Page 180 - JanFeb 2023_ION Indie Magazine

TB: You wrote all 10 songs on the ‘Keep It Dark’ album. What is your
writing process?

JB: Songs are like fingerprints. No two are the same. Sometimes it starts with
a riff. Sometimes it starts with a melody. ‘Planet 97’ came to me in a dream,
for instance. With every song, I work out the changes and rough outline with
my acoustic guitar or piano, then once it's had time to gestate and marinate,
I start recording and producing it. It’s mostly spontaneous, but there are some
songs I write with a specific goal or sound in mind. When I wrote ‘This Is The
Time,’ I always intended for it to be a 6/8 doowop ballad with an early 60s
inspired production, just to see if I could pull it off. And ‘Capsized’ was always
meant to be a rocked-up Glenn Miller-like big band tune. I always imagined
‘Fire, Fire, Fire’ to have a rhythm ‘n’ blues flair. And of course, ‘Planet 97’ is
my nod to the psychedelic mellotron-laden music made famous by The
Moody Blues, ELO, etc. While I like my music to have an original and specific
sound, I also wear my influences on my sleeves.

TB: You follow up ‘Keep It Dark’ with the video game soundtrack
‘Robots & Things’ in 2021. Talk about that project.

JB: As well as songwriting, I also compose instrumental music for films and
video games. I have always admired video game music, like Koji Kondo’s
work for the Super Mario and Legend of Zelda series, Masato Nakamura and
Jun Senoue’s work on Sonic The Hedgehog, and Nobuo Uematsu’s
contributions to the Final Fantasy series. For me, video game music was a
really good gateway to other instrumental music. Koji Kondo once cited
Rachmaninov’s piano concertos as an inspiration for his ‘Legend of Zelda’
music. ‘Robots & Things’ is a 3D platformer that is being developed by two
old friends of mine from high school, Hayden Nicholson and Scott Cooper. I
began composing music for it when development began in 2017. I’ve written
some pop jazz style tracks for that soundtrack, as well as a surf rock title
theme and bombastic orchestral boss battle themes. The game is a WIP at
the moment, but a playable demo is publicly available on its website, for
which I released a soundtrack album.

TB: You also released the EP ‘Why Wherefores & Woes’ in 2021, the
album ‘Multi Varios Sonos’ in 2022, ‘The Universe Hates Me’ album in
2022 .and a remix of the ‘Keep It Dark’ album with ‘The Keep It Dark
Sessions’ in 2022. That is a lot of releases in a short period of time. Why
so many releases?