Baio is the moniker of said bassist, Chris Baio, who announced himself as a solo artist with the Mira EP back in 2013. The title track was a fairly straight up electro house number, but what really got listeners and DJs intrigued was the frayed edges and warped modulation of the beats. Essentially, Baio embedded an analogue unexpectedness into the digital world.
The first single from his forthcoming album The Names (due out Friday September 18) is a similarly crisp yet alluringly unbalanced electronic warble called Brainwash yyrr Face. With this song, perfection stems from imperfection. In hearing this analysis, Baio responds with a relaxed account of the album’s background.
“I like that description a lot,” he says. “There’s a lot going on in that statement to talk about. I really started getting into production maybe around 2009 and started mostly electronically, and put out a couple of EPs when I felt confident enough in my production. The next step with this album was to do more songwriting to create something that sounded a bit more organic.”
Baio is on the phone from a New York apartment where he’s hanging out waiting for his wife and friend to tell him where to meet for dinner. Although he’s now based in London, Baio’s originally from one of New York’s more affluent suburbs. And, in case you’re wondering, he is the cousin of Happy Days and Charles In Charge star Scott Baio.
One of the record’s standout songs is the recent single Sister Of Pearl, which truly displays the organic flavour Baio was aiming for. “A song like Sister Of Pearl was very exciting for me to record,” he says. “I would do these full takes of me playing piano and wouldn’t edit it and then would mix that with perfectly edited drums. So that song has this feeling of looseness and tightness at the same time, and I think that’s something I was going for.”
The track’s also an unashamed tip of the hat to one of Roxy Music’s best known songs, Mother Of Pearl. “Eno and Ferry are two of my favourite melodic minds,” Baio says. “In trying to become a songwriter, I looked to them for inspiration. For that song to have such an overt reference to them… but there’s also a reference to Boys Keep Swinging in the lyrics. That’s probably one of my favourite Bowie songs.”
Sister Of Pearl is made especially striking by a string arrangement, which acts as counterpoint to the song’s delicious rhythm. A week prior to our interview, Baio performed the single with a string quartet on LA radio station KCRW. Assembling this ensemble took a little bit of work.
“Interestingly enough it was a one-time-only collaboration between four players from four different sting quartets, so it was a very political process getting the various quartets to agree to let me take those players and put them together. There was like a string quartet truce in LA to make that performance happen.”
When Baio comes down to perform in Melbourne next week, he won’t be playing with a string quartet. However, he promises to do his best to recreate the recorded production from behind a desk of gadgets.
Courtesy of Vampire Weekend’s prolific touring schedule, Baio’s been to Melbourne “many many times,” and has developed a love of Melbourne’s culinary sophistication.
“Last time I was there I went to Chin Chin and it was so fucking good. I remember that meal like it was yesterday.”
BY DAN WATT
