BASS COMMUNION

The second album of Bass Communion is just a perfect electronic element.

A wonderful record by the mind of Steven Wilson, with a few but wonderful melodies as the whole album is only a party of unusual instruments and synths. Fans of Tangerine Dream and bands like this will really enjoy this recording, but also fans of Steven's. Bass Communion music, show what is the real psychedelic part of progressive music. A wonderful noise trip to the post prog music with the superhuman, who leads bands like Porcupine Tree, No Man, Blackfield and support the job of Opeth and King Crimson.

4 stars because, is just an excellent addition to any prog rock music collection. Anyone of us should have an opinion about that kind of prog magic.

Porcupine Tree mainman Steven Wilson seems to have his musical fingers in more pies than just about anyone I can think of. Bass Communion is one of his ambient projects. I've never been the biggest fan of ambient soundscapes, they're usually something I can only listen to in small doses but I must admit to rather liking Ghosts On Magnetic Tape. It's based around apparently genuine recordings of the dead communicating with the living which Wilson has weaved into his soundscapes. Now whether you believe in this sort of stuff or not is another matter but what I can say is that Wilson has successfully created a suitably eerie backdrop for these recordings on 5 separate pieces.

Supernatural crackles and vague voice sounds are heard over droning ambient backdrops creating a genuinely dark and disturbing at times sounding album. Definitely an album to lay back and listen to in the dark for maximum impact.

Since its original release it has now been re-released with a bonus disc containing the Andrew Liles reconstructions. Steven Wilson is of the opinion that this version is even creepier than his original mixes but I must admit to for the most part preferring Wilson's versions; the album just seems to flow that much better.

I don't think I'll be tempted to go out and buy all the Bass Communion Cd's but for the occasional eerie chill out this one will do fine. 3 ½ stars.

So it seems that this album is looked down upon by many, but I think it is a great album.

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.

The second album from Bass Communion continues where the debut left. Long drawn out synth sounds that make atmospheric soundscapes. There is nothing else on this album but synth and samples, so don´t expect rock drums.

Bass Communion is another one of Steven Wilson´s ( Porcupine Tree, Blackfield, No-Man etc...etc) projects. Bass Communion is a one man project which means Steven Wilson plays everything. Well play might be too big a word to use, because I suspect that it´s a computer that´s playing most of the music you hear here on (II). There are a few human touches though. The music is slow and the songs are generally very long. IMO the musical ideas overstays their welcome by several minutes every time. Some songs are more enjoyable than others but these songs would have been better on a soundtrack to a movie than as a musical experience by themselves.

This is probably something post rock fans could appreciate as the music does sometimes remind me of bands like Godspeed You Black Emperor just without any of the rock parts that at least makes some post rock bands bearable to listen to. This is way too ambient and trivial for me. Had there been a rock element in the music I might have viewed this differently. Songs like 16 Second Swarm and Drugged III does have their moments. The latter reminds me a bit about the most ambient Nosound songs again without the rock element and the first has a great atmosphere. Grammatic Oil and Dwarf Artillery are slow pulsing songs. There are no vocals on the album which would have made this much more interesting IMO.

The cover is really beautiful and signals the calm within the music.

I´m struggling to give this a 2 star rating as this music speaks against everything I believe is good music, but I must admit this is at least a bit more enjoyable than the debut from Bass Communion which I found was a complete waste of time. I still don´t like this music much and I won´t recommend it to anyone really ( well maybe a few post rock fans will like it, Who knows ?), but as I said there are a few enjoyable moments on the album and I will give it 2 small stars. I just don´t have the patience for this kind of music.

It's a new album by probably the most illustrious rocker who is in love with electronic music, Steven Wilson, embracing a rather casual design in all its forms (cover, slim package, by-the-manual ambient music), still being well made. Being the first album of 2008, Pacific Codex is implicitly the first album of Bass Communion's 10th anniversary. But the match of numbers rather falls since this album is the 11th or 12th official full album of Wilson's BC career - excluding EPs, compilations, CD/VINYL alternative reissues, mixes and such, but including three top collaboration - and, more importantly, by the fact that we ain't talking about a spectacular product. Given especially this detail, it's a relief that Pacific Codex stands, as earlier said, well-made. It could have been worse, without a solid vision and method.

