Grammy nomination for Hawke’s Bay artist Baynk

Jock Nowell-Usticke, aka Baynk, from Napier, a nominee in the Grammy Awards.

A former pupil of Hereworth School in Havelock North who turned from an engineering degree to a global electronic dance music career has now become New Zealand’s only surviving nominee in the 2023 Grammy Awards.

Having started practicing piano at the age of four, he was at Napier Central, Hereworth, Whanganui Collegiate, then Canterbury University, and was then known as Jock Nowell-Usticke.

But now, turned 30 on November 4, he is also known as musician and producer Baynk, based in London, not long finished a 28-stop, three-months US tour, and now claims two-and-a-half million Spotify listeners a month.

Nominations in all 91 Grammy Awards categories were announced last week, including Baynk’s “Adolescence” in the best engineered album (non-classical) category, with fellow producers Ryan Schwabe, from Philadelphia, who worked on all 10 tracks, and Australian George Nicholas, who worked on one.

According to an online list, Baynk becomes the 11th nominee from New Zealand dating back to Dame Kiri Te Kanawa’s win in the best opera recording category in 1984, and is up there with such other names as Lorde and Keith Urban.

There are understood to have been more than 500 nominations in the category, which is now down to five contenders including mastering engineer Randy Merrill for Harry Styles’ Harry’s House album.

He is the son of Wineworks director Tim Nowell-Usticke and wife Jules, who recently drove the bus for part of the US tour, and told Hawke’s Bay Today while packing-up in Islington, London, for a trip home at the end of next week he had nominated for a “multitude” of categories.

“But I wasn’t expecting anything,” he said. “It was just a shot in the dark.”

It was only during the tour that he met Schwabe for the first time, although they’d been working together online for about five years, but as it happened Schwabe was in a seminar in London at the time the listed nominees were announced and they were able to break out the champagne.

The next meeting will probably be at the awards on February 5 (February 6 New Zealand time), and his parents are also hoping to be there.

“We are very excited,” said Tim Nowell-Usticke, recalling how when their son rang with the news Jock video-called so he could record the response, leaving his parents wondering whether that will now become part of a future music video.

“We are over the moon. We’ll certainly be there – if we can get a ticket.”

The musical career started moving in 2015 when Jock uploaded his first bedroom-mastered song, using Ableton production software after having to mix music for his university band on a computer when studio time became too expensive, during his engineering studies before graduating from Canterbury University.

The first track, Sundae, a result of experimenting with music creation during his studies, did little until months later when it caught the attention of an internet blogger.

Subsequently, while in Europe, he was invited to play at (Saint Jerome’s) Laneway Festival, also did a stint at Rhythm ‘n Vines near Gisborne in 2016, and in 2019 was a finalist in the breakthrough artist of the year at the New Zealand Music Awards.