The Australian-born musician discusses writing his new record “A House Breaking,” returning to live shows, and democratizing music education
Photo by Rebecca-Marian Irene
“Sometimes I’m like, ‘I’d rather be in the library than on stage,'” Darcy Baylis confesses to me on a phone call. His sentiment is far from universal, but it is crucial to what is at the core of the Berlin-based, Melbourne born musician. Whether it be researching music as part of his academic studies or creating and performing live, all aspects of sound consume his pastimes. With his musical fascination comes a desire to explore various genres, a fascination which makes categorizing the vocalist and producer’s music rather difficult.
Evident in his recent collaborations and debut album Intimacy & Isolation, the artist is best known for his disparate blend of electronica and emotive trap. Two-and-a-half years later, his new album A House Breaking is familiar with this melding process. Baylis expresses his phantasmagorias, documenting personal experiences through intimate lyrics while exploring his past and contemporary history of musical styles. A testament to the evolution of the young artist, he explains how his completely self-performed work “starts in a place that’s very much rooted in the world of electronic music, but it ends up somewhat quite different.”
A House Breaking takes on a different direction in terms of its sound in comparison to your debut record Intimacy & Isolation. Can you expand on this process and transition?
I just have a really short attention span. I don’t really think it’s some sort of grand vision I have. I just constantly reinvent myself whether that’s in music or in other stuff. Personality, like the way that I dress or the things that I’m into just feel so fleeting. I can only ever really engage with the thing that’s directly in front of me. When I put out that first record, a lot of that was what I was listening to, a lot of club music and techno and jungle and drum and bass. Then, over the last year, I got wrapped up in this SoundCloud world — whatever you wanna call it — because I made a lot of friends on the internet.
People are very supportive and it felt like a very welcoming community. I got a bit caught up with that in the last year-and-a-half, but I think with this second album it was very important for me to go back to what sort of started it and to take a step back. Not looking at what everyone else around me in the scene is doing but looking internally and being like what exactly is it that I want to do, which is why the record sounds like it does. It’s very difficult for me to like a piece of music or style of music, so I’m just trying to take something from all of it.
What would you say are the main influences on this album?
It’s in reverse chronological order, so I wrote the last track first. When I started the record, I had this idea I was going to make a straight-up shoegaze record. I got halfway through and then progressively started to remember what it’s like discovering other things from my musical history; all these old jungle tracks I used to love and elements of club music I forgot were quite important and special. But, if you want to say concrete influences, what I was actually listening to when I was making the record was stuff like My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive, but also a lot of stuff that was very significant to me growing up, bands that made me decide I wanted to start becoming a musician. Underoath, Funeral For A Friend, and The Used. Outside of that, I was listening to a lot of hardstyle, techno, and drum and bass, and being like ‘what can I take from that and apply to my own practice?’
How did collaboration with crimson//chaos. come about on “Staggering”?
There have been other people who worked on the record—like my best friend Joe mixed the whole thing and did production on some tracks, and my friend Simon helped with “Privacy”—but the only song that had a feature was from Sonny [crimson//chaos.]. We have a mutual friend in Melbourne who told me about him and I saw the video for “Bleeding” and I was like ‘who the fuck is this kid and why isn’t he famous?’ Eventually, I found the beat for “Staggering” and I was like, ‘I don’t think I have the range to pull this off; I need someone who can really go for it.’ I just left it at that and I didn’t really feel like it needed any other features. I don’t think I could have sung that all myself. He has the voice of a fucking 40-year-old man. I don’t know how he does it but it’s insane.
Did you have any predictions on how listeners would react to the album and do you have any specific takeaways you’d want for the listener?
I had no fucking idea and I was completely terrified, to be honest with you. When I listen to it, I guess like even though it’s still only a very tiny drop in the ocean of music, the last time I put out a record it was just kind of the first thing I did but this is the first time I feel like there’s actually been some sort of audience that I know is going to hear it. It’s really fucking nerve-racking; I have days where I listen to it where I’m like this is fantastic, this is wonderful, you have achieved everything you ever set out to achieve, and then I have other days where I’m like what the fuck were you thinking, this is a fucking mess. It’s just indicative of how we feel about ourselves, just the nature of life.
But, I think at the end of the day I’m very proud that irrespective of the fact if it’s good or bad, it’s 100 percent me and the strange combination of shit that I’m into that makes it sound like what it sounds like. Even if people hate it I can at least say I stayed true to myself when making it, and it doesn’t try to be anything that it isn’t. But I guess that’s the main thing I want people to take away: I just looked very deeply inside of myself and was like ‘this is what it sounds like,’ and hopefully someone else can recognize themselves in that as well.
Personally, A House Breaking is heavily emotionally resonating. Is evoking a certain emotion and atmosphere something you purposefully set out to achieve?
