ADOLESCENCE

“I went through this period of not being able to write anything,” London-based New Zealander Jock Nowell-Usticke, aka BAYNK, tells Apple Music. “And I put that down to being in a stable and happy relationship, on top of the pandemic happening and just being stuck inside all the time.” Lacking in inspiration, Nowell-Usticke turned to his past and began to draw on his formative years. “The music just flowed out of me,” he says. “I was reliving all of my first loves and times when I found a passion for musical expression, plus all the loneliness and isolation that goes with that period in your life.” Aptly titled ADOLESCENCE, the album is a dreamy and deeply melodic journey through a time in life when things hit harder. “It was just really cathartic,” he says. “Delving into all that nostalgia was really invigorating and helped get me back on my feet creatively.” Here, he provides a track-by-track guide to the album.
“Touch Me (Hold My Hand)” “My friend Rutger [van Woudenberg], who puts out music under the name The Nicholas, helped me a lot on this track and on the rest of the album. He introduced me to using guitar pedals and he sent me this warped guitar sample that we ran through a few pedals for this. I wrote the song early on in the pandemic, and it’s kind of like a plea for the closeness we were missing. It feels like the perfect way to start the record. It’s warm and inviting with some awkward glitches.”
“Esther” (feat. Tinashe) “This started with some samples I chopped up, and then I was just humming melodies over it for ages. It sat on a hard drive for a while, then my friend Annika Wells, who’s an incredible songwriter, helped me finish the lyrics and Rutger helped with the arrangement. It’s based on a dream I had about a girl, and I could never quite remember what she looked like, but I’d fantasize about her in my dreams. This was an ode to her, and I thought it would be perfect to have a female singer play that part on the record. Getting Tinashe to do it was a dream come true.”
“How Does It Feel?” (feat. Cosmo’s Midnight) “I worked on this with Rutger too. It started as an instrumental with a bassline he recorded on a Fender P bass, plus this little sample of a chord we played on a cheap Casio keyboard we got from a pawn shop. Eventually, I was like, ‘We should probably put some vocals on this,’ so I got in touch with Cosmo’s Midnight, who I’ve always loved. The song’s about the trauma of getting broken up with, feeling super heartbroken, and then trying to delete all traces, like the pictures in your photo library, so you don’t have to constantly feel that literal pain in your chest.”
“1 Chance” (feat. DRAMA) “This is, without doubt, the fastest session I’ve ever been in. We were recording in LA and Via Rosa, the singer from DRAMA, just walked in and recorded the vocals in 40 minutes before they had to go and soundcheck. We did two takes and it just came together perfectly. I did some more production work on it afterwards, but sometimes the best songs just come together super easily.”
“Mine” (feat. Cub Sport) “I wrote this song with the Canadian duo Chiiild. Their song ‘Pirouette’ is absolutely incredible and made me really want to work with them. I used my Prophet-6 synth on this—which is a piece of equipment you’ll hear across the whole album—and Pierre-Luc [Rioux] from Chiiild played this amazing atmospheric guitar all over the track. He brought a case with about 20 or 30 pedals in it and got some amazing sounds out of it. Then, we sent it to Tim [Nelson] from Cub Sport, who wrote the majority of the lyrics, although I’d written the chorus already. For me, the track’s about remembering early encounters with girls I had in my teens, when you don’t really know what you’re doing.”
“Remember” (feat. Rainsford) “This is the first song I wrote for the album and it’s definitely the one that sounds most like my earlier productions, which was just dance music I wanted to groove to as an 18-year-old at a festival. It’s a bold and dramatic dance track about the euphoria of young love. I guess I’m drawing on influences like early Calvin Harris or guys like Flume and Mura Masa. Or someone like Rustie, even. The track doesn’t sound like something he’d make, but it has that shimmering and shiny sound he was always so good at.”
“Naked” “This song is about a girlfriend I had when I was 14. She was getting with a friend of mine during our relationship, but I was so enamored with her, I didn’t really care. In hindsight, I realized I was more into the idea of being with her rather than us having some kind of connection. We put a big key change in this track, which is kind of cheesy, but I wanted something really dramatic. Originally, we had three or four different key changes in it, but I don’t think we could get away with it.”
“Till It’s Even” (feat. Golden Vessel) “I love Golden Vessel so much. He’s been on tour with me before, and we wrote a song called ‘Down’ together previously. We got on Skype and traded ideas back and forth. The track’s about a couple where the guy has cheated on the girlfriend early in the relationship; he’s come clean years later to get rid of the guilt, and then there’s this sense of doing things to get even with each other.”
“When I’m Alone” “I made this track in Amsterdam, but it’s actually about the joy of skiing. My parents would take us to the mountains loads as kids and this track’s got this easygoing, joyful feel that reminds me of how joyous and relaxed I feel when I’m on the mountains, skiing.”
“What If He Put His Hands on You” “I wanted to make something I would have loved to hear in a field when I was 17 or 18. Festivals really set in stone my love for music, and it’s just one of my favorite things to do, being on a packed dance floor with a sea of strangers but feeling this amazing connection. I wanted to tap into that.”