A conversation with Lorin Bassnectar.

By Kemek the Dope Computer

One of my favorite breaks Djs and producers right now is Lorin Bassnectar. I’ve seen him play many times, from Burning Man to strange warehouse parties in downtown LA to my dreams (or possibly my neighbor’s dreams), and everytime he rips it up like I never thought possible.

I sent Lorin a bunch of questions and these are the answers he sent back. (I did have to cut one especially racy exchange pertaining to cats and car air fresheners due to content, but I felt it didn’t really add much to the interview other than nausea.)

Kemek: First up, why are you not the biggest artist on the planet? Seriously, why is it do you think that you haven't been able to get as much exposure as we all know you deserve?

Lorin: Shit, sounds like I would have to be quite the pompous bastard to answer that first question. As to the second question, I think it’s a mixture of things:

a) My styles are vastly eclectic, in terms of genre, energy, and tempo.
b) My political beliefs pervade all of my artistic endeavors.
c) I am working in multiple scenes: From the hardcore, purist end of the breaks spectrum, all the way over to full-on futuristic electronica. That’s in terms of production. In terms of DJing, again, I play not only to the hardcore breakbeat heads, but also to the West Coast hippies, lovers of dub and reggae, and also people who are just getting into it. It seems like I end up being a lot of people’s first exposure to electronic music.

Kemek: How did you get started making music?

Lorin: When I was 12, I learned a couple of Metallica songs on the guitar, and kinda took off from there. I never learned very much music theory, just a lot of percussion knowledge, and a fetish for massive bass.

Kemek: Your earlier releases were downtempo. When did you make the transition to breaks, or was the trip-hop thing concurrent and coincidentally the first to be released?

Lorin: Interesting question. It’s definitely all been quite concurrent. Since about 1996 I’ve been making all kinds of hybrid breaks, hip-hop, trip hop, even quite a bit of psy tr**ce in ‘97 and ‘98. At the moment I’m working on a full-length CD of mid-tempo, hip-hoppish throb-core between the ranges of 90 BPM and 115 BPM, [with] massive baselines and ultra thick drums and percussion, mixed with hypnotic melodies gangked from a few old death metal tunes. Kind of like maybe Tipper meets Thievery Corporation meets Uberzone meets Prefuse 73 meets Dan F meets NWA meets My Dying Bride meets Kruder & Dorfmeister meets... I dunno, DJ Quest? ;)

Kemek: The ubiquitous question: which do you like more, spinning or producing?

Lorin: Equally ubiquitous is the answer: I’ve no flocking idea which I like more. I love the participation and energetics involved in performance and Djing, the give and take. But I also love losing my shit night after night, up until dawn all alone in the music studio, clinging white-knuckled to my desk, as I mosh around the room, building songs.

Kemek: Sweet or salty?

Lorin: Depends. OCEAN: salty, LOVERS: sweet.

Kemek: Drum or Bass?

Lorin: BASS! No wait... DRUMS! Argh!

Kemek: Who are some of your influences?

Shit.... Krafty Kuts, Freq Nasty, Kenny Dope, Uberzone, Tipper, Si Begg, 2nd Protocol, Horsepower Productions, Freestylers, 2 Lone Swordsman, Apollo Kids, Nubreed, Mr. Scruff, PMC, Sibilant, Metal Spark, Matsuri, Exhumed, Emperor, Dark Throne, My Dying Bride, Simon and Garfunkel, Boards of Canada, Pest, Plaid.

Kemek: What's your background? Where did you grow up? Go to school? Have your first spiritual experience? Learn to drive a car? Realize you loved "Weekend at Bernie's 2"?

Lorin: I hated that movie. :) NO, I never saw it actually. I grew up in the depths of Silicon Valley, spent a lot of time smoking “cigarettes” and romping around in the woods, throwing death metal shows in the basement of the Cupertino Library, going to what could most accurately be called “raves” in nearby San Francisco and Oakland.

