Bayonne announces May 13 release for debut album ‘Primitives’
Roger Sellers is a lot of things. He’s a minimalist composer with a knack for making hypnotic, enveloping songs from a few repeated musical phrases. He’s a gifted musician who is mostly self-taught, having abandoned formal study because it was draining the life from his work. He’s a self-described disciple of Phil Collins. What he is not, however – despite multiple press reports to the contrary – is a DJ. “I started developing a decent following in Austin,” he says, “but most of the time when I would play, the press would say something like ‘Local DJ Roger Sellers,’ or ‘Roger Sellers is playing a late-night DJ set.’ I think it was maybe because my live set involves a table full of gear, a drum set and headphones, but the average person probably knows more about DJing than I do.”
To combat the misunderstanding, Sellers printed up stickers reading, “Roger Sellers is Not a DJ,” and eventually adopted the alias Bayonne, changing his name without altering his approach. And it’s a good thing: ‘Primitives‘, Sellers’ debut as Bayonne, is a rich, complex work – the kind with no clear rock parallel. In its winding, maze-like structures are hints of both Steve Reich and Owen Pallett, each instrument working a single melodic pattern over and over and over, as Sellers threads his soft, reedy voice between them.
On first single “Spectrolite”; taut apostrophes of guitar enter first, pinpricks of barely-there sound that blink like Christmas lights. Bone-dry snare enters next, but the guitars keep echoing their same hypnotic phrase; it’s followed by grumbling bass and, finally, Sellers’ airy, high-arcing voice; each piece follows their charted course again and again, but as the song goes on, it gets more engrossing – it gives the effect of slipping slowly into warm water. “That one came from an older loop that I had,” Sellers explains. “It was about a stone that my girlfriend at the time had brought me back from Australia, a spectrolite stone. We had some things happen between us during that time, so that stone meant a lot to me. I had it with me the entire time I made the record. It’s a song about forgiveness, and keeping those people who matter most to you close around you, and caring for those that you love.” On ‘Primitives’, Sellers creates music that’s nuanced, layered, complicated and soothing – easy to get lost in, impossible to ignore.