Interview: Kyle Blaqk of Auger

FG: I’m here with Kyle Blaqk from Auger. Happy to have you chatting with us today. You guys are really blowing up this year. You’ve booked some solid tours and you’ve got some large festival gigs coming up. What’s really exciting you about the year ahead?

KB: Yeah. Well, first of all, thanks very much for having me. And there’s obviously been a lot of a lot of good stuff come our way and it’s come through, you know, hard work and real drive, but also a bit of luck, which I think everyone needs. So we certainly got a lot to look forward to. 

And there is there is an event coming up this year that I very much wish I could spill the beans on now. We’ve been told we have to wait till we can announce that one. But there is one coming up in Germany in a very specific region on the east side, if that gives any clue. So that’s probably the one I’m really genuinely looking forward to the most. 

But that being said, I think just the whole, the whole future plan that I have with Auger and that we have is very exciting. And I think every week more work is done and we get closer to seeing the sort of results and the fruits of our labour. It’s just a very exciting time. I think we’re right on the brink of doing something really, really special. So it’s in my best interest to sort of keep pushing and try and get it to that that big, almost arena level that I want it on. I mean, I don’t believe that anyone should limit their optimism and their ambition, and I’m certainly not going to going to do that. So I want to be I want to be as big as possible to enjoy crowds and for them to enjoy themselves. And the more people I can impact through that, the better.

FG: That’s fantastic. I caught the show at Rebellion in Manchester here last month, and sound is tighter than ever. So you’re definitely making the right play, in my opinion. 

KB: Thank you very much. 

FG: You guys have been around for a while, So, you know, the band started, what, 2016?

KB: It was actually 2017. We did we did one show in the July on the back of writing a few songs. And then come September we had a whole album written. Then really it was from September that we started to have regular shows and it was basically non-stop shows from then on until 2020 when everything went a bit sour with the world.

FG: Yeah. So those were really dark times. So how did that set back Auger and what do you think that did to the industry?

KB: I think it’s almost uncalculable the damages that it did to the industry. I think it was a real shift in culture as well as a hard hit on grassroots venues. But even the big ones suffered. The festival’s dropped like flies from that moment on. 

So it was a pretty dark time for the industry. I will say that I made sure that that was not going to happen with Auger. I started doing live streams, just done acoustically. I ended up doing like, I want to say about 40 hours worth of live streams during that time, some of them over five hours long of constant music. 

Then we did that one show with the full production kit. I had to apologize to the neighbours in advance because we did it in my garage with the loudest speakers I had to hand on absolute full volume to really get that immersive experience. I just wanted to make sure that people had something to look forward to on a regular basis.

And also being a small band, I didn’t want people to forget about us. I wanted people to know that not only we were there, but the community was there. You know, people talk very, very fondly about those lockdown times with our live streams and how they were able to connect to old friends and also creating new friends. We’re still meeting people now at shows who have come out together, and that’s the first time they’ve met because they had chatted to each other on the live stream. Now they’re friends. 

So I think the community that we built in that time has actually made us go even further. I think we made the most out of a pretty terrible situation.

FG: That’s great to hear. I listen to how passionately you talk about the community, and the connectedness of the folks that that follow the band and those of us that that listen to this kind of music. I know you’re also involved in the Sophie Lancaster Foundation. Tell me a little bit about the outreach that you’re doing for that.

KB: Yeah. The affiliation with the Sophie Lancaster Foundation is technically one of the longest standing ones we’ve ever had, as it was something that we supported from very, very early on in Auger and in my personal life. Ever since 2007, when the news broke. 

More recently, I’ve been I’ve been working for them as the Marketing and Development Manager presenting in schools about hate crime and about the importance of inclusion. So it’s really positive but also very hard message that I’m delivering. The Sophie Lancaster Foundation is very much embedded into the alternative scene and Sophie herself was an alternative. And so it’s really close to a lot of people’s hearts within the scene. 

We do festivals like Bloodstock and Download in the UK where there’s a big tent and even a stage there for her. That’s to raise funds, to raise awareness and really drive home that message of inclusivity. I’m really proud to be a part of that now and to try and use my platform as Auger and my experiences in performing to reach as many people as possible with the foundation. That relationship is only going to grow. I’m working on something with the next album to see if I can do some fundraising or some awareness raising with that platform. 

FG: Yeah, truly excellent. I always applaud people that really put their focus where it’s important. How are how are the kids responding to the message when you go out to the schools?

KB: It’s always mixed because there’s different schools, there’s different backgrounds, and there’s different forms of prejudice that are very much localized. The school I visited most recently was for Year Ten. Kids about 14, 15 years old. The message was quite a hard one because I think a lot of people, even if they don’t admit it, are guilty of forming these prejudice against alternative people. I showed a picture of Sophie at the beginning and showed it again later on, having explained what had happened. I think a lot of people felt guilty. Then when we played some of the clips and some of the videos that I had in the presentation, there were quite a few people who were very upset and in tears, and we made sure we support them. I was really touched that the message got to them. It was very, very well received. 

