Words by Andy Kovacic //
In his debut album, Sonny gives us a little taster of the sonic bistro, otherwise known as the underground house scene.
Sonny, aka Xavier Bacash, is an Aussie producer making vibrant waves in the European neighbourhood. You may recognise Xavier from his previous life spent in electro-pop duo Gypsy and the Cat. But now, Xavier has been reborn as Sonny – a solo producer and electro whiz. And with the release of his debut album, Union: Integration Of The Shadow, comes just the kind of dreamy beats we all love to lose our heads to on electric nights out.
But Sonny isn’t all about dance jams. This album waxes on philosophical. It’s a lush compilation of tracks drenched in rhythmic synth and the chaotic cacophony of unexpected samples. Keep an ear out for some native Australiana on the album, you might hear something mighty familiar.
Speaking with Sonny is nothing but a good time. What really shines through is how deeply in love he is with the realness of the music that surrounds him. Sonny is authentically musical. Not only does he manage to mix his own unique sound in an industry over-saturated with cardboard cut-outs, but he also admires the somewhat humble and lowkey existence of underground artists; those who make music from the soul.
Staying true is something Sonny values. And I think we see that in his debut album that blends retro house with new wave groove. It’s a welcome introduction into music usually reserved for after-dark shenanigans. Sonny brings a bit of the underground into the light, whilst somehow uniting the Aussie and Euro houses at the same time. Who knew that musical diplomacy could create such sunshiny vibes? Hear all about it from Sonny in our chat below.
How does an Aussie guy find himself over in Denmark making music?
Basically, I was in a band that toured around the world quite a bit and we’d come to Denmark and play a show and I just really liked it here. I knew that sometime in my twenties I would like to go live overseas like in Europe, specifically. I liked the appeal of Denmark, I liked Scandinavian culture.
It just seemed like a good fit and a bit untracked in the sense where like, I guess if you can compare it to Berlin where a lot of Australians move to, especially musicians, that’s kind of the obvious thing to do. So, I just liked the anonymity of moving to Denmark or Copenhagen. And now, my fiancée is Swedish, so it doesn’t look like we’re going anywhere anytime soon. I’ve come and now I’m staying.
Danish culture from Aussie culture, what’s the biggest difference?
Oh. Massively different. It’s completely different. I mean drinking habits are the same. Partying habits – a little bit more different, I mean drug culture is much more prominent in Australia. It’s much cleaner here. Politically, it’s more of a socialist country here. Just the sense of community is much greater in Scandinavian culture with the welfare state and the idea of paying high taxes and receiving free healthcare and schooling. It’s just a different feeling in Copenhagen compared to say Melbourne, which I think is a pretty progressive city as it is for Australia.
And you’ve established your own record label?
Yeah, it’s called Northern Underground Records. Well, with my old band we had a record deal and it was a really terrible experience. The idea of like starting my own label was more to basically put out my own music – a platform to release music. And then, it just so happened that a lot of my friends here are Scandinavian musicians that are right at the start of their career and so I liked the idea of trying to connect Australia and Denmark in the musical sense and so, on this record there’s a few remixes from guys who have never put music out before but they are really great electronic producers.
So, I’m hoping to put out some records from them and I’ve put out a record from another guy last year. I’m just trying to create a vibe around the project and the particular sound I’m trying to push.
I heard you’re a man of many talents. Did I spy a how-to bake bread on your YouTube Channel?
[Laughs] Yeah. Heh.
Bit of ISO Baking.
Yeahh, some ISO baking. Look I’m not professional by any means but I just kept posting bread that I make on Instagram and people would say I have to do a tutorial, especially during this time so I did it. And yeah, it was fun.
It’s actually pretty entertaining [go watch it] but let’s get back on track and into the music.
The title of your new album is: ‘Union: Integration Of The Shadow’. That’s quite a mouthful, how did this name come about?
It’s like a theory in union philosophy. The idea of becoming one with your shadow, which is like essentially the darkness inside you. It’s about understanding the roughness and the warts inside you so that you can become a better person. But if you live a life, like we all try to live at the moment, where we have Instagram pages and you put up your very best photos or your very best occasions, it’s so far from the truth of who we are.
So, I just liked exploring the truth of the shadow and the title also has a relationship to the songs, which are kind of about personal growth of moving to another country, learning another language and trying to develop as an artist and a person.
This is your debut album as Sonny, so it’s uber special. What’s it like to create your own album from scratch, it must be hectic?
