Bass

Tim Simenon's Bomb the Bass pet project pumped some of the best acid house straight into late-'80s dance clubs. Best known stateside for the seminal "Beat Dis," similarly groundbreaking slow-beat club groove, and the Burt Bacharach cover "Say a Little Prayer," Simenon's brand of acid-laced rap and snappy sampling kept sweat flowing coast to coast. Unfortunately, by the time the band's second album appeared in 1991, Bomb the Bass was all but forgotten in the beginnings of the grunge backlash. However, the sonics have continued to percolate, hence the welcome appearance of the U.K. compilation Beat Dis: The Very Best Of, which serves up a healthy hodgepodge of hits and a neat tweak for aging ravers' long-lost brain cells. In no particular order, Beat Dis unravels 1988 through 1991, commencing with the 12" version of "Beat Dis" and ending with the absurdly short "Megamix," while hitting all the important points in between. First-wave favorites include the aforementioned "Say a Little Prayer" and "Shake It," while the 1991 incarnation weighs in mightily with "Dune Buggy Attack" and the British hit "Winter in July".

Most Porcupine Tree fans already know this, but lead guitarist Steven Wilson is also a keen experimental artist, although he keeps that facet of his activities well separated from his progressive rock career. Starting in 1994, Steven Wilson began solo recordings described as "experiments in texture," resulting in his work under the name Bass Communion.
How does an invitation to create a one minute long piece of music based on a single instrument source become a two and a half hour 3CD epic? Towards the end of 2018 Frans de Waard of Freiband was invited by a Japanese label to create an album of one-minute pieces using only the Casio VL-Tone 1. The VL-Tone is perhaps best known as being the first commercially marketed digital synthesiser, a cheap plastic instrument barely a foot in length…

Although at first we might wonder at the rationale for pairing these two pieces–a double bass concerto and a sinfonia concertante by a (not very well liked) colleague of Mozart and Haydn–on closer inspection we realize that the connection derives from the fact that both pieces were premiered by the same double bass virtuoso. Leopold Kozeluch’s Sinfonia Concertante is scored for the unique combination of mandolin, trumpet, double bass, and piano.

Most Porcupine Tree fans already know this, but lead guitarist Steven Wilson is also a keen experimental artist, although he keeps that facet of his activities well separated from his progressive rock career. Starting in 1994, Steven Wilson began solo recordings described as "experiments in texture," resulting in his work under the name Bass Communion. Atmospherics is a collection of short pieces that are original compositions, remixes, and extracts of pieces from other Bass Communion albums for use in television and radio. Even though these pieces are short, each track has its own unique qualities (in relation to only the other tracks on this album) that result in a listening experience that isn't dulled down by stagnant repetition but is instead a fairly eclectic collection ambient atmospheres…