Balam Acab Is Making Music Again Because Normal Life Sucks

If there's any mystery circling around Alec Koone, the 24-year-old behind the moniker Balam Acab, it's not by his own design. The Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania-based producer released a string of recordings in the early part of this decade—culminating in 2011's lithe, cavernous sample collage Wander/Wonder for the then-nascent Tri Angle Records—that critics lumped in with the spectral, bass-heavy, enigmatic music that people were calling Witch House.

Koone's music and general disposition never really fit under that banner; his were towering, ghostly recordings, sure, but they felt homey and lived-in in a way that the microgenre's better-known practitioners never were. And he talked to the press. As such, any mystique came from the cocoon-like nature of his recordings, their silky samples laced together so tightly that it was hard to catch a glimpse of the kid behind them. But then, as if to appease an audience convinced of his reticence, he retreated into "normal life"—moving away from his hometown, then back again, going to school for a "boring," "practical" degree, dating—for almost four years. But ordinary life didn't suit him—there's built-in limits to the appeal of another night at the bar or another weekend wasted watching Netflix. Even as he jumped between residences and muddled headspaces, his creative drive started to nag him.

Back on December 17, he made his cautious return with a self-released record called Child Death, which adds double-kick drums and self-recorded snippets of simmering indie-rock to the already boundary-blurring compositions he's been making for years. With little fanfare—that is to say, no singles, no support tour, and a release date timed deliberately to coincide with the music industry's hibernation at the end of each calendar year—it's easy enough to see his latest project as yet another bid at obscurity.

But as with everything surrounding Balam Acab, this album's origins are far more relatable and, frankly, mundane. After years of not listening to or recording any music, the urge to create slowly crept back in. He gave in, but he did so on his own terms—shunning long-abandoned offers of label advances in favor of keeping things at home, recording guitar and synth parts himself and enlisting friends for any aspects he couldn't handle on his own. To that end, the traditional physical release due later this year will come on New York boutique label Orchid Tapes, whose founder Warren Hildebrand mastered the record.

After a few oddly timed emails, which he blamed on slowly readjusting his sleep schedule while returning from winter break to his studies, Koone hopped on the phone to detail the strange origin story behind the unapologetically DIY Child Death, during which he lost and found himself again.

THUMP: The title of the new record is Child Death. Were you concerned with morbidity when you were making it?
Alec Koone: Not particularly. It was weird. I was on tour [in 2012] and I was hanging out with some people afterward. Some kid asked me my age and then he gave me this really philosophically worded explanation of how I was in the process of "shutting my child" and that it would be a painful process. I was like…"Ok." It's a weird thing to say to someone. But since then, I haven't been able to stop thinking about the idea of child death.

It's not really about death, per se, but the end of an era. You can go through so many lives in one life. I'm a lot older than I was when I released Wander/Wonder. I'm 24. I feel like I've learned a lot and a lot of the things that have happened in the interim have taught me how to lose a part of that child. I mean, trying to become a good, honest, mature person—being the best you can to other people and always growing.

Do you feel like you've grown up?
Kind of. I would hate to say it's a growing up album. A lot of things happened in the interim.

Can you run through the highlights?
Ok, let's see here. I had some really bad things happen that made me really depressed for a long time. I learned how to be alone by myself for extended periods of time. I had my first mature, long-term relationship. I had my first real job. Lots of things. Just living life, I guess.

When did you start school again? That was a big part of the break between albums, right?
I toured [Wander/Wonder] until the end of 2012, basically. Then I was idling. I didn't know what to do. There was a lot of pressure to put out new music and I wasn't feeling creative or inspired. So I started going back to school the summer of 2013. I was like, "I gotta do something with my life." Because I couldn't make music. I needed to give that break.

I'd be getting emails from people like, "Hey this label wants to put out your album, they'll pay you this much for an advance." I was thinking, "I don't have any music." That looming over my head alone made me incapable of making music. For three years I lived a really normal life, like dating, going out to dinner, going to bars and stuff. I eventually realized…I couldn't do that. I wasn't making or listening to music. I was caught up in the normal life things that people do.

Three years is a lot of time, especially when you're young.
It's really crazy. 2012 was a really bad year for me. But finally, I feel like I'm getting back in touch with myself. That's why I'm releasing music again and doing the things I'm supposed to be doing.

How did you decide to self-release this record? Wander/Wonder was released on Tri Angle and seems like a foundational text for the sort of dark stuff they're putting out now.
I just wanted to self-release an album, to just do it myself, exactly how I wanted to do it. I think people just want to hear music. You can get so caught up in the music industry stuff, it's easy to forget that the people who listen to your music are just real people. None of them are so wrapped up in that world

But me and Robin [Carolan, Tri Angle's co-founder] are cool. We talk to each other every so often. I still love Tri Angle records; everything Robin puts out is great. He has great taste.

Even from the opening of the new record, the music is a lot darker and more dissonant than anything you've released so far, was that by design?
Everyone has always called my music dark, but I didn't see that [in the past]. When I came back, it was in a vacuum. I was just like "Ok, I haven't made music or anything for four years, let's just do this." I don't listen to electronic music, really. I grew up on noise and drone, so that's one of my favorite parts of the record. I wanted it to come out and for people to have no idea what it was going to sound like. I was worried about ["Glory Sickness"], too, because I was afraid people would put the record on then turn it off after like 30 seconds.

That opening segment, and a lot of this album, is recorded, when a lot of your previous work was based around samples. Was there a specific reason you changed your approach?
I was just missing the physicality of music. I've been playing guitar since I was 13. I've got a sampler and a sequencer and a JUNO keyboard. Wander/Wonder is almost 100% samples. When I'd get a vocal sample I'd want to edit the melody to get the melody I wanted. It was hard to get it to sound right.

But I love playing guitar, I love guitar music, and I wanted to write. Pretty much all of the synth parts are recorded. All of the guitar parts but one are recorded. Some of my friends recorded guest vocals on the album. The songs that are most "written," as opposed to collaged from samples, are the ones that people seem to be digging the most.

Is there a possible future where you make a rock record?
Yes! I started a rock band actually, with a couple of friends in my hometown. Maybe we'll put something out. Fifty percent plus of what I listen to is rock music. [I've been listening to] True Widow, everything that Teen Suicide puts out on their Twitter, repeatedly. Nirvana, always. Pavement, always. [Those bands] are a heavier influence on my music than any electronic music. I grew up on stuff like Flying Lotus' Los Angeles and that's like, beats. But I'm definitely into incorporating rock into it.

Along those same lines, you've said there's no plan for a live show until you can do it differently.
I did the whole stand behind gear, press buttons, use visuals [thing]. People like it because they're in a club dancing with other people and it's really loud. But it always felt a little cheap to me. I've seen bands like Animal Collective; there were so many electronics, but none of it was pre-programmed. They have those four people, and they're jamming, but jamming on weird ambient, psychedelic electronic music. I'm all about the jams when it comes to the live show.

The future of Balam Acab is as a jam band then.
Exactly.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.