Hilly Town: The Portland Maine Music Blog

It’s been some time since we last heard anything from the usually prolific Jakob Battick. His last public performance was back in June, performing at Red Medicine’s farewell show with post-punk hybrid Captain Hollow (who have yet to release their long-delayed debut). And aside from a few odds-and-ends releases including a ghostly Primal Scream cover and a handful of instrumental deconstructions of Top 40 hits — Battick hasn’t released a proper collection of material since Jakob Battick & Friends’ swan song Bloodworm Songs in March.

Interview by Kevin Steeves.

Fortunately, the unusual dry spell of material from Battick ended earlier this week with the release of EMF: a digital split album with the similarly dreamy, minimalist work of Portland’s Jared Fairfield, and the the debut of Battick’s newest solo project, Afraid.

During this quiet period that was marked by a lack of new material from Battick and the release of Afraid, the Portland mainstay went through something of a musical reboot. Disenchanted by his previous output, the catalyst of the new project came from an unlikely place given Battick’s former affection with American folk music and 80’s goth — the 1992 gangsta rap classic The Chronic by Dr. Dre.

“Somehow a copy of The Chronic made it into my car stereo,” said Battick. “The rest just happened. I couldn’t take it out for three or four months — maybe more.”

The influence of The Chronic and hip-hop as a whole is apparent even during a preliminary listen to EMF, as chopped-up and repurposed samples of Top 40 hits from the last few years make-up the bulk of the backing-track, with Battick’s morose drone imposed — and at times just as over-processed as the backing track. The result is that EMF is just as haunting and surreal as his previous work, but with a much more contemporary influence compared to his prior neo-folk output.

HillyTown recently caught up with Battick to discuss the creation and evolution of Afraid, the influence of visual aesthetics upon the project, and what exactly we might be able to expect when the project hits the road for a hopefully upcoming string of live shows.

HillyTown: What do you think drove you towards move more into a hip-hop/production direction with Afraid? Your previous work was pretty well ingrained within the rock/folk tradition.

Jakob Battick: It was a lot of things. Too many things, really. I started listening to The Chronic in my car all the time, and I mean all the time; it became a total obsession. One day I woke up and realized I had been trying to pretend I wasn’t here in the present and I was making this utterly miserable music with no light and no rhythm, and I suddenly felt very uncomfortable with that. I wanted to make something someone might conceivably dance to, or something that might be nice to put on late at night and melt around to, by yourself or at a party or with another person. That was the only way that I knew to fall back in love with music.  Continue reading Interview: Jakob Battick / Afraid