ACCESSORY JASON BALLA OF DEHD SHARES NEW SINGLE “SAFEWORD”
ACCESSORY
JASON BALLA OF DEHD
SHARES NEW SINGLE “SAFEWORD”
DEBUT ALBUM DUST OUT APRIL 17TH
NORTH AMERICA HEADLINE TOUR KICKS OFF IN APRIL
Accessory, the solo project of Jason Balla, singer & guitarist of beloved Chicago band DEHD, shares “Safeword,” the second single off his debut album, Dust, due out April 17th. Over a sprawling, sumptuous, dream-like immersion of frantic guitars, Balla wrestles with the very notion of love, reckoning about losing oneself in its pursuit.
“With Safeword I wanted you to feel the pull of gravity. It’s about getting lost into someone else’s world, about being consumed and out of your depth. It’s a whole mess of power and passion, pursuit and magic and the resilience that love requires of you,” says Balla.
“The video is shot in the studio room where I recorded the record. In it I’m constantly being pulled apart and reassembled which was a way to play with the idea of how intimacy reshapes us, sometimes in ways we don’t quite recognize.”
A songwriter and multi-disciplinary artist based in Chicago, Balla’s work centers on the conflict between optimism and melancholy, pointing to their correspondence through curious and complex melodic experiences that mimic the tension of the natural and digital world. His debut album Dust is where the celestial meets the molecular: Angels, shooting stars, and lightning converse with blood, serotonin and calcium.
The album announcement follows last year’s smattering of impactful singles and performances, including opening slots for Cindy Lee, Protomartyr, & Diiv. Accessory will embark on a lengthy North American headline tour this Spring. Full dates below, and tickets on-sale now.
WATCH “SAFEWORD” OFFICIAL VIDEO
Balla has always been a prolific creator and held a distinctly DIY attitude. At an early age he was running sound in downtown clubs and booking shows across a network of Chicago warehouses and basements where he was first exposed to both experimental music and the possibility of alternative lifestyles. In a testament to his assiduous artistic nature, Dust was recorded on equipment mostly built by himself in his home studio.
Much of the record’s foundation was orchestrated on the piano—a gift from his mother after her passing in 2018. Six years later, after nearly non-stop touring, a break-up with a live-in partner and subsequent couch surfing, Balla found enough stability to move it out of storage. Mornings writing on the piano offered a new perspective on composition and a way to commune with his mother’s memory.
There is a sense of release and transcendence through Balla’s work. It’s a lo-fi heliograph with a Cindy Lee-like tenderness, taking notes from the Copenhagen electro-acoustic scene, SML and the experimental jazz world: an act of discovery that finds its tones amidst guitar feedback and soft balladry.
Released last month, lead single “Calcium” is buoyed by persistent percussion that accompanies Balla’s relentless vocals that recite images of power and tools of violence, contrasting panicked emotional states with dense instrumental beauty. It was named in Stereogum’s Best Songs of the Week, and covered at Alt Press, Brooklyn Vegan, FLOOD Magazine and more. Watch the visual below, which features 2000 hand-painted frames that Balla made inspired by aerial photos of dust storms.
WATCH “CALCIUM” OFFICIAL VIDEO
Tour Dates
4/24 - Milwaukee, WI @ Cactus Club
4/25 - Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle
4/30 - Detroit, MI @ Outer Limits
5/01 - Toronto, ON @ Monarch
5/02 - Montréal, QC @ L’esco
5/03 - Boston, MA @ O’Briens
5/05 - Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s
5/06 - Brooklyn, NY @ Baby’s All Right
5/08 - Washington D.C. @ DC9
5/09 - Columbus, OH @ Cafe Bourbon St.
5/18 - Minneapolis, MN @ 7th St. Entry
5/19 - Sioux Falls, SD @ Total Drag
5/22 - Seattle, WA @ Barboza
5/23 - Vancouver, BC @ Fox Cabaret
5/24 - Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios
5/26 - Reno, NV @ Holland Project
5/27 - San Francisco, CA @ Bottom of the Hill
5/28 - Los Angeles, CA @ Permanent Records
5/29 - San Diego, CA @ The Whiste Stop
5/30 - Tucson, AZ @ Groundworks
6/01 - Denver, CO @ Lost Lake
Tracklist:
01 Other World
02 World of Pain
03 Angelfire
04 Wherever You Are Tonight
05 Calcium
06 Safeword
07 This Is Not Your Life (Static)
08 Dogbite
09 Sunshine
10 Blood (Magnetic)
11 Lighting
Accessory is nurtured by the elemental and the accidental, with Balla treating it as a living organism where mistakes are encouraged and experimentation can flourish. While known for his signature guitar and production work in Dehd, Balla proves his scope as an instrumentalist performing everything heard on album with the exception of the viola lent by Whitney Johnson (Matchesse, Winged Wheel).
Dust confirms Balla as a new voice in the experimental pop movement. He crafts an intimate sculpture of feedback, electronic manipulation and everyday poetry, straddling the line between the digital and organic. They are a constellation of misconnection, desire and the search for certainty in a reality dominated by distraction and defeatism.
At a time trending toward AI gloss, Balla employs the dadaist tradition of random chance to incorporate human imperfection and unpredictability into the compositions. The result? Songs that live and breathe, marked with the fingerprints of process and shaped by emotional undercurrents that flow beneath a calm surface.
Connect with Accessory:
Accessory Press Photo by Jason Balla
