Bathed In Light

"You just called at the right time because my computer crashed,” admits Tyondai Braxton as he steps outside his New York studio. Currently he's trying to finish the follow-up to his debut solo journey, 2009's Central Market, but before he does he wants to talk about HIVE, the rhythm-centric multimedia experience that he's bringing to Australia for the very first time as part of Sydney Festival 2014.

Wanting to create complex sensorial environments on top of just performing music, the 35-year-old enlisted the help of Uffe Surland Van Tams – a Danish architect he worked previously with on his Memory Remember Me show in 2006 – who commissioned five illuminated performance pods for HIVE, an expansion on Van Tams design, Light Hill. 

“The pods are so strong as an identifying factor that they speak [for] themselves, I don't have to do much visually,” he expands. “But musically speaking, the question [with HIVE] was being able to match the quality of the visual element in a lot of ways, see what the visual element would inspire in me to incorporate in my music and which direction I wanted to go.”

Stimulated by post-war modernism in composition, Braxton has tried to implement elements from these periods into his own writing. He admits, however, that HIVE is an ever-changing entity, with musical probability maintained through modular synthesis.

“There's always going to be [an] open element, no matter how pre-composed the music is,” he remarks. “So even after I solidified what I knew I wanted to build off of, the question became, 'What is this even going to sound like?' Working like this, you cast a wide net with that conceptual idea, then when you start to understand what you have you shrink it down. That's what I've been doing, refining what this original idea was.

“When you start getting too comfortable it shows. You start nesting in your nook and you find that your material sounds very comfortable. A lot of artists that I really love, you can feel the search; you can feel them trying to extend themselves. That extension is uncomfortable but it's necessary if you want to grow as an artist.”

After departing from math-rock group Battles in 2010, Braxton continues to challenge and delight. And with projects like HIVE keeping him busy, a return to the traditional 'band' mould seems unlikely. “I wanted to go to the next level, musically, for myself,” he reasons. “As a founding member, having been there for [over] eight years, it was time to move on. Would I be in another rock act? Probably not. I just don't feel that's where my interests lie at this point.”