch of cowboy hats got around. I was just listening to Spencer P. Jones, for example, a great cowboy hat wearer or the big one is Tracy Pew from The Birthday Party. They were really kind of subverting that because obviously in Australian culture we’re obviously not cowboys and applying to a different world and saying something different with it. For me it’s putting the cowboy hat on, becoming Cong and stalking around the stage. And it gives me a good excuse to collect hats, I love them.

Do you feel like when you put the cowboy hat on and you stalk around the stage, that you become Cong Josie and that’s entirely different to Nic, or do you feel like they’re the same? Can you speak to that similarity or separation between Nic and Cong?

It’s basically like the expression of the id, or the ego from the outside with peeks of the daylighting (as opposed to moonlighting) Nic poking through constantly and kind of making Cong insecure or vulnerable at times. But all the while Cong is putting on the showbiz front, but it's that kind of big hyper character I discovered is me in performing, when in NO ZU I developed Cong basically. It’s really fun but it's basically me showing the world those things you don’t really get to in day to day conversation.

How important is that idea of showing people things that you don’t get to in day to day conversations?

It’s kind of less important in terms of people understanding me, and maybe more important in that I want to be involved in the conversation in culture, so I know that I’m just a product of the world we are in right now. And I love the idea that it’s just another voice providing something that somebody else would feel. I really think l that I’m just a product of this time and place and if it wasn’t me somebody else would be Cong in a way.

That classic idea of relating to an artist and feeling like you’re not alone because that artist is saying or doing something that you can relate to.

It’s so true, like I feel like if I have a moment of not feeling as confident about it or something… I think about playing on stage how disappointing would it be if somebody actually liked the band then I came up and I wasn’t confident doing the thing, that they’re probably projecting onto it, as well as we all do. If we’ve got a public voice whether it’s got a short reach like mine or a longer reach then you're engaged in a conversation and you’re representing something not that it has to be important or anything. You feel nervous if someone else is feeling nervous on stage. I think we’re talking about a collective consciousness thing which is why we go to a show and why we play - it’s kind of like living outside of yourself and existing and being a part of it. 


In terms of the shows that are coming up I saw that you’re doing a New Years Eve show but with a different band. You’ve got your band The Crimes, but the New Years Eve Show is with The Teardrops…



That’s fun. The Teardrops are the rival group, they hate The Crimes and The Crimes hate them, that’s how it’s pictured in my head now. This stems from the freedom idea of Cong where I really highly value The Crimes, the people in that band… I want Cong to be able to do karaoke if I need to, or do a show if I want to play it and then if I can work it out; if I really want to do it then I should just do it, like why should there be things holding it back? I was lucky enough to find two good friends for this band, the band for the night will be Max Cash and Micky Dollar, they’re all about the money. I picture them they’re a bit more dangerous these two, they only come out at night and there’s less romance in this group. 

I guess in summing it up, there’s that real freedom of Cong Josie - Cong Josie can be whatever you want Cong Josie to be.

That’s right, exactly. It will just naturally evolve as it happens, as I excavate more of myself and as I look at symbols and themes that I haven’t felt like I’ve got it out… It’s all there ready to be mined.