Kemek: How did you hook up with Kool Keith's breaks/hip-hop label, Sync?

Lorin: The label manager, Dan Merlot, is an old-time friend and needed some raunchy bass-a-listik mayhem. Hence: http://www.bassnectar.net/pelvis/Bassnectar_Swerve.mp3, my remix of Crash Berlin’s “Sister’s Of Seven.”

Kemek: Is your house as dusty as mine?

Lorin: Adam, you’re a wingnut! And the answer is HELL NO. I am a neurotic clean-freak. The only thing I like dirty is BASSLINES!

Kemek: You tour A LOT. You must have some great road stories. (Or if you don't, make one up.)

Lorin: Yeah, sometimes I wonder what the fuck I’m doing! I guess I just love to drop bass on people’s heads in big throbbing orgies in as many towns and countries as possible.

Stories... Let’s see. Well the absolute rocking-est parties have been in Australia, Canada, Hawaii, and the West Coast of the US. I liked Japan a lot, UK and Germany were cool, and Mexico was nuts (an abandoned Villa overgrown with plants, hidden in the valley behind several landfills... the soundsystem was in a dried-up swimming pool. It was DIA DE LOS MUERTOS, Day Of The Dead. Quite a trip).

Fukuoka, Japan was crazy as well. The promoter was Israeli, and he had the misfortune of getting drafted into active duty in the Israeli military the week of my gig. Unbeknownst to me, he left his main act Trance DJ in charge (he goes by the alias “The Holyman”). So I showed up in the airport, and there was no one to take me anywhere, much less speak English to me. Once I finally made my way to the venue, there was no hotel booked. I saw the flyer for the show. And they listed me as: Lorin Bassnectar - Cyber Trance & Techno from San Francisco! I was booked to play from 12:30 to 2, but “Holyman” decided to do a little bit of rearrangement on the lineup. He switched it so that I played from 9 pm to 10, and he played from midnight until 5 am, and on and on and on. Fortunately, a really sweet DJ from Nashville, who was also booked to play, worked some magic and I ended up getting to play from midnight to one, and dropping STUPIDLY FAT bassy breaks on all those Japanese freaks. They screamed and went nuts. The next day I went shopping.

Can I just say Canada rocks? I mean fuckin ROCKS. Jesus H Christ, they go off so hard in BC, eh!? I can’t get enough! Anyone in the area should definitely check out Shambhala in August.

(www.shambhalamusicfestival.com)

And of course: Burning Man, Burning Man, BURNING MAN!!! (www.burningman.com)

How’s this for a story: I was playing a party for Perry Farrell in LA, and none other than Madonna showed up, as she was considering hiring me for one of her parties. She spent a lot of time uneasily eyeing some of my hottie friends who were dancing up a storm. The next day she e-mailed Perry and said she was very impressed with my DJing, and that she would love to have me, as long I didn’t bring any of my girlfriends with “dreadlocks and little trinkets hanging from their hair.” I guess she wasn’t feeling up for the competition. She was pregnant at the time, though. My girlfriend was a bit pissed, but I thought it was funny.

Kemek: You've been all over the world. Who's got the best food? The best ladies? The best health care system?

Lorin: HMMMMMM... SAN FRANCISCO!!! For healthcare, you have to go north to Canada, eh? I’d like to take this moment to say: FUCK YOU GEORGE BU$H. He and his moneymaking party should quit stealing our tax dollars for their oil companies and instead pump it into some education and healthcare. Fuckin’ fascist bitches.

Kemek: You bounce around in tempos like it was nothing. That's so ballsy. Why do this, when it's so much easier to just stick with a groove?

Lorin: Ballsy? Really? Nice. That’s the first time I’ve ever been called “ballsy.” Usually they stick with the terms “pansy,” “faggot,” “weakling,” “gimp,” or “pussy.”

