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, which is her first new music in over 15 years, out digitally and through cassette on September 4 from 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 September 2, at the Art Gallery of Ontario. A 240-page photobook of the same name, arriving September 8, through 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, 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 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.
BASS WOMB ROOM Track List
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
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