Interview Junior Eats Alone

Junior Eats Alone is an experimental rock outfit based in Leiden, which happens to be my birthplace. I spoke to them right after an instore gig. The article can be found here.

Interview with Crystal Fighters

I spoke to Crystal Fighters this year at the Walk The Line-festival in The Hague. You can read it here at File Under New Music.

BASS! How low can ya go!?

Allright. Thus far I have refrained myself from doing a serious blog entry. A part of me finds it a bit self indulgent to put these inner ramblings on display. I mean, how many shmucks are actually gonna read these mind numbingly interesting, yet blatantly opinionated rantings from a four eyed music geek like me? Anyways, as I digress further into a cesspool of verbal nonsense, I guess some of my findings deserve a place to be put on display. Even if it's for some dude googling for Futurama-quotes by typing the words 'mind numbingly interesting'.

If you're that dude, and happen to be a music geekoid like yours truly, perhaps you share my appreciation for good basslines in music. I myself play drums and piano, but when I listen to music, I tend to play some groovy-a$$ air-bassguitar along. Why you may ask...? I find this to be quite a headscratcher myself. When it comes to addicting music, an awesome bassline just seems to be a consistent factor.

A band like Primus, who I've had the pleasure of seeing a few weeks ago in Paradiso, is not the reference point I'm looking for. Les Claypools radical three piece rock outfit seems to attract virtuoso bass-enthusiasts -who listen to Pat Metheny and Jaco Pastorius for similair reasons- and casual 90's rock sentimentalists (such as myself) alike.

I'm talking about a band like Efterklang from Denmark. Their latest record 'Magic Chairs' is an amazing listen from start to finish. Bands with the philosophy of creating music that sounds better as a whole than the sum of it's parts tend to knock me on my behind...HARD! Every musician seems to chip in collectively into Efterklangs multi-layered soundscapes and subtle arrangements. It's prolly best on display during the 4AD-sessions they held at VEGA Copenhagen.

Woah! As I insert the video into this blog entry, IMMEDIATELY I get the image I want you to notice. You see Rasmus Stolberg bobbing his head while playing that quirky, bouncy bassline which simply reeks with awesomeness. It makes 'I Was Playing Drums' a really addicting track, and it sounds even better live than on the record.

Efterklang here is a really good example of a song in which the bass steals the limelight without it being all that sophisticated by itself ...yet it allows all the instrumentation around it to sound the way it's supposed to. Every drum break, every detail just makes sense because of it. The best analogy I can think of is that the bassplayer represents the head of a snake...it navigates and allows the rest of the song to move along fluently.

I shall exhibit few more examples of this phenomenon, off the top of my head. Macca's smooth bass playing in 'Dear Prudence' by The Beatles is another terrific, simplistic bassline that just makes you want to listen over and over.

Fleetwood Mac prolly have a shitload of songs I can think of...aha! 'The Chain' of course! Behold!

Got one more for ya! This one's more recent: Armistead Burwell Smith IV. He sounds like some evil charlatan from the British Commonwealth days, but in fact he plays bass for lo-fi indierockers Pinback. And he totally NAILS it on this track.

That's enough randomness from this musicologus geekus..for NOW. See ya!

Interview Lior

My interview with Australian singer-songwriter Lior for File Under.