10 years of Bass Communion include the proper progress, especially because, with a keen ear, a fan can split in at least two periods what Wilson has done overall, the cut being somewhere around Ghosts Of Magnetic Tape. Not to interpret this the wrong way, in terms of a radical (or even significant) style change. Pacific Codex is defined in two words: ambient drone, and that's quite the quintessential electronic art Bass Communion has put pressure on. 2007's Construct II held enough surprises to be considered a high point in the artist's career, but this here isn't necessarily a recoil as much as it simple is a study on basic, close-minded styles and elements. Of course, the "monotony" and "cold atmosphere" effects are included right from the start. Lasting 40 minutes (which, on the official site, is regarded as the length of a full epic, but elsewhere and even on the cover it's split into two parts), the experiment is aiming no extensiveness, while the "roughness" of an ambient-powered is a thing of taste: Wilson knows how to play it like this, and the ideas put in the bowl aren't bad. Theo Travis collaborates again, but just like last time, it's hard to figure when he's playing, especially because there are no flute and sax moments. Therefore, it's probably a composition credit and, let's just speculate, a bit of a percussion play.

Taking the walkthrough ultimately justifies the moderate star that's awarded for Pacific Codex: it is a good, prosperous, accomplished album, but it's also bitterly unspecial. Judging the full 40 minutes epic, the beginning and the end (in translation: the first and last 10 minutes or so) are the losse, feeble edge, while the middle part is the essential one - said in a different way, Part 1 starts numbly and ends intelligently, while Part 2 starts in force but dashes the hopes by sinking solidly towards the final minutes. The first two minutes of Part 1 offer an unbelievable moment of total silence after an intro of an electronic "gong" -like bang. The unusual fades afterwards, the slow build of a ghastly, fibber ambient harmony determining ultimately a tag of "silent music", that gives rustling emotions to whomever listens. This isn't soundscape music, but instead simple atmosphere glazures with a "drone" particularity. As any ambient player respect himself, it takes 14 minutes for the low-form arrangement to evolve and catch some extra pumps, grave percussion echoes doing the trick of awakening your senses. At this time, I already see a leitmotiv of "gong"-beats erupting out of the cold and still ocean of eerie ambient emulsions, Wilson & Travis finalizing this epic-side with different overdubs of sound and percussion edgy pulses. Part 2 starts by changing its ambient frequency and switches the chilly atmosphere into a more casual "dark vibe". The first part is the best music done in this album, tense & dense mixes merging with the serene & abstract idea of "ambiance". The drop back into "silent waves" is bit more disappointing than how the intro of the first part sounded like, reason for which this entire side is not actually better, more refined than the previous one. The finale is very silent, taking its volume down to nothing and loosening its ambient nods completely.until the last 1.40 minutes are virtually empty space on the record.

As it is simply another composition (with skillful processing, but a bland creativity) from many other projects, there's realistically no point comparing Pacific Codex with anything but Wilson's brand line of "ambient drone" meditations and, regarding the prog electronic tag, with the line of modern, dark ambient music. But just for the pleasure of it, some of the wobbles remind of the good times Tangerine Dream played dark electronic (Atem, Phaedra), with Pete Namlook's similar tunes and, in case it's all about the long journey into the sounds of mind and ether, with anything valuable, and yet easy-structured, Brian Eno has done.

Wrapping it to three stars means the album is good, accessible electronic music with just an impossible to appreciate stillness and a luxury of introspective energy; a second album is already announced for July 2008 and it may surpass this intelligent, yet "naïve" album from the start, that's how promising it sounds. But anyway, Pacific Codex is not a bad choice for this year.

Well....I love Porcupine Tree....and Blackfield.....and No-Man....so I thought I would try Bass Communion.... This is nothing like any of those bands.....Steven Wilson is really out there tryng something different here..... I also enjoy Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze....and a few other Electronic bands.....heading in the ambient direction......but this album makes Tangerine Dream look like foot tapping fiddle music in comparison.....There's not a lot of real music here at all.....There's a lot of background noises that sort of evolve into something that makes you think of music........ I am not tempted to get any further Bass Communion albums.....but this is something that you could play if you are looking to zone out completely...... I don't mind listening to it every once in a while.....

