MULTI-HYPHENATE EXPERIMENTAL MUSICIAN, BAYONNE ANNOUNCES THIRD STUDIO ALBUM TEMPORARY TIME
January 24, 2023 BY Jason Currell
Multi-hyphenate experimental musician Roger Sellers, aka Bayonne, announces his third studio album, Temporary Time, releasing via Nettwerk on May 26th. He also releases a psychedelic new single and video “Right Thing.”
Bayonne describes his upcoming album, “To me the overall narrative of Temporary Time is the events following my Dad’s cancer diagnosis in early 2019. The record explores the emotional journey we went through as a family coming to terms with his declining health. Not every song covers this, but that presentiment is lingering in the back of my mind through it all.”
“During much of the recording process, I was in a pretty deep state of depression, which is pronounced throughout some of the lyricism. I started focusing on my mental health and things eventually became much easier for me, but writing these songs certainly helped push me through a dark period. Going through this really helped me improve my process, among other things. I started thinking a little differently about collaboration and having more people involved, allowing me to focus more on the songs and their meanings.,” he continues.
Temporary Time features recent releases “Is It Time” and “Solo,” as well as new single “Right Thing,” which dropped today. While Bayonne wrote and recorded his first two albums in solitude, he took to a more collaborative approach with his third full-length, bringing in outside ideas via co-production credits with Jon Joseph and fellow Austin native Danny Reisch, who also mixed the record.
Bayonne veers into the propulsive dark-pop of “Right Thing,” one of several tracks featuring ghostlike samples of audio lifted from his family home movies.
“Approaching my mid 30s, I was having a lot of anxiety about life, music and the future – contemplating where I wanted to go creatively, which among other things, caused me to fall into a state of depression. It’s a deeply meaningful song to me, conveying feelings of stagnancy and self-doubt while maintaining a poppy format,” says Bayonne.
“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.”
Bayonne describes “Right Thing” as a gloomy but upbeat reflection on uncertainty.
The “Right Thing” video captures the feelings of uncertainty with a woozy, psychedelic visual directed/animated by Lauren Haug.
WATCH “RIGHT THING” BELOW
About Bayonne:
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.
After putting out a handful of avant-folk-leaning projects under his own name, he adopted the Bayonne moniker in the mid-2010s and released Primitives to acclaim from major outlets like MOJO, who noted that the album merges “the celestial overlaid vocals of AnCo, Toro Y Moi’s soaring gauzy electronic pop, the live, looping sample techniques of tUnE-yArDs and D.D. Dumbo, and even Steve Reich’s shuddering, percussive experiments in repetition—with charming results.” An artist that NPR has hailed for his “sheer talent and keep-you-guessing nature” he is now signed to Nettwerk and has released two singles, “Is It Time” and “Solo,” both incorporating voice, synths, looping, effects, acoustic percussion, and more.
