Starflake Found Freedom by Starting Over

Gathered inside a modest cabin overlooking Lake Travis, five musicians slipped into an avant-garde rhythm. They spent 16-hour days recording, cooled off with jumps into the lake, grabbed a few hours of sleep, then woke up and did it all over again. Although Starflake had only existed for a few months, the band embraced an experimental process that left room for spontaneity. 

“It all felt very new,” says lead singer and founder Jackie O’Brien. “We recorded in every different way that you could record songs.”

O’Brien, drummer Zac Catanzaro, percussionist Juan Alfredo Ríos, bassist/synth player Ben Nelson, and bassist/electronic producer Alex Holeman recorded their debut album, STARFLAKE, over that Memorial Day weekend getaway. On paper, the project, arriving Sept. 1, reads like another Austin supergroup: O’Brien, Zatanzaro, and Ríos play in the Bright Light Social Hour, Nelson’s known for his work with Molly Burch and A. Sinclair, and Holeman records experimental beats under the name Chroma Phase. In practice, the album captures five musicians giving themselves permission to forget everything they know about making records. 

The result drifts between psychedelic rock, cumbia-pop, dub, Afrobeat, post-punk, and funk without lingering in any one place for long. “I wanted to do a new project that was totally free,” O’Brien says. “There are no genre barriers. There are no barriers as to what you can or can’t say.”

O’Brien traces Starflake back to the 2015 passing of his younger brother, Alex Jude, who also managed the Bright Light Social Hour. After his brother’s death, O’Brien began questioning not only life but everything he believed about making art.

“One thing he always said is you need to stop giving a fuck what other people think, and that really burned into my mind,” O’Brien says. “So that was the impetus. It was an idea in my head for a long time before taking any action.”

Finding collaborators willing to embrace that mindset proved easier than expected. O’Brien met Nelson through their wives, and the two connected over a shared openness to experimentation. When O’Brien began recording the songs that would become Starflake, Nelson was drawn to the project’s loose, instinctive approach. “There was a kind of joyous, chaotic, impulsive thing in the making of it,” Nelson says.

That same willingness to embrace imperfection shaped O’Brien’s songwriting process. “Most mornings I set a timer for 10 minutes, and I just try to fill a page with poetry,” he explains. “It’s usually terrible, but the idea is just don’t be precious and don’t make it a hard thing. Turn on a timer and just write.”

If Starflake’s lyrics arrive instinctively, their arrangements emerge collectively. Nobody appears interested in acting as the star of the show. Instead, songs are built around rhythm, with three bassists, dual percussion, and synthesizers constantly trading responsibilities. O’Brien compares the group less to a traditional rock band than to a basketball team.

“We’re all supporting the team – like the Spurs, where you’ve got a lot of stars in there, rather than everyone supporting LeBron,” he says. “We wanted the rhythm to be key and up front.”

The approach explains why STARFLAKE refuses to settle into one genre for long. The album moves between heavy tropical percussion, psychedelic dub textures, funk-driven guitar lines, and dance-punk energy, but the constant is its commitment to rhythm. Three bassists and two drummers create a low-end-heavy sound built for movement, whether through hypnotic grooves or explosive bursts of energy.

On their latest single, “Don’t Let Go,” the band turns that tension into a late-night dance floor haze. The track opens with pulsing drum machine rhythms and sharp funk guitars before settling into a pulse both euphoric and disorienting – like stumbling through a crowded club, the room spins but the bass keeps you grounded. Nelson says the song began after a night watching couples at Coconut Club, where affection and lover’s quarrels unfolded simultaneously across the dance floor.

“I came home and did the idea of it that night, and then we went in and added the color and flavor of the whole thing,” Nelson says. “It’s the dance music and punk thing happening at the same time.”

That collision of opposites runs throughout the band’s discography. On April’s “Bajo La Luna,” Starflake trades the frenetic energy for a slower, hypnotic flow. Built around shimmering melodica and hazy percussion, the Spanish-language track feels like a late-night drift through neon-lit streets – equal parts dreamy and restless. For O’Brien, writing in Spanish became another way to embrace the album’s larger philosophy of exploration.

“I went to UT, did a master’s in Spanish linguistics, and I still am very insecure about my Spanish,” he admits. “It was really important to conquer that and write songs in Spanish, and not even refine them.” That same willingness to embrace vulnerability will follow the band south after the album’s release, when they head to Mexico City for a week of Spanish-language press and performances.

More than a debut record, STARFLAKE serves as a reset. Though each member has spent years playing in Austin bands and touring, the project asks what happens when experience becomes something to unlearn.

O’Brien isn’t concerned with listeners walking away thinking about genres or musicianship. He just wants them to leave feeling a little less afraid of themselves.

“I hope it encourages anyone to be themselves as loudly and honestly and unabashedly as possible,” he says. “Let your freak flag fly, embrace yourself, and hopefully shake your ass a little.”

Starflake plays an album release show on Sept. 5 at C-Boy’s Heart & Soul.

The post Starflake Found Freedom by Starting Over appeared first on The Austin Chronicle.