August 14, 2017

Dirty Art Club "Basement Seance" (Instrumental Album)


Conceived in North Carolina, fragments of sun-kissed soul and dusty psyche-rock sounds are stitched together and intertwined with live instrumentation recorded in a home studio setup to convey a woozy and soulful experience. It's a blend that’s been refined on Dirty Art Club’s latest album, Basement Seance, which is themed around sampling rare “old songs and records that barely anybody's heard" and reanimating them into a new life... The genesis of Dirty Art Club’s nuanced approach to production was inspired by RZA's mystical beat work for Raekwon's "Verbal Intercourse,” from the rapper’s classic 1995 album Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…. The way the melody sample "was cartoonish and weird but also soulful" and the impression "the loop has someone saying something but you can't really tell what they're saying” helped form the Dirty Art Club template. This idea of utilizing "strangely placed vocal clips" carries through to Dirty Art Club’s compositions, where truncated phrases from rare songs are skillfully layered into tracks to enhance wistful, nostalgic and carefree vibes... The fruits of vinyl digging trips are combined with layers of live instrumentation and embellished with field recordings and atmospheric effects. These component parts are skillfully mixed so that they “sound like one sample.” It’s a trick that creates a unity of sound where songs segue together while moving the emotional narrative along. Listen to it below...