The most important thing is that even if it’s just one mind changed, I think that’s worth it. I’ve done my job there even if I just change one mind. We’re never going to be able to change everyone’s. And even if I don’t change them, just to open them a little bit might just be the difference between someone saying something hurtful and deciding not to. That’s the important message.

FG: Let’s pivot to your music, because I think that that’s the core of what you’re doing. And it gives you the platform to have all of these other great things going on. Nighthawks was simply a fantastic album. It was solid all the way through. I know it was loved by critics and all the fans. So take me through a little bit of your writing process. Where do you pull your inspiration from? Do you start with the music? Do you start with the lyrics? Walk me through your creative process. The mind of Kyle Blaqk, The Creator.

KB: The creator? That does sound pretty good. It sounds very biblical, actually. I think it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly where the inspiration comes from. Only because it comes from a lot of different places and varies from song to song. Particularly with Nighthawks, the story is really that it started with one song and that was City Never Sleeps, which is the opening track on the album. I had been listening to a lot of Tears for Fears and I’d been visiting Chicago quite a lot, and I just had this image in my head of like a really sort of dimly lit street at night with these sort of big orange lights, kind of artificial, and this rain coming down and this real atmosphere. I just really wanted to capture that in sound. But I also wanted to tell a tale. I pictured someone almost staring through a window, looking in at someone’s wall and being cold and, and this sort of, I don’t know, it’s sort of like, a story of someone walking through and all the senses that they’re feeling. 

So I wrote the music and a lot of my vocals are freestyled when I write them, I just press play and when I come up with the melodies, quite often I come up with most of the words as well. So that’s quite interesting. And, and when it all came together, I was really, really pleased with it.

I played it to my manager and he normally describes songs in terms of music. He says, okay, this one is heavy, this one is catchy, this one has a melodic vibe, maybe some references. This was the first song he ever said “this song is visual”. He said that it’s like conjuring this image of like a really dimly lit street walking through, maybe like an America sort of suburbia. And it’s got this sort of atmosphere to it. And I thought, that is so bizarre that he’s picked up on that through the writing. And then he said that it reminds him of this painting by Edward Hopper called Nighthawks, which is actually in Chicago. And I thought, oh, right, I’ll have a little look at that. So I’d never heard of it. And I looked it up and that was the exact image that I had in my head when I wrote the song. And I swear I must have come across it at some point. But I had no idea that it was actually a thing and I couldn’t believe it. Especially that the visual must have been strong enough for it to be picked up. So that kind of, that kind of gave me the fuel for the rest of the album.

You know, the rest of the tracks sort of came together from the singles and it had this sort of idea of creating a lot of atmosphere and being trying to be more visual with my music, which gave it a totally different dynamic, I think, to the other ones. I mean, Insurgence is a very sort of dancey album and there’s a lot of sort of party hits on there. But I think this one just had a special tone. And weirdly, the album artwork matches with every single song somehow. Like you can look at that and getting get immersed in that and listen to the song. I think it really links together. 

Feeding on from that was to build on the theme of artwork and create a sort of gallery. That’s when the idea for the booklet came through. It’s 12 pages and each page is a unique painting done by someone for that specific song based only on the title and not on the lyrics. There’s a different interpretation per song. So it kind of became this sort of really artsy project - which makes me sound very artsy, which I’m not normally. But I had a lot of fun doing it, I’ll admit.

FG: It’s certainly an album that speaks to me as, as a recovering American. The imagery that you go through is imagery that I’m familiar with from my youth. So yeah, yeah, definitely. It makes a lot of sense to me. For a younger guy, you’ve got a lot of depth. Where do you get that? Who do you kind of attribute the evolution of your craft and how you’ve matured your writing over the course of your career?

KB: Yeah, that is a very interesting question. I don’t really know because again, I’m only 26, but sometimes I forget that and I think I’m in my 40s. I just don’t know. I approach everything I do as I always have done. It’s always been my mentality to approach everything I do with learning something from it, whether it’s on a philosophical sense or whether it’s bettering myself or whether it’s just being open minded and actually consciously flipping things that have happened to me to try and see the other side of it. I think whether that comes from a background of being bullied growing up or whether it comes from a background of being very self-conscious or whatever it is, I always try and put a bit of a spin on it in the hope that I find some light. And I think because I’ve done that from probably since I was like 6 or 7, it’s sort of perhaps matured me in, in certain ways more than it normally would, that sort of thing. So I like to really think about how things can affect people. There’s almost always a challenge I see in that and enjoyment in trying to create amazing music and a lot of it does also come from those influences.