Yeah, it’s a real headfuck in the sense that you don’t really know the direction you are going so you have to try and figure that out on the way. It’s not like sailing a boat from one place to another because you have a start and finish point in that scenario, whereas this is very abstract and it’s not just about sitting down and writing ten songs or whatever. There has to be some kind of purpose.
But luckily, I had already written like three of them in my time, so it felt like I had the right thinking and tools and methods of how to do it. It was much more of a challenge to do that as a solo artist because I just didn’t have any help whatsoever from anyone. But it was really, really great.
Let’s dive into some of the actual tracks:
‘Ozone’
I wanted to write a track on the record that had that feeling of walking into a party. And so, it was about getting the mood going and moving. ‘Ozone’ occurs pretty early on in the playlist of the record. It’s inspired by some old 90s Japanese house electronica and that track only uses very old synthesisers like outboard analogue synthesisers so I’m really happy with the way that tune turned out. But sometimes I regret whether or not the vocals were too understated on it or whether or not it’s just what it was.
‘Euromantics’
This was a bit of a reflection on my first year in Denmark when I was partying a lot and making friends with Scandinavians. It felt very different from me being from Australia and experiencing these different cultures and it was just different from being young in Australia. So, ‘Euromantics’ is about getting up to antics in Europe.
‘The Feels’
‘The Feels’ is actually written about my fiancée [Awww].
So, it’s a love song?
Yeah, it is a love song. A friend of mine lives in Berlin and his name is Kris Baha, he’s quite a renowned techno-producer so I went and visited him for a weekend to do some writing. And that track started from a jam there and I brought it home and constructed this song out of it. We just had the chords, so I turned it into this weird Frankenstein track. I feel like it’s maybe the strongest track on the record in the end. But yeah…it’s about my girlfriend.
‘This Will Be Our Year’ – is it just me or did I hear a kookaburra laughing in this song?
Yeah, it’s a sample of a kookaburra the whole way through and coming in and out at different times. It’s my little ode or homage to Australia.
So, the motherland is never too far away in your music?
Nah, exactly. I’ve got to slip in some kind of Australian reference.
What is it about house music that you love so much?
I think right now we are at a crossroads in popular music where music is so homogenised and boring, and people are just copying recipes and formulas to have their five seconds in the sun. The thing I like about house music is that it is generally made by people who really love music who make it for themselves. You can hear there is heart and spirit in it.
A lot of the time, house music producers are incredibly talented, but they just don’t create music that is commercial. So, I like the understated, obscurity of house music where you can find certain records by certain people that just never went anywhere but you can hear the influence of these records in the music of very popular artists to some degree. For a hypothetical, you could hear someone like Aphex when he creates very obscure, electronic music influence say someone like Daft Punk.
It always seems like there are savvy pop guys and girls who hear and steal ideas from the underground electronic world and I like the idea that these underground artists don’t really care about that and they stick to their guns and they don’t cave into commercialism.
They just want to create fresh music.
Yeah, exactly. So, a little bit of my project is trying to incorporate song writing into house music production and try to marry the two together – not to commercialise it but maybe make it a little bit more accessible than what it is.
Talk to me about the album art, it’s very surrealist. Why make this your cover?
I feel like I wanted something quite strong. Originally, I had the title and the artist name on the cover but my friend Thomas, who does all my artwork, got a photo of this Danish beach that is outside my friend’s summer house in Denmark. I took it a few years ago and he really liked it and so he wanted to add those rocks on it to make it more abstract. So, he sent that to me, and it wasn’t what I expected because all the art he has sent me in the past has been more animated. But I really, really like it. I think it feels like something out of a 70s architecture book.
Tell me your dreams. Where do you want to go in the future, more producing/more performing or both at the same time?
Yeah, I think I would be silly to say that I was doing the project to never play live. At the moment, I play fairly regularly in Denmark and that’s really fun. But the dream would be…well my fiancée and I have an idea that we would move back to Australia in say the next 3-4 years and so I would hope that at that point the dream would be that in the summertime I would be able to tour in Europe, after building a career in Europe and then be living in Australia in summer and then be on tour there and just live my life like that. That would be my absolute dream. I would be the happiest person on earth if I could do that.
How do you say goodbye in Danish?
Well, you can say “vi ses” – which is like ‘see you’ or ‘see you later’.
Or you can say “farvel” – which is ‘farewell’.
[Excitedly] Or you can say “hej’ – which sounds like ‘hey’ in English. But “hej” means hello and goodbye, like “ciao” in Italian!
That’s why when you see some stupid American movie that shows a Scandinavian person, they are always filmed saying Hejjjjj.
It all makes sense now.
Heh-heh, yeah.
