If I were to take the name of this band literally, I would imagine a horror movie in which a musician’s touring gear suddenly comes to life and begins to torture and murder and maim the band. And I did do that, and I did imagine that, and I did giggle at the idea. That being said, Amps Kill has nothing in common with what my brain made up; instead, he’s a brutalist, experimental electronic project out of Denver, CO. Intense and dense industrial music that’s meant to be confrontational. And we’ve got a word from him on this edition of INTRODUCING. Check it out.
Give us a brief background about Amps Kill please. Who are the members and what are your roles?
Amps Kill is the solo project of me, Stephen Bailey. I do all the things. I’m a classically trained composer and improviser from Denver with a background in experimental electronic and electroacoustic music. I also have a less hoity-toity history with punk, dance, and industrial music.
When did you first launch the project and was it born from other projects?
Amps Kill’s first release was in 2022 but the project really started for me around the time of the 2020 pandemic. At the time, I was teaching music at some colleges here in Colorado, running a chamber music ensemble, and moonlighting in a free improvisation group and an industrial group. The pandemic put an end to those pursuits by altering university funding levels and ending live music performance for a year. uring that time I also started to feel a shift in how I wanted my artistic output to relate to the world around me. The music I was writing prior to this focused a lot on what I think of now as fairly subtle, nuanced gestures. Subtlety and nuance seemed like tiny, pointless ideas in the face of a world that was willing to eviscerate itself and bleed out at the feet of a class of billionaire, pedophilic rapists.
I finished up some existing commissions by making what turned out to be early iterations of Rage//Decay and The Boatman. Then I moved on with developing the branding, sound design, and philosophical concepts that became Amps Kill.
What bands and artists influenced Amps Kill for the most and why?
My most immediate influences are probably Emptyset, Shapednoise, and The Body. I think the way all three of these artists think about timbre, pace, rhythm, and scale in their music has a meaningful reflection in my own. I think there is a less immediate or obvious influence from a group of mostly Eastern European composers, specifically Górecki, Ligeti, Penderecki, and some others, who prioritized timbre, texture, and scale over more traditional approaches to melody and harmony.
If you could pick a single song from your discography to explain your music, which song would you pick and why?
This is such a hard question because all my songs are my favorite little babies but they’re also necessarily imperfect or there wouldn’t really be anything else to say. At the moment, I think Husk on the new Avulse EP is probably the closest to representing what I think of as Amps Kill. Sonically, the song is driven by a dynamic interaction across multiple voices which manifests both as spacious, breathing resonance, and as a throbbing, off-time groove. Also distortion. Much distortion.
Is there a central theme behind the new EP?
Avulse is about tearing away things that prevent us from growing and moving forward. Conceptually, it was initiated by a smallish collaboration with an artist I admired that soured quickly in an ugly way. That ending echoed other toxic relationships in my past that needed to end in order for me to be healthy. I think a lot of people, especially in my generation, have had to force toxic people out of their lives to protect themselves. Those endings often come from people that we love or are supposed to love us. That can be very painful. The music started to take shape around those feelings and ideas. I’m often conscious of the inherent difficulty that comes with trying to evoke a fairly specific emotion or tell a specific story with instrumental music. Titles and metaphors end up doing a lot of the semantic work, but at the end of the day these songs have particular meanings to me, and it’s less important to me that that specific meaning be conveyed to the listener than that SOME meaning be conveyed.
Take us through the genesis of a song or album? Do the lyrics and concept come to you first or do they come about after the music?
Really the very first thing is sound design. In previous projects, I often felt like I was reinventing the wheel for every single song. “Which kick drum? Which bass? Which lead synth?” Over and over for each song on an album. That’s not how other forms of music tend to work; if there’s a guitar, there’s only so many different sounds that guitar can make based on what’s available and possible. I’d like there to be a certain amount of sonic consistency in the larger scale of Amps Kill, so I always want to create a sonic palette that’s complete but inherently limited for each cycle of tracks. That ends up taking a long time, but also can be fruitful for a lot of material. An album and two EPs have mostly been made out of the same set of 10 or so instruments with only a few additions along the way. Beyond that, the concept, and often the title, almost always comes first, then the music follows in an effort to capture the emotional content of that concept. The music itself is generally born out of a lot of contemplation and noodling with the concept until something catches and feels like it can be the idea that gets finished. Once there’s a musical idea that has started to form, it’s mostly a process of listening and editing to find the ebb and flow that the piece needs to get to the end. Beyond that, it’s just mixing and mastering.
What’s your current favorite song, band, or album within your scene? And vice versa, what do you enjoy the most that’s completely opposite of what you make?
Another tricky question because there’s so much out there that I love. Aelk Minsur is a stalwart favorite of mine. He’s put out some incredible stuff this year. I also just recently found an artist called RomanOwitch that I can’t get enough of. In terms of the opposite of what I make, I feel fairly strongly that Hozier is probably the best songwriter alive.
What is on the horizon for Amps Kill? Upcoming gigs, tours, merch, videos, etc. Name it, link it, show it off.
I’m putting a lot of effort into developing a live show at the moment, so that should be coming soon. I tend to post short-form results of those experiments on instagram and youtube. I have another EP that will be coming out between now and the end of the year. I also have some collaborations with friends that I’m excited about next year. I’m working on an art book of the stuff that I developed to accompany Avulse. Should be available soon. Merch and everything else is available at LinkTree.
