Too often, calling an album “genre-bending” means it cannot really settle into a unique sound, instead running all over the musical spectrum to collect a bunch of bits and pieces that do not amount to much.
For Lorin Ashton, the brain behind Bassnectar, genre-bending is a way to stay free. Unlike so many others, Ashton seems to have no difficulty creating a sound undescribed by existing genres, but that is focused and unique just the same.
Bassnectar is a result of a diverse musical diet and an open mind toward the composing process, Ashton said.
“My tastes have always been super eclectic,” Ashton said, citing groups from Talking Heads to NWA to Metallica as influences while he was growing up. “I don’t want to limit my musical directions at all, so I tend to refer to this style as ‘Omnitempo Maximalism.’”
And while this classification may seem broad, it’s appropriate. Ashton’s latest release, “Underground Communication,” begins with the title track, which exemplifies Ashton’s skill for mixing styles and elements that may not appear to play well together on the surface.
The track opens with heavily processed breaks and an ethereal-filtered synthesizer, moving forward with an IDM style beat, a heavy dose of gritty bass synth and a smattering of bright synth chirps that would sound equally at home on a European club anthem. Then the vocals drop, and we hear Ashton seamlessly integrate hip-hop into his amalgam of club-friendly styles.
Ashton said he works with an arsenal of computer-based audio tools, a dislike for musical rules and some unconventional writing aids like his cell phone.
“So I might start humming a melody one month and record it on my cell phone,” Ashton said. “And then not actually sit down in the studio with that melody for six months, and then I might work like a demon for three weeks straight on it, and then maybe I will know that it is finished, or maybe I will send it off to a friend and see if they have anything to contribute.”
He added that he is “wide open” to new song-writing approaches, and enjoys fully embracing his creative freedom while composing.
“Musically, rules are really boring and I resist them,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever followed the same format for any two songs.”
While his attitude and mixed approach work beautifully when recorded, the stumbling block for many electronic musicians is the live performance, which can suffer from lackluster knob twisting and mouse clicking.
“It’s really not an issue for me because I am so excited and stimulated by music that it just kind of comes crashing out of me,” Ashton said. “A lot of what is going on during a performance is an energetic transaction between a person in the crowd and a person on stage. And in addition there is the crowd as a whole making a whole separate organism, so I feel pretty intentional with the magic of that human phenomenon when I’m playing music.”
That “human phenomenon” sweeps through the WOW Hall this Thursday, a performance, he said, for which he is extremely excited after visiting last April.
“I am just waiting to unleash all the sonic fury that is echoing in my cabeza.”
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A sample Bassnectar video: