Camera in one hand and bass in the other, Montreal-born musician and artist Melissa Auf der Maur spent the 1990s touring the world with iconic ’90s alternative rock bands Hole and The Smashing Pumpkins. Today, she announces BASS WOMB ROOM: My ’90s 4-Track Demos x Field Recordings, her first new music in over 15 years, out digitally and via cassette on Sept. 4th via Envision Records. It features seven never-before-heard 4-track tape recorder demos written and recorded by Auf der Maur in the ’90s, as well as eight new “interludes” created for her upcoming museum exhibition Melissa Auf der Maur: My ’90s Rock Photographs, opening Sept. 2nd at the Art Gallery of Ontario. A 240-page photobook of the same name, arriving Sept. 8th via DelMonico Books/D.A.P. and the AGO, accompanies the exhibition.
Auf der Maur wrote the 4-track demos on BASS WOMB ROOM in her living room home studio in the 1990s, on her trusted Tascam 4-track. The songwriting and instrumentation were often anchored by an acoustic guitar, then layered with vocals as well as lo-fi 4 track tricks such as flipping the cassette backwards, or pitch shifting. Lyrics were streams of consciousness or direct reads from the diary in which Auf der Maur wrote every day—reflections on blistered fingers, desire, and the moon landing. Other featured instruments include the bass, a vintage Ross phaser guitar pedal, and a cheap keyboard. Auf der Maur also sampled field recordings of mundane, everyday sounds—a dripping leaky faucet, her camera shutter—captured on the pocket-sized cassette dictaphone she carried alongside her camera. All seven of these demos were recorded and self-mixed right there and then at home. These are the final works from that time. There has been no modern intervention for this release other than mastering.
The ’90s 4-track demo songs are presented alongside interstitial sound pieces that score Auf der Maur’s BASS WOMB ROOM installation at the AGO museum, co-produced by Auf der Maur and Alex Crow. BASS WOMB ROOM the installation is a mirror pyramid surround of video, set to the music; it’s both a celebration and emotional centerpiece, a site designed to give visitors to the exhibition a taste of the transcendent experience of being on the road, performing on stage, before cell phones and digital recording. Auf der Maur often placed a video handycam on her bass amp during Hole and The Smashing Pumpkins shows to film the audience. The sound pieces featured in the exhibition are mostly drawn from these recordings, sampled and then connected by a recurring heartbeat that symbolizes both the bass (“the mother of all instruments” she says) and the womb we all come from.
This album is an interaction between the ambient yet noisy BASS WOMB ROOM installation score, and the seven ’90s demos made by the girl who took the photos in this exhibition and book. There is a purity and an innocence to these recordings, made at home in Los Angeles, that sits in stark contrast to the music Auf der Maur was making in the studio with Hole at the time. “I wrote these songs in the context of rising pressure from the major label-driven music industry on myself and my peers to make glossy hit songs to dominate radio airwaves,” says Auf der Maur. “These songs are the sound of my internal experimentation and a way of keeping the Montreal art girl alive inside. These sounds are the quiet and private side of the girl who joined the big American major label rock band.”
BASS WOMB ROOM: My ’90s 4-Track Demos x Field Recordings Tracklist
1. Active Heart
2. … And The Next Day
3. Courtney Chimes In
4. Desire is Critical
5. In The Reflection
6. Water Wars
7. Flesh Flush
8. Is She His
9. Billy Seoul Crowd
10. Love Is The Drug
11. Sparkle Bass
12. Fancy Piece (Featuring The Hunger World)
13. River’s Dream
14. Sea Of Tranquility
15. Skip A Beat
By: Bass Magazine