On February 20, 2025, Jock Nowell-Usticke, otherwise known as BAYNK joined one of our Sports Directors, Roman Aguilar in a Zoom meeting for an exclusive interview! With his latest release, “SENESCENCE”, Jock spoke about his creative process with the album, and life on the road during tour. Nearing the end of their 2025 world tour, the band stops in San Diego to play Music Box on March 6! 

Senescence makes a change from Adolescence, exploring themes of aging and impermanence and darker themes, I’d say, in this new album. Can you just talk about what inspired the transition in your storytelling? Because you’re able to kind of create that alongside your electronic sounds.

BAYNK: I think it was mainly just the aging itself—moving out of that adolescent period. Not even that I was in my adolescence when I released Adolescence, but I hadn’t released an album at that point, so I was kind of making up for lost time, having not been in the music sphere in my childhood that much, or at least I wasn’t making or writing music. And then straight after Adolescence was finished, I was just in that time in my life where things were settling down, and I wasn’t quite the animal I used to be back in my youth. So I just started feeling a bunch of things that come with age—namely, thoughts about death and impermanence and what’s going to happen to all the people I love and how one should spend their time with the knowledge that everything is impermanent.

That kind of translates into how the album starts, and we have “Prelude” and “Fall for You,” where it has more of a moodier, more kind of organic sound altogether. Can you walk through the sonic evolution of the album and just kind of how it came to be and how you came to form it?

BAYNK: Sure. So I had been working basically in the box for all my life, which just means making everything on the computer and using soft synths to make the sounds. And I was getting a little bit, I don’t know, a little bit too up on my screen all the time. So I just started going back to things that I love that are not computer-related—piano, real instruments, sampling the real world, and trying to make music with sounds that aren’t from soft synths. So most of the sounds you hear on the album are from my Prophet-6 or this Kumar 17 keyboard that I fell in love with during the start of the creation of the album. Yeah, just like a need to get back to real things and away from the computer as much as possible. I still did a lot of stuff on the computer, but much less than I did for my early career, and it felt good. Honestly, I think less screen time in my life is generally just a good thing—not only in music but just in general day-to-day living.

Sure, sure. I mean, with the genre you’re in, how important is it to be able to, like, get away from just, you know—it’s so, I guess, from most people’s perspectives, easier to just do everything electronically and just kind of mash everything together musically—but to also incorporate those live instruments and kind of have a good balance of both, where you’re able to make more from that?

BAYNK: For me, it’s important because I think it just makes everything instantly more relatable—not only for the audience but for myself too. And I do like things that are purely electronic and weird and strange, but it’s just a different ball game, and it wasn’t what I wanted to do on this album. And it makes it fun. Like, I had lost a little bit of the passion and fun in making music just on my laptop. You get a lot of excitement when you first start making music—everything feels so new and expansive. And then as you get further into your career, at least for me, the sheen kind of comes off. You also start realizing how many things you don’t know and the general limitless possibilities of what you can do on a computer. And I think that started to overwhelm me. Having access to just instruments that do one thing, and a pedal that does one thing—limitations are often a blessing, and I kind of subscribed to that on this last album.

What can fans expect from this new live show? I mean, I’ve seen you have a lot more live instruments playing with sax and guitars and the big stages. What can fans take from that?

BAYNK: I think it’s just a different energy once you have people on stage—especially people you’ve known for a while. The bassist, Rutger, his project is The Nicholas. I’ve made a lot of my music with him—the majority of this last album I made with him. And it’s just so nice having other people up on stage interpreting the songs with me and just giving energy. Honestly, I’m there to just spend a night with people, have fun, and let go. And it’s harder to do if you’re just one person up on stage—you just have to run it yourself the whole time, which I’ve done for a number of years. And it’s fine, but this is a lot more fun for me and sustainable. I think it’s a way better experience for the crowd, too, because I’m having a way better time.

Yeah, we have The Nicholas on bass, we have Phil Good on guitar, and he’s also doing kind of drum effects and other little things he’s cooked up. The songs have been slightly reinterpreted to provide a change from what you’d normally hear on a recording. And yeah, I’ve been playing saxophone for a while, but there are new saxophone parts on different songs, and it’s just a different way of experiencing the music. It’s a fun show, honestly. That’s probably the best way to describe it. I only want to make a show that’s incredibly fun and rewarding for people to come to and just have a good time. So I think that’s what you’re getting out of it if you’re coming to the show. It’s a show I would have wanted to go and see if I was my younger self. Maybe I’d still want to go see it today, but I just like to make shows… I’m not in the business of attending them all the time anymore, unfortunately.

