Bassnectar :: Underground Communication (Om, CD)

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(03.18.07) Oddly enough, Bassnectar’s Wikipedia entry has been mysteriously deleted “and protected to prevent recreation.” Well, I never. I learned from an electronic musician that Sinbad has also had problems with his Wiki. Sinbad says of his Wikipedia-circulated death rumor: “I gotta die more often. I’m writing a movie about this now… Seriously, my death is gonna be my comeback.” Bassnectar needs no such comeback. He’s pretty famous right now: 150 shows a year, really recognizable sponsors, 170489 Myspace total plays at this moment, and an important publicist. Not to mention being named San Francisco’s #1 DJ in Nitevibe, the Bay Guardian, and SF Weekly. In his spare time, he volunteers at a music education program sponsored by really noticeable sponsors, helping kids get excited about music, making up for a sinister lack of state funds.

DJ/Storyteller around a huge campfire spins yarns of heroes from a mythical past and hopes for a brighter future. The rappers sing “worldwide communication,” “network,” “party” and I feel a sense of hope-love-freedom emanating from my personal computer. Children’s voices echo and glitch along with so many other samples turned rhythmic, giving poly to the rhythm, sync to the pation. And suddenly I’m sweating and there’s no war, only dancing. Oh ethereal bouncing ball, bounce over here, dance with meeeeeeee. It sounds like a little light-ball (“light-centric” says the MC) bouncing from speaker to speaker, ricocheting to me. There are rigid quarter notes in this measure, but the ball does its own dance, fills out the off beats and the simultaneous sounding of two or more independent rhythms occurs. “I kick it complex!” says the MC.

I’ve been haunted by the little boy saying “look at this” at the beginning and end of “Bomb the Blocks.” “Look at this” and “look at this” and “look at this” and I hear how his words (“look at this”) do not land perfectly on metronomic quarter notes. But if you assume that the first one landed on a quarter note (because “Bomb the Blocks” is a 4/4 track), then the other words (“at this”) land on two of the many other beats (1/8ths, 1/16ths, 1/32ths, etc) available within the measure. And so we get a short, little rhythm (“Look at this”). And that rhythm can be repeated rhythmically.

Then again later in the album (“Kyrian Bee Bop”), I hear samples from other shows: Bassnectar talking from another show and then his voice becomes a sample that can wind around the other elements of the song. This sample then becomes a new and unusual melody which unexpectedly ends up being really fun to listen to. At the end he breaks to tell the crowd that he’s going to record them and if it sounds cool then he’s going to put it on the next CD. Maybe when I see Bassnectar at the DNA Lounge on March 31, he’ll want to sample we-the-audience again to make a rhythm from our party which incites the music that drives the party.

Bassnectar’s break to interact with the audience and the child’s break to “Look at this” is extended into a rhythm as ye olde DJs of the past had done with R&B breaks. Now two or three spoken phrases bounce and ricochet off each other and a polyrhythm –built from unheard, unprecedented, or newly heard sounds –takes shape. This is the case with all of the samples and blips, beeps, thuds, beeps: they weave around each other like so much smoke; chaos becomes order and then chaos again; I see fruit dancing as in Sledgehammer, I see feet tapping and arms gesticulating wildly. I feel unpredictability and exaltation therein.

An electronic musician feels that Underground Communication is drum ‘n bass. My neighbor hears dub. It makes me feel the same way that funky breaks (less Florida and more Chemical) does, but who can be sure. Sometimes half-time, in service to breakbeats, sound collage, samples that make me feel effervescent somehow, space rap, computers; the girl with whom I share a cubicle wall asked if this was Trip Hop. Maybe I’d call it Trip Hop in a better mood. Uplifting trip-hop? Happy trip-hop? Somebody help me out here. These genres weave in and out of each other like so many polyrhythmic samples.

Don’t forget to check Bassnectar’s award-winning shows.

Underground Communication is out now on Om. Buy it at Amazon.com.

Bassnectar / Myspace