Back in Blaqk
Two members of AFI form a successful side project
Sometimes, you don't have to scream to be heard loud and clear. Take, for instance, Blaqk Audio, a new electronica side project launched by AFI's guitarist Jade Puget and singer Davey Havok, who has done quite a bit of yelling over the years with the California-bred goth-punk outfit. After many promises/threats to do so, the duo has indulged its mutual love of '80s techno, '90s block-rocking beats, and contemporary clubland culture to come up with "CexCells," a techno album that is equal parts valentine and departure from the pair's day jobs.
Several AFI fans - and a few other folks, too, it seems - are listening: Upon its release last month, the disc debuted at No. 18 on the Billboard Top 200 and sold nearly 30,000 copies in its first week. And when we catch up with Puget by phone, he and Havok are only hours away from their first-ever public performance as Blaqk Audio - a sold-out show at the Popscene club in San Francisco. The duo hits the Roxy on Monday.
Not too shabby for a side project that started as a lark and what Puget calls "a labor of love" that took shape on the margins and in-betweens of AFI's busy recording and touring schedule.
"It was years in the making - a lot of our fans have been waiting and wondering when we were going to do it," says Puget, who produced the album and wrote all the music and handled all of the keyboards and programming. Havok wrote the lyrics and sang. "Finally, we got around to having time to actually put an album together and record it. We really wanted to do it [sooner], but AFI put out their two biggest records right in a row."
Indeed, after more than a decade during which it released five albums, AFI (which stands for A Fire Inside) issued its major label debut, "Sing the Sorrow," in 2003, toured relentlessly, and followed it up with last year's "Decemberunderground." The band again hit the road for a series of tour dates that ended in May. The timing for finally getting "CexCells" out there seemed perfect, Puget says, but not for the reasons you might think.
"We weren't really trying to capitalize on AFI's success and trying to release it when we could sell the most, or anything like that," he says. "This is just the first little bit of down time we had. I guess I'm a Type A personality. I should be enjoying some time off, but I've created more work for myself."
Indeed, after Blaqk Audio's tour ends in three weeks, "the next thing on our plate's definitely a new AFI record," Puget says. "But hopefully after that, we'll start writing the next Blaqk Audio record. I probably have 40 new songs."
"CexCells" offers a sweeping, synthesizer-powered survey of both Blaqk Audio's adolescent obsessions - check out the Depeche Mode techno-pop romanticism of "Semiotic Love" or the slow-building industrial clang of the very Nine Inch Nails "Between Breaths (An XX Perspective)" - and current club cravings (the ready-made dance floor workout "Snuff on Digital"). Havok's dramatic croon and mannered delivery are well-suited to the brittle, arch chill of the music.
"We've been listening to electronic music since the '80s, starting with stuff like Depeche Mode and Ministry, but I think when a lot of people hear ["CexCells"] - maybe people who haven't listened to a lot of electronic music - they immediately think of it as '80s because that's a more common reference point for electronic pop music," Puget says. "But there's a lot of stuff going on currently, a lot of subgenres, and hopefully if there are people who are curious about electronic music, this could be a steppingstone for them to get into other things."
But as Puget points out, that wasn't the point or purpose of making "CexCells." "We love this kind of music, but we didn't know if anybody would like it because AFI's primarily a rock band," says Puget. "We didn't really focus on how people would receive it. We just wanted to put this out there. Years ago, we kind of stopped caring how people were going to receive anything we did because everybody wants you to sound different. If you start catering to what people want, there's going to be no focus there. Luckily, our fans are really open-minded."
So, too, was Puget when it came to composing the music that would end up on "CexCells." Writing and arranging the songs for Blaqk Audio provided a far different experience than AFI's usual modus operandi.
"Technology these days really frees you up, especially when you're making an entirely electronic record," he says. "I wrote a lot of songs on the tour bus and while waiting in airports, and it's nice to be able to have that freedom. When you make a rock record, you spend so much time in the studio getting all the parts down, whereas with this I can create an entire album of music and then send it off to Davey so he can write the lyrics and melodies. It's like being in a small band again."
There's no telling how the men's work with Blaqk Audio may rub off on AFI, and vice versa. "People have this impression that AFI was going, or is going, in a more electronic direction," Puget says. "But I've just started to pick up my guitar again to write songs for the next AFI record and right now, I'm feeling the opposite. I want to make a big rock record."
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