Buck Meek of Big Thief on the release of ‘Double Infinity’, improvisation with friends, Brooklyn roots and ancestry
Big Thief. Photo credit: Genesis Báez
With the release of their sixth album, Double Infinity, Jordan Royal (Sonic Alien 4ZZZ) caught up with Buck Meek of Big Thief to chat about the process of improvisation, community, and rediscovery that shaped its creation. “Playing with 10 well-adjusted musicians… everyone was hearing the songs for the first time and so they were reacting instinctually,” Meek says. “In that kind of density, it forces you to play very simply and just listen with really open ears, and it’s a very unselfconscious process because you don’t really have the space to focus on yourself.”
What began as a desire to open fully to the unknown evolved into one of Big Thief’s most collaborative and texturally rich records yet. “It felt like starting a band again or something,” Meek explains. “Putting yourself in a community of new people, you’re forced out of your biases and you’re forced to just respond.”
Anchored by themes of memory, ancestry, and presence, Double Infinity blends improvisational energy with expansive instrumentation and subtle sonic experimentation. “We wanted to create something that felt like a river, like a liquid to just swim in,” Meek says.
Interview aired on Sonic Alien 4ZZZ on 10 September 2025.
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Jordan: I'm joined by Buck Meek from Big Thief, having a chat about their sixth album, Double Infinity, which is dropping September 5th. Thank you so much for taking the time, it's such a pleasure.
Buck: Good to be here.
Jordan: I want to talk about sort of the birth of this album first. Over three weeks, nine hours a day, you guys improvised and recorded these songs live with a circle of extraordinary musicians and friends, and you've spoken about the importance of staying really open to the unknown and sort of letting the music arrive rather than trying to define it. What was it like in that process, live, of opening to creation and to hold space for these songs to reveal themselves?
Buck: Great question. Playing with 10 well-adjusted musicians, in this case at least, we put together this band of some of our friends and some of our heroes like Laraaji and Mikel Patrick Avery, and our friend Mikey Buishas was there creating live tape loops, and Joshua Crumbly was playing bass, and we had three singers: Alena Spanger, June McDoom, Hannah Cohen, and Jon Nellen on percussion as well. There was just so much happening. Everyone was hearing the songs for the first time and so they were reacting instinctually, and we were all reacting to each other's first instincts. I think when there's that much density, it forces you to play very simply and just listen with really open ears, and it's a very unselfconscious process for me at least because you don't really have the space to focus on yourself because there's so much happening. In some ways you're more yourself, I think, in that because you're less focused and you're just responding instinctually.
Jordan: I can imagine just being in that room would have been so special with musicians that you really look up to and just letting that pour through you. It must have been so special. So, it takes me to my next question. I feel like this album has such warmth sonically, like it is so physical it almost holds you. It's like sunlight, and I think a lot of that is through the improvisation and production that you guys have throughout this album. What was it like bringing in so many different textures and instruments and voices into this world? And again, working with Dom Monks, did it feel like you were reaching for something beyond language even?
Buck: Definitely. We wanted to create something that felt like a river, like a liquid to just swim in, and Dom Monks is such an incredible engineer. He has such a deep relationship with fidelity, a really natural engineer. He often places microphones much further from the source than you would expect, and he's really just capturing the sound of how things are interacting and less about the kind of forensic, more tactile, direct sound of things. Really capturing the sound of a room, and in this case with 10 players playing in a big room, I think he really captured the atmosphere. We brought in a few musicians with the idea of creating drones. Like Laraaji was creating a drone with his zither and an iPad with some violin pads and flute pads, and our friend Mikey Buishas was creating live tape loops with an eight track tascam and a microphone, collecting samples from the room in the moment and then reprocessing it through his tape machine, flipping the tape around backwards and looping it, and he had eight channels of that so he could almost play it like a piano. I was creating a lot of drones in my guitar.
Jordan: It came across so beautifully. One of the first things that struck me about all the songs was how sonically involved and amazing the world you guys built around it was. Truly, it's so amazing. But you recorded Double Infinity in Manhattan, riding bikes through the frozen city to Power Station before heading home to Brooklyn, which is the place where you and Adrianne first built your musical bond and your friendship. I feel like environment really influences music. Did being back in Brooklyn stir up anything for you, like any sense of nostalgia of the early days of Big Thief in any way?
Buck: I think it definitely reinvigorated this feeling that we're just like a small part of a much bigger community, you know, because Big Thief emerged out of this community in Brooklyn 10 years ago. There were so many bands playing shows with each other all the time every night and cross-pollinating in each other's bands, and we just kind of were part of that scene. Then we left, and we travelled around the world playing our music, but I think it felt like a return to home in that regard. Also in this transition, we let go of our bass player of 10 years, and we actually tried to make this record just the three of us in isolation in the forest. We were kind of feeling in a vacuum, in this echo chamber of our own thoughts, and so we were called to go to the city and back to a community and a culture. We brought in some of those old friends that I mentioned and also some of our heroes that we became new friends with.
