Artist Profile: Accessory

Photo Credit: Elyza Reinhart

Jason Balla, currently of indie-rock outfit Dehd and formerly of NE-HI and Earring, has been a fixture of the Chicago rock scene for almost as long as he can trace back his musical consciousness. But with the release of his second solo record as Accessory, entitled Dust, he’s at his most intrepid, carving out spaces informed, but not wholly defined, by his roots in noise rock and his long-held passion for “weirdo” music.

As a child in the suburbs of Chicago, neither of Balla’s parents held a serious interest in music, at least not one that left a deep impression on his young brain. He does remember, though, his mother’s love for certain soft-rock acts, and he has stark memories of being quizzed by her when different songs came on the radio.

His first true musical experiences, however, didn’t start until he picked up the tenor saxophone as he entered middle school. When he did, he knew immediately that it appealed to him. He compares the task of learning that instrument (and, in a way, every instrument he’s learned since then) to the challenge of completing a puzzle— it’s about putting the correct pieces of knowledge and technical skill in place.

Yet, in spite of his technical leanings at the time as a musician, the first notions within Balla’s musical taste were non-conformist. He skipped the typical classic rock phase that many teenagers undergo, delving straight into the emo and hardcore scene out of a vague sense of spite for anything traditional. This scene, in fact, is where he got his start as a live musician, playing in multiple emo bands throughout his time in high school.

But during that time, he also encountered a set of softer, stranger, and more intimate artists: ones that would dramatically and rapidly re-shape his taste.

“I met this guy who let me borrow seven or eight records, and it was like, Elliott Smith, Joan of Arc, Trans Am… It was a whole sampler pack of weirdo music. That was the first time where I really was, like, ‘Oh, this is the stuff that, it's not just exciting. It speaks to a deeper well of the soul or something like that. And it really ignited me.”

Around that same time, Balla got a part-time job at a music venue in the city where he would pick up shifts once or twice a week. The first of many shows he saw while working there was a performance by genre-bending electronic artist Caribou. His musical palette was rapidly expanding, and he suddenly had a community around him to help accelerate and encourage that process. 

Although he did some work as a solo artist at this time, recording a lo-fi tape that was shared around his small circle, he felt more tightly drawn into his work with his various bands. Earring, his relatively short-lived noise-rock project with Alexander Otake, provided him with his first opportunity to tour. NE-HI formed as a transmutation of Earring, and Dehd formed shortly after, both featuring Balla as a vocalist and guitarist.

Across almost a decade spent in various bands and fully immersed in the Chicago music scene, Balla had earned his chops as a performer and a guitar player. But it was always with the benefit of the creative buffer that a band provides; over time, Balla felt a desire to begin his solo project anew, augmented by his interest in self-recording, which had been re-ignited by his role in producing Dehd’s first four records.

His first record as Accessory, 2018’s Blue Tape, was a decidedly lo-fi affair. He was working as a sound engineer at the time and living in a small apartment above a 24-hour McDonald’s. He tore all of the doors off his closet to form a home studio, and he specifically recalls the glowing yellow light that would soak his space as he worked late into the night. 

Balla’s philosophy has always been to lean into discomfort where it’s present, though, and with the advent of Accessory, he did exactly that.

 “I had just gotten off of a tour with Dehd, with Julian Baker. The night before [the first Accessory show] I played to, like, 3,500 people. And I felt completely at ease. Then the next day, I was playing solo guitar, playing my songs for 50 people or something, and my knees are jello. It was so funny, but it made me uncomfortable. So I was, like, ‘Well, I have to keep doing that.’”

Yet as he overcame these initial anxieties, he slowly realized the advantages that came with being able to directly express his creative vision, taking whatever distinct sound and combination of layers he heard in his head and etching it out onto his sonic canvas himself.

“To me, like doing the self recording is just a further extension of me being able to fully express my vision rather than having to communicate it and collaborate… I'm not trying to come off as anti-collaborator, but I can hear this thing in my head. Rather than having to try to do this game of telephone, I'm learning the tools with which I can just do it.”

In the eight years that separated Blue Tape and Accessory’s newest release, Dust, Balla continued to grow in his ability to navigate this act of direct translation. He slowly built out a more robust home studio, and as he’s continued to tour and play both as Accessory and with Dehd, he’s felt himself become more free as a musician and as a creator.

On Dust, this growth is more than apparent. The dichotomy the project attempts to establish between a certain cynicism the modern world inspires and a tempered, hopeful optimism is contained within the first two tracks, “Other World” and “World of Pain”

From there, the project delves into an increasingly personal sphere. From the swelling strings and grand, opening chords of “Calcium” to the much sparser, wistful “Dogbite” to the intensely intimate finale, “Lightning”, Dust distills those contrasted emotional states over the course of its 33-minute runtime, taking the listener on an intentional journey through both a thematic structure and the inner reflections of Balla as a songwriter.

The experimentations extend far beyond the project’s narrative structure, though. While Balla still loves the tighter, more pop-influenced music he makes with Dehd, his interest in jazz has led him to explore the possibilities of a more expressive and open approach to his instrumentation. In combining the hi-fi capabilities that he’s gained over years of production experience with the lo-fi sensibilities that have appealed to him since he was a teenager, something uniquely immersive comes into existence.

“I'm exploring this idea of how to be super expressive and to paint with the guitar in a way, because this phenomenon of a word, you name something and then it makes it smaller and more manageable… The internal world is so big; feelings are so much bigger than words. So how can I attack these kind of things in a way or represent them in a way that is less constricting of them?”

For Balla, Accessory has always represented a sort of ode to the type of music and the songwriters that first made him fall in love with the medium. Dust, however, is more than that. 

It is a deeply personal exploration and advancement of Balla’s songwriting efforts, thoroughly transmissive in its sprawling scope.