The Thousands

About six months ago I received a mix from a friend living in the States. To be honest I wasn’t a fan. She’d included way too much of her friends’ shitty bedroom producers and every second track sounded like a third-rate Youth Lagoon rip-off. But there was one track I kept returning to. Its eerie beat and mysterious vocals had me pressing play over and over. Soft vocals were pitch shifted to the point that you couldn’t tell if they were male or female. It had a subtle beauty, an almost dreamy underwater feel to it. I found out that the song was ‘Oh, Why’ by Balam Acab, taken from his debut album Wander/Wonder.

Last year’s ‘See Birds’ EP by Balam Acab, aka 20-year-old Alec Koone, got a little lost in all the talk about the witch house genre. But fortunately for Koone, the noise about that particular style has frittered into (almost) nothing this year, giving his music some room to breath. There’s a resemblance to James Blake’s approach, as if he’s attempting to set his feelings of loneliness and alienation into song. But the tools used are a little different from Blake’s; the Balam Acab sound is much more abstract, with cloudy vocals pitch-shifted into dueling high and low ranges, while the subaquatic tone is pegged down to a sludge-like crawl by a cluster of leaden beats. Despite its nebulous intonations, it feels like a great deal of time and care has been put into shaping the subtle beauty of ‘Oh, Why’, suggesting that Koone is a talent capable of surpassing those rote genre trappings with which he has been associated.

Tim Scott: I understand that you are reticent in talking about your album and music. That’s cool. How about we talk about your music for like three questions then talk about other stuff? The ‘Best of list’. You did pretty well on quite a few ‘Best of 2011′ lists from Diplo. How do labels and artists view these lists? Is a top three position on Pitchfork important?

Balam Acab: ‘Best Of’ lists are nice to be on; it’s nice to know that people enjoy the music you make. It probably also helps with album sales and general promotion of the project too. I guess a top three position on Pitchfork would help with album sales and promotion.

TS: Were those Maiya videos that were up on Vimeo official? Does a visual artist need permission from you to do stuff or are you honoured? I’d think that with the style of videos and the way stuff is put up on the internet people get confused about what is official and not.

BA: I’m working to make the Maiya videos official. He has videos nearly completed for every song off Wander/Wonder and I love them all. A visual artist doesn’t need my permission to make a music video and throw it up on Youtube or Vimeo if it’s for non-commercial purposes. But, if they wanna make any money off the videos in any way, they need my permission beforehand.

TS: As for your remix of Lana Del Ray’s ‘Video Games’, what has her feedback been like? Your profile has risen over the last 12 months but hers has gone meteoric. What do you think of the rise/hype of of her profile?

BA: People seem to generally like my remix of ‘Video Games’. The rise/hype of Lana Del Rey’s profile over the past 12 months is fairly irrelevant to me. She’s just a person living her life as am I. So I guess I’m indifferent on the matter.

TS: Words such as ‘floating’ and ‘underwater’ are often used when describing your music. I often get the same feeling when listening to old ‘dub’.

BA: I’ve never really listened to dub.

TS: Balam Acab is named after the Mayan demigod responsible for creating rainbows. 2012 is supposedly the year the world ends according to the Mayan calender. What have you got planned for 2012?

BA: I’ll be playing shows through the summer, then hopefully moving out into my own house for the first time. I’ll probably spend the rest of 2012 experimenting with hardware. I wanna stop making music on a computer.

TS: What is Ithaca college like? For an Australian – a liberal arts college in New York has certain connotations. I don’t know people who listen to Bon Iver. But maybe Bon Iver is big in every college campus across the US?

BA: Ithaca College is in New York, but it’s pretty far away from New York City. It’s located out in the woods. The campus is on a mountain. The small town of Ithaca is full of drug addicts, old homeless hippies, and really smart, progressive-thinking individuals who are usually somehow tied to Cornell University or Ithaca College. Overall, the vibe is pretty relaxing and open-minded in Ithaca. I listen to Bon Iver and I’m sure there are plenty of other people who listened to Bon Iver at Ithaca College. I’d bet that there’s at least one person at each US college who listens to Bon Iver.

TS: Speaking of connotations. What are yours of Australia? What are you expecting of your upcoming tour?

BA: I think of kangaroos and Australian accents. On this upcoming tour, I expect to have a lot of fun performing, while visiting a bunch of countries/continents that I’ve never been to before, while making money. Hopefully I can go to the beach when I’m in Australia.