Drowse Makes Slowcore With a Black-Metal Edge

Kyle Bates is a full-blown audio nerd. He teaches recording classes at the California Institute of the Arts, where he’s also pursuing his Doctor of Musical Arts degree, and holds a master’s degree in electronic music and recording media from another prestigious California arts school, Mills College at Northeastern University. But for the past decade, Bates has also been the mastermind behind solo project Drowse. Being a full-time student “is really hard to do with touring,” he admits.

Bates released a new Drowse album, Wane Into It, last year and has been on the road promoting it ever since. A self-described perfectionist, he has always had “a really hard time sharing demos with people” before they’re ready, so a three-year pause between records gave him more than enough time to craft and contort the nine new tracks to his liking.

“It’s my most time put into something, in terms of making it sound really good and mixing," he says. "I think it made that record a lot lusher than my other stuff."

The result is 45 minutes of brooding slowcore and ambient folk. From the album cover, a ghostly black-and-white photo of the 235-foot Haystack Rock at Oregon’s Cannon Beach (which also appears in the 1985 adventure film The Goonies), to the closing track, “Ten Year Hangover / Deconstructed Mystery,” Bates takes listeners on an aural journey through his brilliant mind.

“I try to paint a sense of place really strongly and sort of map out another world sonically,” he says. “I like it to feel like you’re going into this other weird, almost unreal space for people to visit sound-wise.”

Bates’s music has regularly addressed his life with bipolar disorder. That's seen more prominently on earlier records, but Wane Into It's “Gabapentin” is in the same vein: The title is a reference to an anti-convulsant medication he’s taken.

“It’s technically anti-seizure, but they prescribe it to bipolar people with anxiety, so there’s still some lyrics about pharmaceuticals, because it plays into my life a lot,” he says. “That’s just an ongoing life struggle, because I’m bipolar. I think I figured it out more and am more on top of stuff. I think my earlier records were in the mess of all of that, so I’m writing a bit less about that now.”

While Bates sometimes plays live with a band, which he finds “much less anxiety-inducing,” the writing and recording process are a solitary endeavor.

“Honestly, most of the writing happens when I’m recording stuff, like layering synths or drum machines,” he says. “It’s like an interaction with my own past recordings of myself instead of a band practice and collaborating with people.”

Bates will be in Denver for a solo Drowse show at the hi-dive on Monday, June 12. Agriculture, Sprain and Palehorse/Palerider are also on the bill.

He sees his Drowse records and shows as “two different worlds” that make for drastically divergent listening experiences. “On a record, I’d recommend people lie down in bed and put headphones on or have their speakers, listen to it and just trance out,” he explains. “Live, it’s a very intimate feeling. I do a lot of looping with synth and guitar. It’s a bit more droned-out or ambient. It’s songwriting, but through a huge haze of sounds and drones and weird things.”

Growing up in Portland during the 2000s, Bates is a fan of Cascadian black-metal bands including Wolves in the Throne Room, Agalloch and Velvet Cacoon, as well as the corpse-paint-covered subgenre in general. He points to Norwegian experimental black metallers Ulver as a big inspiration, as well.

“I don’t think [Drowse] necessarily sounds like that, but that sense of atmosphere, especially that darkness and gloominess to it — I think it has that same kind of vibe, even though I’m not screaming or playing tremolo-picked riffs. All of that stuff was a big influence. I don’t think my music sounds like that, but the sense of space translates," Bates says.

Such doom-and-gloom aesthetics are a big part of Drowse’s vibe, too. “I want people to be slightly unsettled, even though they’re going to hear some very sad indie songs for the most part," he adds. "But I like to get that atmosphere going.”

Plus, one-person bands are very common in the black-metal world, which Bates can relate to. “The early Drowse stuff was more ambient, but that was a big inspiration on [Wane Into It] — those one-person black-metal bands, like, ‘Oh, well, these people are doing it in their bedroom and their records sound huge,’” he explains.

While his “brain is always in a million places,” Bates uses music as a way to keep himself focused on the moment at hand. Maybe others will form a similar relationship to Drowse.

“The most present that I ever feel is when I’m playing or recording. That’s probably the most grounding thing that I have, that I can go to, in the same way that someone might use meditation or whatever,” he says. “It really calms me down a lot. … If I’m feeling anxious or whatever, it’s kind of a cocoon or way to calm down if I put headphones on. Part of my hope with making my records is being able to do that for other people a little bit, too.”

Drowse, 8 p.m. Monday, June 12, hi-dive, 7 South Broadway. Tickets are $15-$18.