Man, I’m bored to tears if I have to listen to some breaks DJ with a baseball cap play a three-hour-straight mix of Rennie Pilgrim into Freq Nasty into MasterBlasters into Krafty Kuts into DJ Quest into THAT BRAND NEW WHITE LABEL PROMO MASH-UP back into some harder-than-thou breaks tune that’s WAH WAH WAH-ing itself all over the place and scaring all the girls off the floor. BORing! And don’t get me wrong... I fuckin’ love breakbeat! I love nasty basslines! But I also love throbbing downtempo and ultra nasty hip-hop and retarded Mr Oizo shit, and a gorgeous tune like Royksopp’s “Eple” that makes everyone get sexy and pack the floor.

Kemek: You play strictly CDs. Dude, no vinyl? That's, like, sacrilege or blasphemous or lame or something, right? Even the Pope won't touch no CDJs.

Lorin: The Pope! He’s old! Besides, I’d rather touch CDJs than some poor altar boy, buddy!

No, I will say this much: I buy the majority of my music on vinyl and then rip it onto my computer, where I burn it to a CD (usually editing or remixing it, if not at least mastering it). I don’t play MP3s (only ONCE in a GREAT while). I prefer to DJ with CDs because they are much easier to travel with, I can play my own tunes, and tunes that my friends make, and I love the extra options (like master tempo, memorized cue, etc).

Kemek: Let's talk politics. You've expressed to me on many occassions your support and love of right-wing, hawkish America. That's an intersting position for someone who plays at so mnay hippie festivals. Discuss.

Lorin: Yes, as president of California’s 44th chapter of the young Republicans, I have worked hard to keep the average American citizen stoned on their TV programs, and paid off with their SUVs, DVD players, and cell phones, so that my neoconservative masters can feel free to ass-rape the environment, the US treasury, and our civil rights.

I own a large percentage of stock in the corporation called DIEBOLD, which is the largest electronic voting machine company in the country. By that, I mean, they control the final count on every election, and don’t have to prove their results to anyone, which is how we’ve managed to sneak in so many Republicans into office! Isn’t that great? Of course, it helps that the entire corporate board of DIEBOLD is Republican.

I never go here: www.michaelmoore.com

Or here: www.gregpalast.com

And I definitely don’t go here: www.bushflash.com and click on the word “ANIMATION.”

Kemek: I've noticed that your more recent stuff is more banging, and less "swingy." Is this the sound of Bassnectar 2004? More bang for your box?

Lorin: Thanks for noticing. You’re probably the only one? For a while, I felt like it was important to pay attention to the “sassy” end of things, as the “funky” end was getting so much attention. I felt like pointer fingers and shoulders were being left out. I liked to shuffle the shit out of my drum loops, partly because I wanted to offer up a slightly alternative sound and feel. I still use a hard swing quantization on my drums, but mostly on the slower hip-hop stuff, and as you noticed, I have been going a bit more straightforward and throbbing with my break beat productions.

As for the sound of Bassnectar 2004: as usual, it will be very eclectic. Right now I’m composing and all slow-tempo CD, probably around 15 tracks of deep throbbing bass-fetish “breaks” tunes that all happen to be between 90 and 115 BPM’s. Essentially it’s ultra grinding hip-hop, a little bit of capoiera dance-hall, some dreamy trip hop, and some ultra-undulating low frequencies. That CD is called “The Tempo of Dreams” and is due out in summer 2004. I wanted to make something a bit deeper and more musical, with remixes for the dancefloor that still maintained their heaviness by keeping the tempos slow and thick.

I also have a Bassnectar 12” coming out on Bless Records (BLESS release #0012) which includes the ultra-heavy glitch-breaks ho-down “Creation Lullaby” and one of the most effective dancefloor tunes I have ever witnessed: “Not In Our Name” featuring Saul Williams. Both tunes are full on and ultra-slamming.

Dave Dub’s DSV label is also putting out a 12” of mine through the 2Wars camp sometime this summer. One side is ultra grinding breaks, with a freakish ragga dubstep tune on the flip.

http://www.bassnectar.net

http://www.dopecomputer.net