Loss if a lament to love lost, and it is a mournful question. Can the dead communicate with the living? With his lone lonely piano, and its canvas of white noise, Steven Wilson depicts tormented souls of both living and dead, lost, afraid, alone. It is essential about death, and the communication with the dead through technology, but atmospherically, emotionally, it explores themes beyond these; unfit for words.

The only conventional instrument appearing is piano, most often performing dissonant notes, manipulated to give a beautiful sense of - you guessed it - loss. Pure ambience is the second instrument here. Footsteps, chiefly. Effects also run amok, giving texture to the sounds that imply, perhaps, it is all taking place in the room next to you; beneath you. Electronic influence is subtle: expect no keyboards or such. The electronics here are merely in production.

Essentially, this is mournful minimalism, executed with experimental and avant-garde methods. It is always soft, and unlike the Continuum projects, it never rises much in volume. It is infinitely haunting, but divinely spiritual and moving, as well. It is a unique brand of ambient music, done with class and style. So many emotions can be milked out of this music that my interpreting it is nearly futile. I will end my review here.

Please disregard the rating attached to this review. My rating for this album is completely blank.

There's something divinely odd about Steven Wilson's music. It seems he has a musical Midas touch, on production, and all around quality, on any release he is involved in. But here, in one of his more independent side projects, there's absolutely no connection to the work he's done with Porcupine Tree, No-man, Blackfield. The bond between this and I.E.M. (an entirely solo project) is minimal, and even the comparisons between the Continuum projects and the rest of Bass Communion's catalog are transparent.

Unfortunately, I've not heard much of Bass Communion's other outputs, nor the now out-of-print (but legally downloadable) Continuum 1. My comparisons would be superficial and unfair, so I will not do so. Continuum 2 is packaged marvelously. Limited to a mere two-thousand copies, is comes in a DVD-sized, slick black case. Its covers are marked by haunting, subtlety grotesque images, which also appear in the interior on inserts. The packaging alone makes its holder feel as though he has a priceless treasure in his hands, and must handle it with delicacy and secrecy.

Musically, however, it is brilliantly unique. It brings extreme minimalism into an electronic environment, as is the charge of ambient music, however, also applies new aspects. It employs the destructive power of heavy electric guitars, and a sinister atmosphere. I was frustrated with this release for a long while. It's not soft enough for a night listening, nor is it exciting enough to listen when fully awake. Some sections grow so loud I thought damage was being done to my speakers! Simultaneously, the vast majority of people will whine with boredom over its extending repetition of simple phrases. It exists in a half world, and most definitely requires a special mood to be enjoyed. This makes it extremely unaccessible, and many listeners might find it doesn't fit their tastes.

However, this unique innovation, this startling originality, proves this a piece of true art. As I mentioned, sections are so incredibly noisy, I had to lower the volume from fear of waking neighbors, knocking over furniture, or damaging my speakers. What's odd about this is that all songs begin with silence and a whisper, and rarely plays host to anything remotely sudden. It all grows progressively. As for its progressiveness, in the sense of progginess: it is extremely so. Many will beg to differ, as it encloses no complexity compositionally whatsoever. However, it is prog in the sense that it progresses away; ahead of the current. That is the true spirit of prog.

In the online announcement made to advertise the release of this album, Continuum 2 is described as this, "Is it ambient? Is it metal? It is neither, and yet, it is both. But it's so much more. Think of a Sci-Fi horror film shot on the surface of an abandoned, ghost-ridden planet, or the soundtrack to a slow motion apocalypse in which all life is extinguished beneath rock, dust and convulsing earth." This is the vivid reality of these atmospheric drones.

Ok this provokes me to a degree were I get angry. How can you get away with releasing this kind of music ? Who would buy this kind of mindless noise ?

Well my respect for Steven Wilson just went down a bit. Now I might not like all his experiments in Porcupine Tree and I think some of them keeps the Porcupine Tree albums from being really great, but those experiments are nothing compared to this ambient noise.

