Describe the politics you feel are inherent in dub bass.
It relates to the general attitude in music that bassists are just there to hold down the rhythm, whereas vocalists and guitarists are the ones responsible for serious expression. Dub music represents an inversion of clichéd perspectives about bass. With dub, the bass line is the hook of the song and the guitar is often there backing it up. The bass line offers a low-frequency melody that carries the key emotional content. Your job is the same as it is for any other instrument—ensuring how you feel about the world is reflected back into your playing. The challenge is you’ve got to do all of that using as few notes as possible.
Contrast your compositional approach on Emergency Basslines to your work with Asian Dub Foundation.
On the new CD, I’m expressing emotional sentiments purely using bass, noise, and percussion—the three main components I’ve had running through my work for the last 20 years. This album strips away the other blatantly melodic components I had in Asian Dub Foundation, including vocals, keyboards, and guitars. I’m trying to challenge people to focus on the melody of the bass—and even the melody of noise—so they can hear, understand, and acknowledge both of them as distinct and unique pieces of musical thinking.
How have you evolved as a bassist?
I’ve become more disciplined about getting to the essence of the bass line. I’m a lot leaner. My goal now is to be able to play one bass line all the way through a piece of music and not feel the urge to go somewhere else. The reason people go elsewhere is they’re not happy about where they are. Playing one bass line all the way through is actually very hard. To make it work, it truly has to be the best bass line you can think of for that piece of music. When I’m writing, I’ll start with a percussion loop that inspires me and jam along with my MiniDisc recorder running. I might go through millions of ideas looking for those three essential notes that make up a great dub bass line. There are several criteria the bass line has to meet for me: Does it break your heart? Will it make your body move? Is it militant? Can you make love to it? In a way, it’s a search for the one bass line that exists at the center of the universe.