Some of my friends have mentioned that about my music, like, ‘oh, I listened to some of your songs and then I ended up crying.’ It’s strange because to me I don’t feel like I make particularly sad music but maybe because that is because I’m approaching it from some other angle. Like with writing lyrics, I don’t necessarily stop and question what I’ve written down or really analyze it; it all comes from my brain and my experiences. I just kind of put pen to paper. This is going to sound really corny, but I’ve tried many times unsuccessfully to make happy or fun music and it’s really hard to write happy music and have it not sound corny. It’s just not something I think I have the skills to do yet. For the most part, a situation happens and I get out a notebook and write about it in a way that somewhat resembles a song, but a lot of the time I feel like I am genuinely just reading word for word from my personal journal.
Environment and themes of transit reappear in Intimacy & Isolation. In turn, how did your environment affect A House Breaking?
There are a lot of very explicit references to places in Melbourne and even the way people interact with each other that I find is very specific to the city. I feel like it’s a very Melbourne record, and if you’ve lived in or visited there hopefully you’ll be able to hear that. I don’t know how to describe Melbourne; I have a very complicated relationship with it, but I think that’s what I tried to represent in the lyrics.
Can you expand on Melbourne and your experiences with the city?
I feel like this isn’t a summary of Melbourne as a whole; this is probably more representative of who I was at the time and what I was spending my time doing whilst I was writing the record, but there is kind of a vicious cycle of partying and drugs. It gets to a point where it goes from a fun thing to a throughout the week thing to a by yourself kind of thing. There’s some sort of desperation that I haven’t really found in other cities.
With that being said, it’s the most amazing place in the world. I’ve had the same circle of friends for like 10 years and I don’t think many people can say that. The people there are incredibly special and it’s a really wonderful place. I think my sort of gripe with it is that it can be a bit of a vortex that sucks you in and you just end up in this cycle. But, you know, I think I’m blaming it on Melbourne because that’s easy, but the reality is that’s probably just the cycle of addiction and I think that probably exists in any city you go to. In my experience, it was Melbourne.
Having previously performed in Australia, including the renowned Golden Plains festival. What’s your relationship with live performances, and do you have plans to delve further into shows?
I think with me, performing is really kind of sporadic and unpredictable because I am a sporadic and unpredictable person. Sometimes I’ll be like I want to play shows all the time, other times I’ll be like I never want to play a show again. But, I finally feel like I’m at a place now where I’m ready to start doing it again. I feel better about it now but I didn’t perform for a very long time. I don’t know if it was anxiety or agoraphobia or if I just didn’t find it very interesting anymore, but I definitely took a long time off performing because I wasn’t the sort of person that just felt like I could do it very easily. I wanted to take some time out to just figure out exactly how I wanted to perform in a way that felt genuine to me. If I’m being paid to do a performance then I want to make sure I’m doing my job to the best of my ability and offering something that’s at least unique or idiosyncratic. I think the stakes should be higher, and I don’t really understand why they aren’t.
Being closely linked to artists who are labeled in such a way, how do you feel about the term ‘emo rap’?
I think it’s bullshit, but not for the same reasons that other people think it’s bullshit. I don’t care if you call it emo rap because that’s the most appropriate thing to call it. I just drew myself away from the scene itself. That’s what I find frustrating. I don’t understand why it’s a bunch of dudes in their late 20s getting really angry and vengeful at women and only collaborating with other dudes who make songs that are angry and vengeful at women. I don’t want to engage in that culture; I find it really strange that no one talks about it because it seems to exist in a world of people who are progressive and left-leaning politically.
In past interviews, you’ve talked about further collaborations with Beijing-based artist Bloodz Boi and creating an album together. Can we expect to hear the project soon?
It’ll come out. I think we’re both taking a little break because I went back to finishing my record and he was working on his other stuff. I listened to all the songs [we’ve written] the other day and I was like, ‘oh shit, this is really good, we need to put this out this year.’
Is there anything else you’ve been working on more recently?
I’ve already started on album three a little bit. It’s kind of been more like the halfway point between Lana Del Rey and some harsh techno tracks. I really want to start a metal band but no one wants to do it with me. I’ve been trying for years and everyone thinks it’s a joke. I grew up playing guitar in metal bands and you just get a feeling of connectedness when performing with other people that you don’t by yourself, so that’s something I’m really interested in doing. Or just starting a band in general. We can sound like whatever; it would just be really nice to get on stage with a drum kit and bass guitar and write some regular songs. I think exploring a heavier side of what I’m into in a very sincere way would be really nice.
Outside of creating music, can you offer insight into your day-to-day life?
At the start of the year, I applied to my dream school to do my master’s. I just thought there was no way that I was going to get in. The course that I applied for said they only accept 25 people a year. I got an interview and I thought I fucked it up really bad, but then a few weeks later I got in. I was like ‘shit, I guess I have to move to Germany now.’ I didn’t really think it through, but when I got the acceptance letter, the way it made me feel made me realize that this was something I really wanted to do.
I really want to be involved in academia, like I love writing about music and teaching music just as much as I enjoy making it, so that’s something that’s really important to me. I hate how much of the contemporary classical academia scene is quite elitist and exclusive and only reserved for people who go to private art schools – I think that’s kind of bullshit. What I’m really passionate about is democratizing music education and making it accessible to all people. I’d eventually like to end up passing on my knowledge as an educator in whatever format that may be.