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The bass guitar is frequently the most conservatively played instrument in rock music. All too often, bassists are content to "hold down the low end" and play the root notes of the guitarists' chords, with a few fills here and there. In much of the music that gets played on commercial radio, the bass is hidden way down in the mix, so that only the trained ear can pick out the individual notes.
My bassist friend Justin chose his instrument for just that reason. "A good bass line is like a secret song within a song," he says. "Sometimes you can only hear it if you listen very closely, but it's there."
That might be why Rothko's music sounds so magical. This bass trio from England focuses on the instrument we hear every day, in almost every song, but aren't always aware of.
Their music is highly accessible and unpretentious, but experimental in the best sense of the word. They use sound as a palette, choosing different techniques and effects to create sonic paintings.
Rothko's first album, A Negative For Frances, is a dreamy, textured set of bass-only instrumentals that stretch the roles a bass guitar can play in a musical composition, and what sounds it can produce. The three bassists, Mark Beazley, Crawford Blair, and Jon Meade (who had never played bass before he was asked to work on the project), alternate between playing rhythm, melody, and atmosphere, sharing sonic space without crowding each other. The result is a set of soundscapes so vivid and lushly textured, they're almost hallucinatory at times.
The standout piece on the album is "Roads Become Rivers," a murky, meditative study in rhythm, melody, and tone. "For Danny" is a playful juxtaposition of pizzicato standup bass and ringing harmonics.
Rothko's second album, Forty Years to Find a Voice, adds occasional flutes and trumpets, and on one track, vocals. At some points it leaves behind the gently structured arrangements of A Negative For Frances to move into more complex jazz territory, but the result is similarly pleasing.
Rothko is primarily Mark Beazley's project. He disbanded the trio in 2001 after deciding that he had taken the bass trio format as far as it could go. He continues to release new music under the Rothko name while working with other musicians. On A Place Between, he collaborated with Scottish vocalist and flutist Caroline Ross to create a delicate, almost folk-ish record. The instruments are still used in a spare, thoughtful, painterly manner. The result is hypnotic.
Mark Beazley |
Distant Sounds of Summer, his 2005 release with prolific electronic composer and DJ Susumu Yokota, is an ambient masterpiece, a shimmering mirage of music so delicate that it feels like a strong wind could blow it away.
Any of Rothko's releases are an excellent starting point for listeners who are interested in exploring experimental music, but are intimidated by the unstructured bleep-bloopery of so much of the genre.
Posted December 2006
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