This is only for people into really ambient music. There are no drums on the album, and it seems to me Steven Wilson has pushed the repeat button on his keyboard because nothing really happens during the way way waaaayyy too long songs. This is a torture I promise you. This is a school example of how some musicians use their fame to produce questionable output to make money. Or maybe Steven Wilson really likes this music ? How many Porcupine Tree fans have been lured into purchasing this repetitive trivial noise ? I´ll tell you how many. Many enough for Mr. Wilson to release 9 Bass Communion albums so far. Yes you read right! 9 albums.

This is by far the worst album I have reviewed since I started reviewing albums on the Prog Archieves site. Stay away and don´t waste your time or money like I did this has absolutely nothing to do with Porcupine Tree or any other Steven Wilson related project.

Well, I guess I'll be the first to review this wonderful album by Steve Wilson. BASS COMMUNION, for those who don't know, is one of Steve Wilson's many side projects (although it should be considered one of his best). Instead of being Prog-pop as in BLACKFIELD, or the great Heavy Prog of PORCUPINE TREE, BASS COMMUNION takes form as an ambient project.

Loss is built around the aural atmosphere created by a lone piano, although there is much more to it than that. It is an observation of the emotional attack one feels after the loss of something dear to them. This slow and eerie album does exactly what it is set out to do: to express emotion in the form of notes and atmospheres. Loss is dark, melancholic, and if you're a little bit like me, beautiful.

I must immediately admit: this album is not for everyone. It is MUCH different than any of PORCUPINE TREE's works, and takes a large amount of attention to fully take in the emotion expressed in the music. If it turns out this music interests you, then I say go for it. In my opinion, it is rewarding when you feel the effect and power of this song, and worth going through the pain of it.

As I said earlier, this album is based around a lone piano. In the first section of the song, the piano meanders around dissonant intervals, creating a sense of questioning and confusion. As you float through the first ten minutes, you will sense that other sounds start to enter the picture. There's scraping and other unidentifiable sound effects, that add to the feeling you have as the listener. At around halfway through the first part, the piano takes a step back as those growing ambiances take over.

From then, there is a long period of a wind like moaning. It is hard to understand what this sound is, but it is a painful sound - going back to the theme of Loss. The crackle of a record sits underneath it as you can hear a random plucked instrument, adding even more to the emotion. After maybe 5 minutes, a new sound takes form - a choir. The moaning wind continues while the distant choir changes notes every so often. Then the real pain hits in - a close up, distinct moaning. It is my belief that this moaning is a low flute of some sort, but I am not sure even to this day. All I know is that the music and atmosphere here sucks you in right as you enter the second part.

The second part of Loss starts off with the return of the piano, this time with deep, dissonant notes. By this time, if you are really focused on the music, you have been sucked in, and you take every low note as another needle in the never ending beautiful pain of this song. The low notes start messing with you - they drop off in pitch, and soon after a new sound enters. A falling sound effect, of some electronic sort, starts to grow on top of the fading and dropping piano notes. For around 10 minutes this pain continues, until the piano drops out for sure, and a static atmosphere takes over.

From this static, an electronic set of pitches come out. This new and final section is what completes this dark and eerie piece. The album slowly fades out, leaving a lot of questions the listener may have unanswered, but it leaves you also with an experience with music that most other artists can't compare to emotionally.

The only possible set backs of this album is that it is more-so the atmospheres, not the music, creating the pain and emotion. This is no problem for me, in fact, I take it in and love it's dark beauty. One thing to understand is that this album will have different effects on different people. For some, they will just question why somebody would make a recording like this, and for others, they will soak up the music as I did, and truly feel the pain expressed by this simple, yet very complicated piece of art.

So in the end, I guess I can only say this - get this album if you really wish to seek the emotions expressed in it - don't get it for entertainment value, for the only entertainment here is in your emotions. Loss is dark, maybe even pessimistic, and is not for everyone, but for those who listen to it as I do, they will agree with me 100% that this album is deeply moving and beautiful.

EDITED ON 3/3/08

Change: Rating (5 Star to 4 Star)

Reasoning: After much consideration, I have decided that giving this album a 5 Star rating would be slightly unfair. I fully stand by all I said in my review, but based upon the criteria for ratings, I must admit that this album is not an essential part of a Progressive Music collection. It still is a deeply moving album to me, and one of my personal favorites, but I feel as though Bass Communion has also released works of similar if not better quality.