BASS COMMUNION

BASS COMMUNION is a side project of one Steven Wilson who I admit is a hero of mine. Heck he loves and grew up on the same kind of music that many of us here are fans of. His IEM project was inspired by Krautrock while BASS COMMUNION was inspired mostly by the electronics of Klaus Schulze and TANGERINE DREAM.Yes he listened to a lot of Krautrock and Electronics in his youth. Some might not know that the music that he plays here is the same music he was making long before PORCUPINE TREE or NO-MAN became his focus.This is all about soundscapes to drift away in, an escape from reality which is what most Electronic Prog is about. Steven said recently in an interview that BASS COMMUNION is "my labour of love, my biggest passion musically these days". So the object here according to Wilson is to use a sound that is either powerful or beautiful or spiritual then find a way to fill a whole space with it while trying to retain the beauty and power of the original sound throughout. This is about filling a room or your mind with this atmosphere so as to take you to a different reality a different place. By the way he has used sounds from both PORCUPINE TREE and NO-MAN songs on this project over the years.

"Shopping" is a short piece with distant sounding synths and static of some sort. "Drugged" is based an a Theo Travis sax melody that is repeated. Synths join in after 2 1/2 minutes and the mood becomes spacey and beautiful. Guitar echoes come in after 9 minutes. "Sleep Etc." opens with faint sounds that build. A dark track that is hard to describe really. It sounds like keys along with people walking on crunchy dry grass and atmosphere too.The atmosphere gets louder and slowly pulses. "Orphan Coal" opens with percussion-like sounds and a vocal sound that echoes in and out quickly. Other filtered sounds join the beat. The voice will continue to come and go.This is cool. A deep sound then joins in after 3 1/2 minutes.The beat and that deep sound stops after 7 1/2 minutes as it becomes spacey. "Drugged" is the 25 minute cloeser. Unlike the earlier version this one is about layering, processing and multi tracking the same sample of Robert Fripp over and over.This is beautiful and spacey throughout as it gets louder around 5 1/2 minutes then settles back around 20 minutes to the end.

This is music for Electronic-Prog fans just like IEM is for Krautrock lovers. Others should listen at their own risk.