Xavier Bacash’s first experiments under the Sonny moniker date back to late 2016. His former band Gypsy & the Cat had just released its last album, Virtual Islands, and completed a run of farewell tour dates.
“I have a solo project under an alias with music coming soon,” wrote Bacash in the Facebook post that announced Gypsy’s break-up. He came good on his word with the December 2017 release of Sonny’s first EP, C.E.
The four-track release reflected Bacash’s yearning for a fresh start. It was a solitary creation dominated by electronic sounds and devoid of vocals. This last detail was especially striking given the centrality of Bacash’s vocals to Gypsy’s indie pop sound.
By the time C.E. came out, Bacash had left Melbourne for Copenhagen. He arrived in the Danish capital keen to embrace a wide spectrum of electronic sounds. He soon found just what he was looking for courtesy of the city’s thriving underground club scene.
Listen: Sonny – Desert Days
Sonny’s next couple of EPs – 2018’s Plastic Worlds and 2019’s The System – both displayed the influence of Bacash’s new surroundings. He’d shelved the sprawling jazz and krautrock influences that ran through C.E. in favour of Balearic and Italo house music.
These sounds continue to play a major role on Sonny’s first full-length release, Union: Integration of the Shadow, which is out on April 24. He’s also established a middle-ground that allows for the inclusion of vocals without sullying the tracks’ underground electronic credentials.
Tone Deaf spoke to Bacash about the origins of Sonny, the music on Union…, and life in Denmark.
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Tone Deaf: You conceived the Sonny project around the same time as Gypsy & the Cat split up. Were the decisions to break up the band, move to Denmark and focus on Sonny all connected?
Xavier Bacash: During the first Gypsy record we had quite a bit of success over in Northern Europe. I think I had always wanted to move here, so when the conversations around the future of the band started to lean more towards ending things it became apparent that would be the direction I would point myself in; moving to Denmark.
Culture shock isn’t the profound experience it once was, particularly when moving between first world countries. But moving overseas can still provoke anxiety and a desperate urge to prove yourself. Did these sorts of feelings feed into your creativity?
You’re right – especially in Scandinavia they speak better English than probably we do, so it’s easy to feel at home. But culturally, politically, they’re just brought up differently and they think differently to the way we do. Getting into that tempo and becoming a part of that took time.
I was creative at the start, but when I started learning the language and making more friends I was even more inspired, because by accessing the language I started to understand the culture much more.
Listen: Sonny – The Feels
Did you have a clear vision for the Sonny project before you made the move, or did you try to absorb the influence of your new surroundings?
One of those tracks I’d written in Australia [before leaving] made its way onto my first Sonny EP. But it became apparent fairly quickly that any thinking that I had about methods or techniques or ways of being creative were flying out the door. I was meeting new people and listening to completely different music [and] that was completely changing and reinforming the style of music I was making.
I have a first EP called the C.E. EP. It’s only on vinyl right now. It’s kind of like a Floating Points-esque electronic jazz record. There’s been two subsequent EPs, but this album is completely different. So it’s been a growing up in public sort of process in a sense of releasing music and seeing where it takes me.
The music on Union: Integration of the Shadow was inspired by the underground electronic scene in Copenhagen and around Europe. What have you learned from immersing yourself in that scene?
Obviously there’s an underground electronic music scene and techno house scene in Melbourne and Sydney and other states, but I wasn’t really part of it. Moving here and just experiencing the fact that there was no triple j-like youth station here at all, so that fostered some more obscure, strange styles of music that could prosper in different circles – there were more subgenres going on.
Fast techno is a really big thing. House music when I first moved was quite big. I was less exposed to that in Melbourne. Here I was more exposed to European and Balearic/Italo disco or genres like that.
Listen: Sonny – Euromantics
Elements of dream pop, new wave, psych and ambient all entwine on Union…, but Balearic house seems like the most prominent influence. Were you making pretty deliberate choices when shaping the stylistic palette of the record?
I went from producing electronic jazz to house very quickly. The second EP I put out was a straight out house record. Then the next one was another three track EP, which was house but with a track with vocals.
When I came to the album I was like, “well maybe I miss songwriting to some degree and could try and include that in the house music thing I was doing.” Around that time I was getting more into Soichi Terada and those Japanese producers that do that mash up really well.
After finishing [Union…] I felt like, “Ok, bang, I know exactly what the sound is now.” It’s just brought on so many more ideas and possibilities. I think that’s why it took so long for me to come back after Gypsy – I just didn’t want to do something that I didn’t feel had some originality to it.
Sonny’s Union: Integration of the Shadow is available worldwide on April 24.