I mean, going on this tour now, have you collaborated with Spencer Graves again for this tour—and did he help how you wanted to design the tour, and how it came out?

BAYNK: Yeah, he did. He drew the kind of platform stair thing we have on a napkin for me at some point. And yeah, we were originally going to take this—I’m not sure if you saw it—but we had a few limited experiences with this setup called The Pillow that Spencer also helped put together. It was this beautiful, inflatable pillow—huge, like 20 feet by seven feet by seven feet high. But it was so expensive, and we couldn’t fit it into hardly any of the rooms, anyway.

So, yeah, he made this stage for us last minute, and we bought all the stuff that we needed. And it’s great—it’s modular, I can climb it, it provides a playing surface for my bandmates, and yeah, it gives a sense of depth as well, because it screams at multiple points from the front of the stage to the back. I love programming the video for that and seeing it come to life.

We’ve had some really talented programmers on the lights as well. Davis has been doing the lights for us, and Justin on tour has been kind of busking the house stuff. So yeah, that’s been really fun. Honestly, I’ve got a really good crew this tour, so it’s just been such a good time.

Do you feel like personally, where you have all these people on stage helping you out, and it just feels a bit more grand—do you feel like, personally, it helps you think, “Okay, now this is another step up from previous years, being an opener”? Now, do you want things done on your own on stage, and then having this big band helping you? Like, do you think in your head, “Okay, I kind of earned this as well from the album”?

BAYNK: For sure, for sure. It feels really good. It’s not even just the band, honestly. It’s the band, and then it’s everyone else on the tour. There are nine people, and they’re doing jobs that me and my friends used to do—like a driver, driving the bus. Our production manager, Chris Bullock, who’s incredible—I used to do their job, like building the LED every day and troubleshooting it. We’ve never even had a lights guy. I used to program the lights before I went on tour, set it up in Ableton, and just prayed every night that it wouldn’t go bad. So yeah, just slowly filling in all those roles has been epic. It’s so good to not have to do anything except focus on the music and performing. It makes my performance so much better and touring way more sustainable because touring is a hard lifestyle. You need good people on the road, and yeah, it feels like I finally have those people now. It’s great.

Have you had any downtime in between shows, or is it just constantly finishing a show, traveling to the next city, and going from there?

BAYNK: No, we’ve had downtime. I’m not sure I could hack doing like five or six shows a week—that would be really painful. I’ve just been in Denver; I went skiing the other day, which was epic. And then some friends are in town tonight. Seinabo Sey is playing a show—where is he playing? I think Concord Music Hall or something. Anyway, I can’t remember, but it’s a really nice venue in Denver, so we’re gonna go see that. And yeah, it’s been chill. We have time to do stuff.

We play a lot of games as well. We’re all just a bunch of gamers, so there’s a lot of Magic: The Gathering, a lot of poker nights. I think there are like five or six Nintendo Switches on board, so everyone’s always buried in their Switch. A lot of Balatro, a lot of Stardew Valley. It’s pretty tame, honestly. I mean, I’m glad it’s not filled with illicit drugs—that would be incredibly unsustainable and bad for our health. But honestly, the games keep us going, and everyone’s just a nice person, so that helps.

Yeah, I hope so. After the tour and the album cycle, is there anything planned next? Are you just going to settle down for a bit, or will you get back to making music right away?

BAYNK: I haven’t written music in a long time—a few months, probably. I just need time to fall in love with it again, as cheesy as it sounds. But it really is like that. If I spend a year and a half writing an album like this, I just get a little bit burnt out from writing music. Touring usually brings it back for me. So once it’s done, I think I’ll start looking for some inspiration. I’m going to build a studio at home, take it slow, and try to get inspired one way or another—then eventually write something new.

And finally, what’s one song from the new album that you’re most excited for fans to hear at the shows? And what are you hoping they take away from the live experience overall?

BAYNK: I mean, I love playing Grin at shows because people really resonate with it. It’s amazing to have a crowd singing back at you and just feeling happy. But Mr. Jocko is a favorite for me because there are some new sax parts on it that sound great. It’s really fun to play with a bassist and a guitarist. So yeah, I’m excited for fans to hear some new saxophone melodies live for Mr. Jocko—melodies that I didn’t put on the original track but sound really good and work really well in the live setting.

Yeah, all right, perfect. That’s all I have for you today. Thank you so much.

BAYNK: Anytime! Thank you so much for being interested—I appreciate it.

 Yeah, thank you. Have a great day.

BAYNK: Same to you. See you later.