The Con Artist: Talking Classical and Dub with Asdasfr Bawd

Walking through the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, you're exposed to snippets of 'Marvellous Melbourne', a period of unparalleled opulence the likes of which the city has never really seen again. A grand portrait of Dame Nellie Melba hangs on a high-ceilinged wall as you enter—walls that sit inside an ivory building housing Australia's oldest conservatorium.

Among this grandeur, the phrase "form follows function" comes to mind, considering Cons have bred musicians and classical purists steeped in centuries of Western tradition. But in its midst, there's a juxtaposition, for Melbourne's Alex Clayton (aka. Asdasfr Bawd) is a classical student who happens to have released a debut EP better suited to London's grimy clubs.

"I started discovering this after the British electronic wave: in the mid-to-late 2000s when all the labels were really huge. There were people and venues that were still open that were doing big shows—I just was just five years late to everything," Clayton told THUMP.

is Clayton's debut, and Solitaire Records' first release from someone with classical training. What's translated is a release born from years mucking around with Ableton, only Clayton has the technical underpinnings of someone who isn't bluffing when they can hear the difference between a Diminished Fifth and an Augmented Fourth.

"I guess with the classical stuff I was listening to, I was trying to recreate that, and the electronic stuff it's more of the same, just in a different context," he said.

It'd be an easy thing to pin down Bawd as some kind of virtuoso. While he's done his AMEB levels, a better fit would be of an affable music obsessive.

"The thing that I tend to be thinking about a lot is style, and what a genre is—and if I listen to electronic music I'm like: oh this is garage, I'd like to make stuff like this. So I tend to put a template onto music before I make it in a way," he said.

Since his release, Clayton explained he'd be struggling with "freeing up" his approach to making music. Granted, it would be hard to free up from a classical context, given its emphasis on what's on the page with little to no improvisation. Though in one sense, this lends a hand to Clayton's work as Asdasfr: Clayton's a technical perfectionist, and as such, the EP's rich with tiny details you might overlook. The title track for example, takes its flute sample from Hungarian composer, Tibor Szemzõ's track, Water Wonder.

"I guess my approach to the structures in each song of this EP is done so in a classical way," he said. "I always tend to analyse and dissect it."

You'd be forgiven for thinking then that Asdasfr Bawd is a logical by-product of the work Clayton's doing at the Con. But the roots for this project lie in Clayton's last year of school at Eltham High—a Victorian school with a prodigious music program. As well as producing Clayton, it brought forth eight of his contemporaries in his year level, including some of the boys from Good Morning, and River Yarra.

"I sent my friend Raudie McLeod [River Yarra] my tracks and he said I should send them to Solitaire. It was only then I realised the Hamish there was the same Hamish from I'lls," he said.

Funnily enough, Hamish also happened to be another Eltham local, also with a shared passion for British electronica. For the then-young Clayton, this was a weird but ultimately fruitful coincidence that's seen his passion in high school grow into a fully-fledged project of his own—with plenty of room to grow.

"It's my dream to be on Rinse FM," he said. "The thing I like about it is that it's trapped in a time-capsule. All of the MCs are doing all of these shout-outs and it's really odd. I really like it. It's this very particular geographic peculiarity. There's interviews with Ben UFO telling interviewers that this kind of music would only be played around in certain London clubs, or even in rooms of London clubs."

For now, Asdasfr Bawd doesn't necessarily have a string of tour dates ahead of him. Instead, you'd find his Soundcloud is busier at present—unless you want to attend Clayton's recitals at the Con.

The thing is though, there's little in the way of difference between the two forms, and as Clayton grows with more electronic and classical repertoires, here comes a musician ripe for the picking.

"One of the most interesting things a teacher ever said to me is that 'composition is like dissecting sounds that you hear, with the audience doing it in reverse'," he said. "I guess I'm doing both at the same time, because I'm always taking music apart into its building blocks and rearranging them."

Underpass is out now via Solitaire Records.

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