“You take one hat off, you put another hat on,” said composer, musician, and producer Stuart Bogie. But right now, he’s putting most of his energy into his latest project, Superhuman Happiness.
Bogie’s no newbie to the New York music scene. In the ten years since he moved to Brooklyn from his hometown in Chicago, he’s played horns for the likes of TV on the Radio, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Foals. But working with others’ bands wasn’t what he was looking for. “As a session musician, sometimes you find yourself next to the creative spark. And you’re like, 'Holy shit!’ I was there when that just happened,” said Bogie. “And other times you’re asked to do something simple, and well, that’s it.” Being a session musician inspired the creation of Superhuman Happiness: “I was working on so many records that were so close to what I wanted to be doing,” he said. “And I was like, ‘Man, I’ve just got to start making the music that I’m hearing and feeling.’”
Bogie first gained visibility as conductor, arranger, and composer for Antibalas, a collective in the style of afrobeat-progenitor Fela Kuti’s band Africa ’70. How a guy from the Midwest became the leader of a world music band may seem puzzling to some, but Bogie’s answer is terribly poetic: “If your heart thirsts for a sound, that thirst becomes a powerful gravitational pull. It’s irrefutable and undeniable, and it breaks through any cultural barriers.” And, he adds, “They say that converts make the biggest zealots.”
After returning from touring with Antibalas, Bogie set to work on the first Superhuman Happiness release, the 2008 EP Fall Down Seven Times Stand Up Eight. “I wrote that CD alone,” he said, using songs he’d composed seven years earlier. The EP features the funky afrobeat sound Bogie’s made his name on, and comparatively, the new Superhuman Happiness single, “GMYL”, sounds rather mainstream in its thoughtful, but still danceable electropop. Both “GMYL” and it’s fantastic B-side, “The Hounds” feature vocals, unlike six of the seven tracks on Fall Down Seven Times Stand Up Eight. But the new pop sound is just a consequence of the medium, says Bogie. “The avenue we’ve taken is that of the 45 [rpm record], so you only have three and a half minutes for your song. If you want the chorus to have the emotional properties of a chorus, and you want there to be passages that have some poetry to them, it all works out to sound more like traditional pop music.” Still, Bogie seems a bit disconcerted by the more and more frequent indie rock comparisons his music’s receiving. While on tour with Iron and Wine, he played the new single for the proprietor of an Amsterdam record store. “He said, “So this is like New York indie pop, like Vampire Weekend.” And I was like, “Well, shit.””
Bogie says he’s not aiming for the mainstream. “We’re trying to make an honest reflection of life. The sounds that we’re excited about have to do with the lives we’re living together right now. We’re not viewing our music in terms of history, what we’re trying to do is create melodies and rhythms that bring our hearts joy.”
Listen to 'GMYL' here:
Listen to 'The Hounds' here:
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