Booking Info
Territory: Europe
Agent: Chiz
Links: official site / MAGIC + DREAMS / Punchdrunk / Mordant Music
Biography
Bass Clef is rooted in deepest London and has a very distinct but ever morphing sound and live stage show. Ralph Cumbers aka Bass Clef has been unnervingly productive recently, laying down solo and collaborations on tape and 12” under numerous different guises, many on his own Magic + Dreams cassette label. The music has seen him delve deep and weird with Ekoplex, modular and zonal with Some Truths, uplifting and rave-wards with the Bass Clef 12” Rollercoasters Of The Heart and backwards and forwards with Coseph Jonrad. His sought after mixes have flown the afro-disco flag which, via the world of deliciously un-smooth groove, brings us to the NEW album, its title lifted from the lysergic prose of a Brian Aldiss novel. ‘Reeling Skullways’ on Punch Drunk features understated textured 4×4 journeys into the heart of dance, trks that hum and hiss with machine-soul reflecting some key techno/house influences as well as emotional soundtrack pieces too. Reeling Skullways fashions new tricks from old books.
He is dance artist who criss-crosses boundaries making friends where ever he goes, armed with his trombone, effects, and percussive instruments of choice he is a potent mix of dance(hall) inspirations – 21st Century urban roots music, Caribbean rhythms, pulsating techno, hypnotic brass, machine soul and classic ‘hands in the air’ rave dynamics which all swirl around the Bass Clef sound-system experience.
In the past few year year he has also remixed Kasai Allstars, Au Revoir Simone, Brigitte Fontaine, Zun Zun Egui and Grace Jones, and he recently launched a new big band live experience called Bass Clef and The Hackney Memorial Free Jazz Marching Band.
Some Truths
Some Truths is a new project from Ralph Cumbers aka Bass Clef. Made entirely on a modular synth, with each live performance unique, written at the soundcheck, the only way.
Each track is a one-take meditation, always changing but always the same, like light and wind on water, or an oil slick in a puddle of rain. Reference points and inspiration would be Eliane Radigue, John Carpenter, Mika Vainio , Vladislav Delay and The Radiophonic Workshop.
The debut album The First Gate Of Dreaming was released on cassette by new label MAGIC + DREAMS, to be followed by second album Damnation Poisoned With Rainbows in the summer.
Some Truths will make its vinyl debut on a new 12” on Mordant Music (who first released Shackleton) alongside tracks by kindred spirit Ekoplekz.
Press Quotes
“Easily one of the stand-out albums of the year” PLAYGROUND on Reeling Skullways
“Track after track, everything in place and right time. Sublime” FACT 5/5
“A satisfyingly cohesive body of work that jars the face of analogue house music in a storm of knob-twiddling tweakery and rock solid drum machine grooves.” JUNO
“Hackney carnival music that rolls out a procession of precise two step beats, skanking rhymths, bass with more elasticity than Stretch Armstrong..and a riot of Latin – American plumage” – NME
“He’s a badass one-man band of bass. He shakes songs out of his arms and lungs that come in somewhere between dubstep and wonky carnival with his club sets sneaking in splashes of old school UK garage and blasts of full frontal techno” – Clash
Tour Dates
| 18/05/12 | Bass Clef in London, UK | Power Lunches | |
| 05/07/12 | Bass Clef in Poznan, PL | Malta Fesitval |
Videos