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Tyondai Braxton Talks About Punk, Percussion and Dad

Tyondai Braxton’s new album is his first solo release since leaving the group Battles.Credit...Dusdin Condren

Before Tyondai Braxton, the experimental musician and composer, could complete his new album, “HIVE1,” he had to find himself in a machine. The project, which started as an installation and performance at the Guggenheim in 2013 before making its way to the Sydney Opera House, is built around a warped backbone of uneven percussion — thwacking woodblocks, bursts of pitter-pattering snares — but finds its voice, sans vocals, in the robotic moans and whirrs of a modular synthesizer.

“One of the main things that I look for in art and music is a sense of craftsmanship and control,” Mr. Braxton, 36, said recently over breakfast at a Williamsburg cafe, laid back but still excitable in a track jacket and bright red Nike trainers. “When I first got this instrument, I didn’t know how to corral my ideas, and I didn’t know how to shape them in a way that felt controlled.”

But as he embraced algorithmic composition, using the analog instrument’s series of modules and cords to conjure electronic sound, Mr. Braxton had a “huge revelation,” he said: “You can get to a level of precision in the way that you set things up that you can really sound like yourself.”

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Anthony Braxton, the saxophonist and composer and Tyondai Braxton’s father.Credit...Diane Allmen, via Delmark Records

He likened the process to amnesia. “You don’t really use any of your skills as a musician to perform through this thing,” Mr. Braxton said of the synthesizer. “It’s like having to start over.”

“HIVE1” (Nonesuch), out now, is Mr. Braxton’s first album since “Central Market,” an orchestral work, in 2009, and his first solo release since leaving the New York math-rock band Battles the next year. The eight new compositions, which will be performed as part of a three-night residency (June 4-6) at the Kitchen in Manhattan, can sound at times ominous, like a sci-fi chase-scene soundtrack, as on “Amlochley,” or as if an old-school Internet modem had taken singing lessons, on “Gracka” (a nickname for Mr. Braxton’s wife, Grace). “Studio Mariacha,” with slapstick boings, recalls an episode of “Tom and Jerry” if it were melting.

In an interview, Mr. Braxton was eager to discuss his work, which is played live atop raised pods designed by Uffe Surland Van Tams, the Danish architect, and his musical upbringing — his father is Anthony Braxton, the avant-garde jazz saxophonist and composer — but remained openly self-conscious of any pretension (or getting “too abstract”) along the way. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

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Edgard Varèse inspired with “a really serious piece for percussion ensemble.”Credit...Newspictures

Q. Do you feel you’re part of a tradition of performing composers?

A. Yeah, sure. The obvious one is my dad. He had his own vehicles, so seeing that made me realize that’s the way to go. Philip Glass, Steve Reich — it’s almost a given, in a weird way, if you want to have your music performed. I wouldn’t necessarily call this project the Tyondai Braxton Ensemble, but I appreciate that way of working.

What are some of your earliest musical memories with your father?

When I was a kid, all my siblings and I, we would wake up to music blasting in the living room downstairs. It was a ritual. He would be pacing back and forth in the living room, listening to the recordings of his music to analyze it. He listened to a lot of jazz: Warne Marsh, Paul Desmond, John Coltrane. And a lot of orchestral music: Stockhausen, guys from the Viennese School.

Do you draw any inspiration from modern popular music?

Not currently. That’s not a rejection; it’s just not where my head is at right now. I’ve been listening to a lot of large orchestral work. That’s still my heart and soul. My main influence that I’ve really been thinking a lot about is Edgard Varèse, the early modernist composer. He was the first composer to do a really serious piece for percussion ensemble.

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Kurt Cobain, performing at an awards show in 1992, and Nirvana offered something to relate to and “the idea that you can create music that’s simple and still powerful.”Credit...Frank Micelotta/Getty Images

Were you ever interested in pop songwriters?

I started playing guitar in eighth grade. Growing up with my dad — everyone’s dad is a figure to them, but the older I got I realized on top of that, my dad is also this guy. I realized early on that I was really infatuated with music in the same way, but I was very conscious that I had to find my own music. I was not like 10 years old listening to Schoenberg.

For me, it was Nirvana. My dad’s music was so awe-inspiring and also, at the time, completely impenetrable, from an era that was not contemporary to me. What Nirvana, Sonic Youth and punk rock afforded me was music I could relate to. I was pissed off like everyone else who was a kid in the ’90s. I didn’t get along with my parents. More than just the music and the affinity with them as people was the idea that you can create music that’s simple and still powerful.

Not only was that music of my time, but it also fed the fire of my conviction that I had to not do what my dad did. But the deeper I got into arranging and writing music, the more I realized my connection with orchestral music. I realized that I could take what I had learned from my generation with me to this place where I was from. That was a heavy thing.

Your music is often compared with cartoons. Is that offensive to you?

I kind of get it because I so love that music — Stravinsky, a lot of his music was re-appropriated, like “Fantasia.” His music, in a way, starts to define the sound of cartoons, so in that way I can understand that connection. And honestly I love that sense of whimsy. I love that sense of humor. I like being able to use that. It’s important to be able to show a bunch of dimensions.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section AR, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: Dissecting Dad, Cartoons, Punk and Percussion . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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