VICE Spotlight: BAYANG (tha Bushranger)

BAYANG (tha Bushranger) has brushed shoulders with death in many ways.

Outside music, he works in a cemetery, which, when you sit this alongside his visceral, emotive and heart-palpitating music, is hardly surprising.

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A stroll through BAYANG’s discography treats your ears to synth-heavy, bass-dominating hip-hop that makes even the most nonchalant people tense. If your brain hasn’t combusted from the face-melting fusion of metal, rap, hip-hop and punk, it’s BAYANG’s conviction and eerie wailing into the mic that keeps you alert.

When you listen to a BAYANG track, you can almost feel the droplets of sweat that rolled down his face when he was recording it. The BAYANG listening experience is an intoxicating, perspiring journey. Much of his music feels like a panic attack that multiple glasses of water can’t even conquer. Once you’re in, there’s not much you can do but accept BAYANG as your shaman to take you through it all.

BAYANG’s first memory with music harks back to as early as age three. Raised on 70s–90s rock and punk music, BAYANG considers himself lucky to have absorbed all ends of the spectrum of rock music over the years.

“I remember hearing The Cranberries – Linger over the radio and really enjoying that. But, when you’re three or four, you’re not old enough to kind of clock what that song means,” BAYANG told VICE.

“I also got really obsessed with David Bowie,”

“My mum’s very into stadium rock like Bon Jovi, Midnight Oil and my dad got me into Rage Against The Machine, Korn, Minor Threat, Black Flag. So I was exposed to a lot growing up.”

Being raised in the south-western Sydney suburb of Bankstown, much of BAYANG’s familiarity with rap came from the community he was a part of, which opened a different world of music to him.

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“Being from Bankstown especially means you have to listen to Tupac. To this day, I feel like I’ve been overexposed to Tupac. Eminem obviously too, Dizzee Rascal. I remember hearing Hilltop Hood’s first song being played on the streets a lot when I was little,” he said.

“I was getting a lot of hip-hop influence, rave influence, and the early days of hardstyle from people just blasting it in public. Paired with all the stuff I was hearing from home, it was just like a cross-pollination.”

Though BAYANG was part of a community that had a distinctive image attached to it, he knew he was innately different to his peers.

“Growing up in the area, I was always kind of a misfit,” he said.

“I was the only kid in the neighbourhood with a mohawk… I was sticking out in a place that was already kind of sticking out in the rest of Sydney. So it was a bit of a troubled relationship. But when you walk around with that confidence and self-assuredness, people are like, alright, that’s just him.”

BAYANG is the OG misfit, and his music is a dive into much of the mayhem that encompassed his formative years in the area. So much so that he describes his music as “mongrel music – the un-Australian sound.”

His collaborative project “REDBRICKGOTHIK” with fellow artist BRACT rips up the travel brochures that romanticise a crystalline Sydney. Much of the city’s darkest secrets are unravelled through distorted sounds, screeching industrial production and off-kilter raps.

However, BAYANG’s recent pivot sees him making music that is less intentional, less brash and more lighthearted.

His latest single “ANTARCTICA” with fellow Western Sydney artist FRIDAY* and TT is a precursor to an upcoming mixtape dropping before the end of the year. It features pretty vocal harmonies, glistening synths and impactful drum patterns. The song pushes into a realm that proves BAYANG isn’t just defined by the toughness that his discography entails.

“The project is a bit more light and playful and cheeky,” he said.

“I realised there was this kind of theme that was happening in my life of being a bit more hopeful and resilient and spiritually strong. Not giving in to the ways of the world so easily, and being resistant in a way that was so embedded in community and friendship and love and all that kind of corny shit,”

“There was less of a focus on the cruelness of the world…it’s the first time I’m writing love songs and toasting to life. But I guess it’s because facing off against the enemy requires you to have a strong spirit if you wish to survive. So this one’s for the spirit.”