I think particularly with Nighthawks. As I wrote, I listened to a lot of early Radiohead, the Bends album being absolutely brilliant. And also some Kill Hannah, which is a Chicago based band. Just listening to the more raw production of that and realizing the importance of imperfection and how incredibly beautiful imperfection can be and how impactful imperfection can be and not sort of worrying too much about making things so clinical and being a bit looser and putting more feel into it. People can feel when you play something with feeling. So that’s how a lot of the Nighthawk stuff was done. There’s a lot of acoustic guitars, a lot of tambourine. There’s a lot of electric guitars that weren’t totally polished and lined up exactly to the beat. Everything was just had a certain warmth to it. And I think that again, leaning into the visual side of things that sort of created that warmth that I was trying to get.

FG: That’s a that’s a great description. 

KB: I’m glad because sometimes I feel like I just talk absolute nonsense. So…

FG: No, it’s brilliant. Now, now I know you’ve got a new album in the works. Is it going to be similar to that process or do you have some new inspiration that’s got you going? How’s that coming? When do you hope to release?

KB: I would say, definitely next year. I’m not quite sure when - there might be a possibility that it gets dropped early as well. If the message from the album is important enough and it’s and it’s at a stage where it’s ready, I don’t think it should be held back from people if they want to hear it. In terms of the process, I still want to keep that sort of visual aspect because I’m very, very proud of that. I feel like the processes that I’ve learnt through doing that have sort of opened up a new way of recording. 

But then on top of that, in my mind, everything I do has to be an improvement on the last thing. If there’s a better way of doing it, I’m not going to be sticking to old methods. I’m always looking to improve and make it make it even better. And particularly with this new one, there is lots of inspiration drawn from the usual suspects like Tears for Fears and White Lies, but also a huge, VAST influence as well, which came across in some of the tracks from Nighthawks like Smother. I want to try and include more of that. Like it might sound odd to stick, you know, a mandolin over the top of lots of electronic stuff, but sometimes it’s those combinations that work.

I’m interested in doing something like that, but also more collaboration as well. In the way that I’ve made Nighthawks a collaboration in terms of the artwork, I want to make this one a collaboration in terms of the music. If people want to add to the song and have something unique to offer, it doesn’t have to be verbal. It could be guitar, it could be anything. When you write all the instruments, record all the instruments like I do, I worry that I compromise on some stuff. I’m not a piano player, not a drummer and not a bassist. I have to do what I feel is right. So sometimes if I can bring someone in, even just for one track, it might just inspire something. 

There’s a lot of tracks that are ready - about 27 of them. I’m going to have to be very disciplined and try and get them down to the very, very best. But the two things that I know for sure that it will be - it will be very, very visual and it will be on vinyl, which I think is very important. So that’s the two things that are guaranteed.

FG: I absolutely love vinyl. Vinyl is definitely worth it and the market seems to respond to it as well. And I really like the way you describe using kind of non traditional instruments in conjunction with each other. I think there’s a beautiful kind of a harmonic note or a shimmer to acoustic instruments over top of either distorted guitars or electronic beats.

KB: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

FG: There’s a frequency separation there that’s just so, so beautiful, right? It provides the variance and the texture that you want from a song.

KB: Yeah, because it’s not, it’s not dependent on an electric guitar running directly into the studio, directly into an amp. That will generate basically the same set of frequencies that any electric guitar plugged into a studio plugged into a thing would do. So by having an acoustic guitar, for example, everything to do with the room that you’re in makes it different and what size cushions you have in the room, everything from the microphone and where you placed it, everything from the guitar you use to how old the strings are, how hard you play them, the varied options are endless. And even sometimes when the tone doesn’t come through on the acoustic guitar, because obviously there’s a lot going on, you get this amazing percussive sort of sound that the pick sort of generates, and it’s that that can really add a bit of liveliness to it. And I really would love to sort of draw from the essence of that and include it into the very sort of unique organic sound that’s been developed over the last sort of 5 or 6 years.

FG: Love it. So I asked you at the top of the interview what you were excited about for Auger over the course of the next year. What about for you - what are you excited about personally? 

KB: Well, aside from the work with the Sophie Lancaster Foundation, which is so important, just getting out on my bike. I passed my motorcycle test recently and I’ve been doomed with ill-fated motorcycles and horrible weather. I got it in September, and I’ve hardly done more than 300 miles. So we’re excited for the weather to get better and just get out there and explore, and hopefully draw some inspiration and visit some places.

FG: Kyle, it’s been a great chat. Thank you for spending some time with us this afternoon.

KB: Well, thank you very much for having me and thank you for the great questions.