The new breed of bass music is pretty much epitomized by this album, understated but ready to deliver the pressure when it needs to. Plenty of mood and atmosphere, managing the clever trick of putting genuine feeling into banging bass heavy music.
The highly anticipated debut album from Atlanta producer Distal (aka Michael Rathbun) recently dropped on Tectonic, the label which is headed up by bass pioneer and one of my personal production heroes Pinch. The album bears a fairly wide scope of influence, but is essentially a sparse bass heavy workout.
I really like this album—it doesn’t try to be fancy, preferring to cut straight to the core of what is good about bass heavy electronic music. On first listen it seems very paired back, almost to the extreme, but further listening reveals complex layers that move slowly with understated aplomb to give an immersive experience that grows on you quite unexpectedly. I would call it minimal, and by that I truly mean minimal in the original musical sense of the word. I can hear the influence of Pioneering minimalist Steve Reich throughout, repeating phrases that eventually build into hypnotic drones, especially vocal phrases cut in unusual ways to create a pattern that is familiar yet slightly out of tune to something you can easily make sense of as in the tracks “Preach On Hustle” and “Drop Like This.” I’m thinking of the 1966 piece by Reich entitled Come Out in particular, where the phrase “Come out to show them” is repeated producing unexpected results.
There is more then a small nod to the early hip-hop sound of a few decades ago, with plenty of 808 style cowbell plinks peppering the tracks, and a sort of tough bass retro sound going on. There is techno and jungle influences evident, with snatches of Reese bass sounds appearing here and there, and throbbing old school dark techno synth lines. Elements of dancehall and a hint of dubstep rear their heads too. This is bass music with intelligence and subtlety, nothing is too ‘in your face,’ it’s all very well balanced, but on a big system tracks like “Drop Like This” are going to set the place on fire.
The new breed of bass music is pretty much epitomized by this album, understated but ready to deliver the pressure when it needs to. Plenty of mood and atmosphere, managing the clever trick of putting genuine feeling into banging bass heavy music.
Civilization is available on Tectonic. Buy at Amazon, iTunes or Juno.
