Kevin Bronson on August 15th, 2011

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Jonathan Bates describes his new direction as Big Black Delta as “stream of consciousness, in every possible way.”

“There’s a certain element of, ‘Hey, I sneezed on the wall and it looks like a painting,'” says Bates, the former Mellowdrone frontman who has gone on to play with M83 and White Sea (the solo project of M83’s Morgan Kibby) – and who, about a year ago, retreated to his bedroom (and his Logic) to explore intergalactic electronica in all its dense, synth-heavy beauty. “It was a feeling of not being constrained by anything that’s out there, of not even being on this planet.”

||| Download: “Capsize”

With an early single “Huggin’ & A Kissin” having cracked some FM airwaves, Bates in September is ready to unleash a full dose of his dirty ’80s, “BBDLP1.” At turns caustic and uncompromising and at others icy and inviting, Big Black Delta’s maiden voyage (which will be out on Coming Home Records) is a triumph of man and machine, not to mention man over record-industry machinations.

“I didn’t want to be just another white dude with a Telecaster, because you can’t swing a dead cat around here without hitting one of those guys,” says Bates, whose band was signed when he was 22 to then-BMG imprint ArtistDirect and released, in all, two albums, four EPs and a 7-inch. “You work with guys like Tony Berg in nice studios and spend months tracking, and for what? This was a lot less precious, and it ended up being one of those things where you just stay out of the way and let things happen.

Big Black Delta’s music – which Bates acknowledges is “dark sonically but not necessarily emotionally” – reveals the songwriter’s boyhood love for all things loud and hard. “I really like heavy music and always have,” he says. “If I could be in any band, it would be Pantera.”

BBD’s live act also goes for something different – amid a light show synched to to his sequencer, Bates goes a bit mad as a vocalist, and he’s flanked by live drummers Amy Wood and Mahsa Zargaran. “Was it Bobby Darin who said, ‘You hear what you see?'” Bates says. “A lot of shows I see are like going to work or doing your homework. I wanted something different.”

||| Live: Big Black Delta plays the Monday residency at the Satellite in September.

Photo of Morgan Kibby guesting with Bates at the Satellite in June