Recently, Bash Co. released Velvet, a single that stays soft and delicate while integrating elements of rock to evoke thought and reflection. We sat down with Bash Co. to understand the process behind creating music, how different parts of your life can influence art, and what’s coming next.
Hi, Bash Co.! How did your journey into music begin?
Hi! My journey began when I was a teenager. I was about 16, and I was in a band at school; until then, I was only a listener. Making music began there and then. We played originals, and we were influenced by bands like Joy Division.
How does a song first come to you – theme, melody, lyrics, or something else entirely?
Usually, lyrics come first. It doesn't matter if they're just a few words or full sentences, but I always write them on my smartphone whenever I first think of them. It's my natural way of registering things right away. Sometimes melody occurs first, and in that case I record it vocally to my phone as well, because there's a chance I won't remember afterwards. There are even a few with mumbled words in between the melody I'm humming. My phone is filled with all kinds of messages to myself in such a manner.
Your sound tends to blur the lines between strict genres. How do you describe your music without using these labels?
I never understood labels and genres. I do whatever I want to without thinking it will have to fit a particular genre. Whatever a song feels like to me, I'll create it that way. I think it has something to do with the fact I've always listened to everything. Around the age of ten, I was listening to Stone Roses or Jesus & Mary Chain and, at the same time, Dr. Alban, Snap!, Technotronic. You would see me listening to Transvision Vamp alongside Enigma. It was all music, and I was absorbing. I've always done that. I own a pin that says "80% of my brain is song lyrics". That's me all the way. So, upon the idea of making music, I've always felt there's no such thing as genre or labels as well. I would write and compose the way I saw fit. Having said that, and once my songs mainly rise from an acoustic base where it's just me and my guitar, I guess you could call it acoustic soft-rock; that's the one label I can always hear about me and not get troubled with. But in production, I really don't think any song would end up in one particular genre just because all others have.
Your single Velvet beautifully balances rock elements with a soft, human touch. How do you know where to strike that balance?
Thank you for the kind words about "Velvet". Honestly, I don't know where to strike that balance. "Velvet" was an entirely new approach, one that doesn't exactly fit my first answer to your questions. I only had the idea of being inspired at Prague. I didn't even think of the word Velvet, though it has been stuck in my head since Velveteen by Transvision Vamp. My idea was to start simple; I mean, true to the way I usually start, just me and my guitar, and then engage in more complex mixes that would act as one more character in the song, with more powerful guitars and the role that drums play within the song, trying to imitate marching troops in the second half. As the song refers to love through tough times, and also separation, as well as political issues like the Velvet Revolution and the Iron Curtain, I felt the entire sonic experience had to make the listener feel he or she was there. I honestly think I'm trying to convey my thoughts not only through the lyrics, but also through the choices I make in terms of the way it's going to sound.
I love the contrasting imagery you bring to Velvet – lines like “the silence of a thousand people echoes through the air,” and “iron curtains never stood a chance / because it’s you in velvet,” especially stand out. How does this contrast play into the broader message of the track?
Once again, thank you! That has always been my thing. Searching for sentences that would have a double meaning, it's just my way of telling things, but not completely in the open. There's a song I wrote, called "Everything I need to know", which is full of those contrasting images, as it goes “, The day you left, the silence was deafening/ You screamed so loud that I could hardly hear you". My most recent song "Dungeon" says, "silent silence deafens all of my agony". So it has always been something I search for and aim at, and you can see silence and noise, and their contrasts, tend to be present in most of my songwriting like a recurring event. The iron curtain part on "Velvet" became clear when I was writing the lyrics; it all felt like the feeling was so strong that no war, no separation, no iron curtain would stand a chance against it. All of this contrast plays a higher role in the message of the track, as it allows listeners to follow different ways to understand what it's about. I mean, it's easy to see what it's about, but the effect I meant was having people experience what the character expresses: the doubts and fears, and the epiphany of having an invincible feeling within. Is this person in love? Is this person starting to fall in love? Is this character seeing someone in velvet for the first time, amidst a city plagued by tanks and war and separation? Or is this character talking about past events and willingly getting past all the places that made him happy and reminiscing on how love won?
You call yourself a songwriter, not a singer. How does that play a role in translating the vision in your head into reality?
First, I call myself a teacher. That's my job and what I am. I'm not an artist nor a musician. Music will always be a hobby. But I call myself a songwriter as well because that's what I feel I have been for almost thirty years. I've written a lot. For all purposes, not only music. The voice behind it hasn't mattered at all. In what concerns songs, I don't write them for me to sing them at all. If that were the case, tone and pitch would always matter and limit, and I don't think about those things when I write, never in a million years. The way I see it, vocals are just another instrument to be fiddled with. Tuned, changed, altered at will. I sing all my songs for recording purposes, as well as I play all guitars. I've been trying to introduce some keyboards and piano bits on my songs; they can be heard here and there. But my voice and my guitar are always the start of everything. I don't own a proper set of drums, but I have the tools to provide any beat I come up with. So, I send my voice to the dashboard just like any other instrument, and I mess with it with everything I can, up to the point where it won't sound like me if I need to. That's because I want the song to last, not the person behind it. I want it to be sung by a thousand people who won't know who wrote it. And you can be sure I won't let my songs sound worse because I was tempted to sing them just because I've written them. I can sing, and I actually like my voice, but I could never live up to the songs I write the way I plan them. Tone, pitch, all has to fit, and I make it fit. Hardly ever does it fit my voice, so I work on it. I perform them all live when I want to, with the kind of differences that won't make it to a recording process, but the producing bits and getting songs better and better are what I've aimed at for the last 16 years. I've said this before: one day I woke up and thought about how bad it would be if all the songs I've written died with me. That was when Bash Co. was born.
What’s next for you – creatively or personally?
There are a few songs waiting to be known. Some of them are already published, and people can listen to them on my Spotify; others are on their way. I'm planning to release at least one more song soon, and then there are a couple more coming up before Christmas; they'll be launched together, and they will address the last month of the year and snowy Christmases. They were written some time ago, and probably they will only be available during Christmas time; I'm fighting with the idea of having them published for longer than that.