JOCK NOWELL-USTICKE OF BAYNK
Hi Jock and thanks for taking the time out to speak with us at Musicology. Firstly congratulations on the new EP Someone’s. What were some of the challenges in putting this EP together and conversely what were some of the greatest surprises you experienced through the writing / recording process for Someone’s?
The most challenging barrier to overcome is my own quality standard I think. Once you’ve been deep in music for a bit your taste gets a bit more refined and fewer ideas seem genuinely good. As a 1-man band it can be tough to decide whether a song is good or not so working through that judgement stage with friends is beneficial but also time-consuming and confusing at times. I was surprised by a few of the songs that started to be made after a period of touring was done, like I didn’t really think I had a song like ”Water” in me and I didn’t really think I could pull off a production like INT. II on my own.
In terms of the writing and lyrical content, was there an overarching narrative tying the album together or an assortment of topics and inspirations that zig zag throughout the record?
It was the feelings and emotions that come with being in a loving, stable relationship that formed most of the inspiration for the record. Narrative is difficult to navigate when you’re a producer such as myself and have a lot of features and different voices and opinions all in one place. But my vocals and production were all based around that.
You worked with a great many artists on the EP including UK vocalist Sinead Harnett, GLADES, Hablot Brown, and UK producer Martin Luke Brown. In what ways did they push you sonically that without their input may have altered the way Someone’s turned out?
Sinead’s voice pushed me to make more space in the production for her voice which is so tonally rich and all encompassing. GLADES pushed me into writing in a more typical pop fashion which I’m usually not comfortable with but it felt so right with them. Hablot Brown pushed me to accept that less is sometimes more and that over complication can be the death of a good song. Martin has one of the most unique ways of singing I’ve encountered which you can hear on the song in chorus he was whacking his throat with his finger to make this tremolo-like effect.
Creatively, once you have an essential tune in place and it is birthed into existence, does your approach change in so much as the song now begins to tell you what it needs rather than following the raw emotion and impulse that started the initial track on a conceptual level?
It’s a little bit like that. The impulse stays with throughout the process until the song is finished or until it gets tossed out. I feel like when you know you know. The song doesn’t so much tell me what to do as I tell it what to do.
Not content with just producing music, you also worked on the artwork and live visuals. As someone who works across artistic mediums, do you feel that the triangle between film, photography and music is an equilateral one?
For me they all fall into the category of artistic expression and I get bored easily if I’m just doing one thing so whenever I’m feeling creatively exhausted I’ll switch into a different art form for a while.
Having toured the states and performed at the prestigious festivals Coachella and Lollapalooza, can you share with us some of your highlights from those shows?
Lollapalooza is yet to come but I’m extremely excited for it. Coachella was a great time and the crowd was very large and responsive but the heat was almost unbearable and I nearly fainted.
Speaking of touring you are about to play a string of shows in Australia and New Zealand. When traveling do you find inspiration in the towns and cities you perform in that makes its way into new material or are you so focused on the task at hand that writing / recording takes something of a back seat?
The touring takes up all my time. I run all the visuals, stage manage and troubleshoot audio problems all from centre stage so motivation to write is unfortunately low. I’m hoping it will change but for now that’s how it is. Experiences from tour and emotions felt can definitely make their way back into material.
