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CMU Approved
Approved: Bayonne
By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 1 August 2016
Bayonne is the work of musician Roger Sellers, who is set to release his debut album. ‘Primitives’, on 4 Nov through City Slang.
Using layers of loops as the basis for his sound, he builds complex but laid back songs around which he wraps his vocals like a blanket. This is shown perfectly on the album’s first single, ‘Spectrolite’, which is carried aloft by a hypnotic guitar riff.
He hit upon his sound after becoming frustrated with studying music academically. “It became homework”, he says. “It made me come home and not want to write”.
Buying a loop pedal and working more freely reignited the spark within him, he says: “I found out that I could make these songs really spontaneously and have this really good idea without having to get into the studio to capture it right away. Most of these songs came out of me just fucking around, hooking up keyboards and experimenting”.
There’s an unlikely influence in there too, he adds: “I wanted to be Phil Collins for so many years as a child. He was my hero. I feel like you can hear that a lot in ‘Primitives’, that big drum sound, because so much of the way I play was learned from Phil Collins”.
See if you can spot that in the video for ‘Spectrolite’ here:
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