BASS COMMUNION

I first saw this album (in iTunes) a little while after I got my first PT CD. I listened to the 30 second previews, and I didn't really know what to think of it. At the time most of the tracks just sounded like noise. I wasn't interested, so I ignored it, and I moved on to buy more PT albums.

Well, about a year after that, I started to get into electronic music. Not ambient at the time though, mainly a genre called IDM. About a year after that (which is about 3 weeks ago) I went to Steve Wilson's website to see if anything new was going to be released by PT in the near future. While I'm there, I see the Bass Communion section of the site, and I go to it. I start reading what I already have about 2 years ago, and for curiosity's sake, I check out this album again on iTunes. This time, it enlightens me. So I think, what the hell, what's the worst that could happen? I buy it.

The intro track Shopping is just that. An intro track. It has a bunch of static, but if you turn up the volume loud enough, you can hear synths in the background. Nothing special, but it wasn't supposed to be.

Drugged is by far the best track on the album. It starts off with a hollow, dark sound which wraps around your mind. After a while of this, the happier, more dramatic tones come in, and they continue to wrap around in your mind. Even though happier tones are now present, it still sounds haunting. Then, you hear the sound that you probably least expect to hear: a guitar. It strums in a kind of random part of the song, and each time I hear it, my stomach kind of drops. The haunting is now the holly. The track immediately changes mood as soon as you hear that, even though it's really the only thing changing in the song. The guitar continues to strum every so often, with everything else still going on in the background. The track fades out, and I'm left hypnotized.

Sleep Etc Again starts with a dark sound, but it's more spooky than dark. There's a sound in the background that could be a number of things: water flowing, tall rustling grass, or just static. Every so often a grueling sound of a double bass comes in using a bow. It's a very appropriate sound for this track, it adds more to the scary feeling. I want to stress how creepy this song is. It's like an old, abandoned house where a family once lived, but they were killed, and you're in the room where the baby once lived. My description sounds cheesy, but that's how spooky this song is. The growling bass gets hungrier and growls louder and the long notes end with trills to make this even scarier. A pretty good track, like a scary story, but a good one that isn't cheesy.

Orphan Coal is a different track. Right off the bat you can tell that it's different because of the percussion. This track took me a while to get used to, but it's pretty good. You hear the slamming of...something. It's not a drum, but some percussive instrument. Then, you hear a string of notes picked by a guitar, and then you hear a lot of notes that sound like they're being played backwards. This goes on for a while, and it's not very exciting. Then you hear a wave of sound emerge and crash, and they keep coming. Shortly after, you hear an electric bass come in, which is another thing that makes this track a little bit different. The waves of sound get a little spookier. Towards the end the percussion stops playing and so does the bass, which makes it more spacey, because everything becomes more unexpected.

The longer version of Drugged is A lot like the first, except it doesn't start tout as creepy. No guitar either, but it's different enough where it's worth a listen. A good track.

Overall, I think that this is a really good album, and I'm surprised that it isn't appreciated that much.

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