Jordan: I was gonna say, it sounds like a complete going back to your roots of this community and getting other musicians involved and collaborating, improvising, that's so amazing.
Buck: It felt like a return to not knowing what would happen. Because as a four-piece, as a trio, you develop modes. We've made five albums now and we have our modes that we go into in the creative process, and there's a lot of reliability there, but there's also biases. Putting yourself in a community of new people, you're forced out of your biases and you're forced to just respond. So, it feels very new in that way.
Jordan: And you guys too, you've talked about playing as in like playing around and having fun with instruments. So, it would be like a little bit of a return to that process too, that's amazing.
Buck: It kind of felt like starting a band again or something.
Jordan: Yeah, that's such a fun deconstructive and rebuilding sort of process to come to. But your guitar playing, I have to say, is extraordinary. I love your solo work too, and it always feels like it's listening, a little bit in conversation with something that's beneath the song. It's truly beautiful. I feel like it clears space for the meaning and the lyrics to land too. When you write guitar, do you consciously think about what the meaning and emotion and themes are behind the song, or are you more chasing a texture or a sound?
Buck: Both. I mean it's definitely all about the song. I think all of us in Big Thief, and definitely the way I approach the guitar, is always in service of the song. So often I'll look to the lyrics for that guidance, or sometimes I'll create a part that's almost in juxtaposition to the lyrics, not necessarily deriving something literal from it but creating some other feeling that's in constellation with it. But yeah, all the information is in the song already and it almost tells you what it wants, you know, if you're listening.
Jordan: It definitely comes through in your guitar playing. It feels like a jigsaw, like it slots so nicely into place with all the interplay of the song.
This album too, it is creating space for what's forming and what's fading, the past and future, loss and desire, longing and release. It feels very reflective on the big questions of the world and our place in it as well. After spending so much time sitting with these themes, did you walk away from the record feeling anything different? Did you learn anything from that process or your relationship to time and memory and everything?
Buck: Definitely. I think moving through the phases of a creative process is a bit of an analog for all of those life processes as well. There's the birth of the process, the concept that we have for the album, all the intention we put into organizing those ideas, and then the inevitable curve balls that happen, all those expectations being completely broken in the actual process, and then having to accept that and adapt to them. Then learning to just be present with what's actually happening in the room, or in your life for instance. Every time we walk away from an album, I think we've learned a lot.
Jordan: Yeah, that process of having expectations then curve balls are thrown at you would definitely strengthen the process of reflection and having to be present too.
I want to talk about Grandmother, which is the first song that you guys all three wrote together for this album, and it holds so much love and fear and grief and transformation. It's one of my favourites on the record, and I know that your lineage played a huge part in your musical upbringing, like your grandmother banging on books and your mum teaching you guitar as well. So, I was wondering if writing any of these songs feels like it tapped into anything ancestral for you, like a thread back through your family and time and memory?
Buck: Good question. Wow. Definitely. I was actually going through the loss of my grandmother around that time that we wrote the song Grandmother, and it wasn't directly related, but I was definitely in the space thinking a lot about how a grandmother figure, a grandfather, or a parent even provides this sense of stability and wisdom that you can rely on. Then when they pass away, I was really just humbled with the idea that that information is kind of lost to some degree. That stability that I found in my grandmother, for instance, was suddenly my responsibility to find within myself and maintain. I mean literally maintaining her particular wisdom and stories, but also just finding stability in general within myself.
Also thinking a lot about how a grandmother, a grandfather kind of has this unique role in your life. They're not as responsible for raising you as a parent, so they can really shape-shift and embody the sense of play and just have this more free-form relationship with you, more based on inspiration. To some degree that's almost like a fantasy. It's this new phase in their life where they can just be the person they want to be and raise you in that regard. Then when they pass away, you lose that relationship too. I guess I was thinking about at that point you also have to find that within yourself too.
Jordan: Thank you so much for that answer. There's definitely a testament of two forms of loss when you lose a grandparent, because they do play two different roles in your life: stability, and then a sense of play too, teaching you stories and a lot about a different aspect of yourself. Thank you so much for that answer.
The last question that I have for you before I let you go is that you guys are going on your Somersault Slide 360 tour across the US. I feel like Big Thief songs feel very alive, like they stretch and breathe differently every time you return to them. Do you see the recorded version as just one moment in a longer unfolding, like each take, each performance is just another way that the song chooses to speak in that moment?
Buck: Oh, definitely. I think we've always really relished in that, in practice that on stage. Every show we play a different set list, and we often improvise our arrangements, or at least there's a lot of room for improvisation within the set. That's one thing I love about playing music: it's always new, if you let it. If you let it be new at least. We try not to control it too much.
Jordan: Yeah, I've read that you guys sometimes put on the wrong pedal or a different tone to throw on a wrench. I love that. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate your time, thanks so much for having a chat.
Buck: Thanks for listening.
Listen to Double Infinity by Big Thief below.