Youth Lagoon

He began recording music in 2011, releasing a trilogy of albums under the moniker Youth Lagoon

before announcing the end of the project in 2015. While taking crash courses in classical theory, jazz, and ancient modes throughout the time that followed, Powers started making music experiments inspired by the visual works of artists such as Francis Bacon, Sister Gertrude Morgan, and Harry Clarke. Lining his walls in crude print-outs of pictures, he found graphic saturation helped inform the social and spiritual themes of his music.

For two years, Powers crafted his own library of sounds, grotesque and bewitching, to serve as the backbone to the poetry he had been writing while traveling between Europe, Asia, and the United States. Embracing a combination of noise, beauty, and mercurial avant-pop atmospheres, he began molding these experiments into songs highlighting the intersection of unity and chaos, nightmares, and the invisible forces at war within the human self.

Retreating to Tornillo, Texas, Powers brought his songs and a handful of contributors to Sonic Ranch, a residential studio complex in the middle of a 2,300-acre orchard, to record Mulberry Violence - the debut album under his birth name. The six-week tracking process consisted of fusing together and manipulating elements recorded over the previous two years with textures, arrangements, and programming created at the ranch. The album was mixed in Los Angeles by frequent Beyoncé collaborator Stuart White.