"another Saturday lifting up your own condition..."
When any song is cooked in pain, formed out of life changing loss that leaves scars on the skin (like forever tattoos) on the artist who makes it, piece by piece like a carefully constructed fire as catharsis or homage or both, you tend to feel it. For those of us who consume the art deeply, art born out of heavy things might suck the air out of the room even though we don't know why. I had this sense listening to the sounds, vocal aesthetic of "Right Thing" by Bayonne, the musical projects of Austin-based artist/producer/multi-instrumentalist Roger Sellers. This is not to say that the song is dour, it is not, in fact the rhythms, musical colors have a sort of late 80's dance vibe blended into melancholy post punk atmospheres colliding with big pop sensibilities (I thought of artists like Tears For Fears, Howard Jones, Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark and Unknown Mortal Orchestra all in the same breath). The dark synths hold the pain and the sprite key ascensions let hope move upward.
Sellers' dealt with his "father’s diagnosis with and eventual death from cancer, the end of a significant relationship, and an overwhelming struggle with depression and anxiety" that has been seeping into his music and "Right Thing" holds a special place in his heart:
“One of the reasons it’s so meaningful to me is because it was the last song I remember showing my Dad before he passed. In the middle percussive section, I added samples from old home VHS tapes, wherein you can faintly hear him and other family members chattering lightly in the background. I’ll never forget showing him how I implemented these old recordings into the song. He was highly amused by this.”
When any song is cooked in pain, formed out of life changing loss that leaves scars on the skin (like forever tattoos) on the artist who makes it, piece by piece like a carefully constructed fire as catharsis or homage or both, you tend to feel it. For those of us who consume the art deeply, art born out of heavy things might suck the air out of the room even though we don't know why. I had this sense listening to the sounds, vocal aesthetic of "Right Thing" by Bayonne, the musical projects of Austin-based artist/producer/multi-instrumentalist Roger Sellers. This is not to say that the song is dour, it is not, in fact the rhythms, musical colors have a sort of late 80's dance vibe blended into melancholy post punk atmospheres colliding with big pop sensibilities (I thought of artists like Tears For Fears, Howard Jones, Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark and Unknown Mortal Orchestra all in the same breath). The dark synths hold the pain and the sprite key ascensions let hope move upward.
Sellers' dealt with his "father’s diagnosis with and eventual death from cancer, the end of a significant relationship, and an overwhelming struggle with depression and anxiety" that has been seeping into his music and "Right Thing" holds a special place in his heart:
“One of the reasons it’s so meaningful to me is because it was the last song I remember showing my Dad before he passed. In the middle percussive section, I added samples from old home VHS tapes, wherein you can faintly hear him and other family members chattering lightly in the background. I’ll never forget showing him how I implemented these old recordings into the song. He was highly amused by this.”
Art, especially the heavy intimacy of personally wrought art is important because it connects us all even if we don't know why.
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
https://soundcloud.com/bayonne
https://open.spotify.com/artist/6BbqU3r1G2mwkRIfIbkCek
https://www.instagram.com/bayonnemusic/
https://www.bayonnemusic.com/
Since his 2016 debut album Primitives, Bayonne has channeled his vast imagination into an elegant yet wildly experimental form of electronic pop, equal parts meditative and mesmerizing. In the making of his latest body of work, the Austin-based artist/producer/multi-instrumentalist otherwise known as Roger Sellers found himself in even greater need of an outlet for his kinetic creative impulses, thanks to an intense convergence of events in his personal life: his father’s diagnosis with and eventual death from cancer, the end of a significant relationship, and an overwhelming struggle with depression and anxiety. Deeply informed by a deliberate transformation of his musical process, Bayonne’s third full-length Temporary Time ultimately makes for his most expansive work to date—an album of both painfully raw introspection and otherworldly beauty.
Since his 2016 debut album Primitives, Bayonne has channeled his vast imagination into an elegant yet wildly experimental form of electronic pop, equal parts meditative and mesmerizing. In the making of his latest body of work, the Austin-based artist/producer/multi-instrumentalist otherwise known as Roger Sellers found himself in even greater need of an outlet for his kinetic creative impulses, thanks to an intense convergence of events in his personal life: his father’s diagnosis with and eventual death from cancer, the end of a significant relationship, and an overwhelming struggle with depression and anxiety. Deeply informed by a deliberate transformation of his musical process, Bayonne’s third full-length Temporary Time ultimately makes for his most expansive work to date—an album of both painfully raw introspection and otherworldly beauty.
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