Upon pressing play on Darcy Baylis’ new album More Again Forever, you are greeted with the song ‘Looping Out’. Guitars smother the atmosphere of the mix, with the only beacon of light being woozy autotuned melodies slicing through the fog. It feels like an intersection of minimalism and vehemence, a juncture Darcy consistently crosses in his songwriting throughout the entire project. The process of getting here, however, was far from simple.
“You don’t have to listen hard to realise this album is about getting sober, and how you feel like two completely different people in the before and after of that process,” Darcy tells me as we chat amidst the Sunday morning rush of the Footscray cafe we dwell in. It’s freaking loud, and there’s a lingering paranoia that the recording function of my phone is struggling with the cries of brunch pandemonium. But like ‘Looping Out’, Darcy’s voice cuts through the noise, powered by this reinvigorated urge to express. “It feels like I’m starting again, not just creatively, but the entire way I view the world.”
More Again Forever is a reflection of the adversity, exploration, and introspection that’s been happening in Darcy’s life recently. The title is inspired by novelist Leslie Jamieson’s book The Recovering: Intoxication and its Aftermath, where ‘More Again Forever’ describes the feelings she got from drinking, a sentiment Darcy related to in his journey to sobriety. The album features song titles like ‘Fuselage Falls Over Rudower Str.’ which nods to his time living in Berlin up until the end months of 2020, and symbolises a frequency of transit over the last few years that he describes as “Picking up what I have, finishing what I can, and moving onto the next place.” Songs like ‘Krisendienst’ feature lyrics like “Everyone you know is sort of famous if you squint your eyes” where Darcy shows his appreciation for the creative scene he is a part of. “I realised that it seems so silly that we spend so much time on numbers and comparing ourselves to each other, when we all know who each other are, and are all a part of this exciting community,” he explains. “People sometimes get hung up on wanting what other people have instead of focusing on what they have. I feel like I’ve now gone through that, and am content.”
Contentment is a new horizon for Darcy, but this new form is fueled by years of musical mountaineering. He’s thrived as a producer throughout This Moment I Miss, a collaborative project with Wicca Phase Springs Eternal. He’s polymerised the wildering soundscapes of ambient music with pulsating deep-house on past albums like A House Breaking. You can hear his vast back catalogue elements through More Again Forever, as shoegaze-esque guitars reverberate and sharp snares snap. But the music here is more condensed, resembling the cruising of the cars below him on the album’s cover, and driving away the mountainous soundscapes he used to climb. “I think anyone who makes music spends the first part of this journey experimenting, and with technology, that period of experimentation is pretty public,” Darcy tells me. “This record is like a culmination of all those experiments, and the most clarity I’ve displayed yet.”
The clarity Darcy finds is not only a result of years of experimentation in his music but also a sense of curiosity when it comes to the music he listens to. In between sips of his coffee, he gushes about genres like German Pluggnb, and masters of indie melancholy like Phil Elverum (also known as Mount Eerie or The Microphones). For More Again Forever, he cites both the heartbreaking tones of Carissa’s Wierd’s Songs About Leaving and the chaotic mortars of Glassjaw’s Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Silence as two massive sources of influence. “When I first heard the Glassjaw album I fucking hated it, and with Clarissa’s Wierd one I didn’t know what it was about, but something about them made me keep coming back to the point where I was obsessed,” he explains. “This was music I could relate to, and when I started to feel like I could relate to music again is when I started to seriously consider putting my record out.”
Within his new beginning, Darcy openly wears remnants of his old self on his sleeve. He describes the journey of his life as one of self-actualisation, explaining that “While the journey to this [self-actualisation] is often lonely and miserable, it’s all a part of trying to learn how to balance happiness with what you want to achieve in life.” It’s why he chose his guitar over Ableton tinkering in an “interest of being more direct.” It’s why he’s unintimidated by sharing the vulnerability of More Again Forever with the world and letting us in on the struggles of his journey towards sobriety. “The person I was when I was doing drugs feels so distant to me now, to the point where it feels like I’m simply telling a story. This is the first time I’ve listened to something I’ve made and been happy with it to the point where I didn’t care how it’s received because putting it out was something I did for myself.”
More Again Forever is Darcy Baylis’ ode to the creative community he’s a part of, and that he’s come to appreciate. It’s the result of years of musical experimentation that lead to the hazy whirlpools of emo that make up his album, and the vast array of music he’s listened to along the way. It’s a reflection of the adversity that has accompanied him on his journey to self-actualisation, through constant transit and a quest for sobriety. It’s a new beginning for Darcy Baylis, and as we leave the cafe, he lets me know that we’re all invited to sit beside him on this ride. “I don’t want More Again Forever to just simply be the sobriety album, and I don’t want to simply be the sober guy. I want the things I express to be about the universal human experience, and hopefully, everybody can relate to them.”
Follow Dacry Baylis here for more and stream the new album ‘More Again Forever’ here.