Featuring a long improvised intro, this was the first track from my show at Greenbelt Festival in Cheltenham on August 25th 2013. More from this show to come... :)

(cover photo by John Sargent)

A Year Afloat (with extended intro) - live at Greenbelt Festival 2013

The first bit of evidence of the collaboration between Crimson ProjeKct/Adrian Belew Power Trio bassist Julie Slick and British bass experimenter Steve Lawson. They recorded and gigged together in April 20014, along with drummer and guitarist Andy Edwards. Watch for more soon! 

This duo track was recorded in a session at Kidderminster College, and has Julie's bass sounding almost like a mellotron, playing the arpeggiated figures all the way through, with Steve playing the melody at the start, and the moving bassline later one, as well as the layers and then the pad part right at the end… 


now out on an album called Marinate - here's how you can get it: http://www.stevelawson.net/2014/07/more-new-music-new-album-with-julie-slick/

Julie Slick and Steve Lawson - first duet (rough mix)

So, I was messing around with this progression yesterday, and looped the chords, some ambient goo and a solo. Was listening to it while reading the news about the UK election stuff that's going on, and it felt like the same sonic story as Grace And Gratitude 10 years ago. An exploration of the sadness around people adopting a politic of fear and distrust, peddled by a party of opportunists and targeted at the most vulnerable. 

The initial thought to playing yesterday was to explore a few new sound possibilities combining the Dunlop Super Bright strings that I've just put on my 6 string, and my MXR, Darkglass and Markbass pedals (see pic). So I'll tag the audio with what's happening there. 

This is probably the most despondent gear demo you'll ever hear ;) 

Lament

I was really sad to hear yesterday that Gerry Goffin - one of half of one of the greatest songwriting duos of all time - had died. With Carole King, he wrote a dizzying number of astonishing pop songs, from the broken tragedy of 'Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow' to the awesome 'You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman, and this - the pure delighted whimsy of I'm Into Something Good. Which, obviously, I've given a bit of a pathos-laden twist to. 

This is one take from earlier today, played while thinking about Gerry and his legacy. RIP. 

"Something Good" For Gerry Goffin

So after a conversation today with Lo about which REM tune we wanted to cover, I came home and had a go at a solo version of this. It was the first one I thought to try, and this is the 2nd time I played it (I missed recording the first). So here it is, and it starts/ends with a different REM song. 

from a technical stand point - the main point of interest is probably the backwards delay from the Kaoss Pad, onto which I also sample 4 different notes/phrases which I mess with as the tune progresses... fun times :) 

The chances of my next album being all covers has gone up by about 80% in the last few days :) 

[update] there's now a 2nd version of this on Youtube, another take, a little shorter, I think... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8D6dHcr2yE&list=UUHlI8xnDnhdcquOZk1QL3zg

Steve Lawson - Orange Crush

Recorded at Leeds Beckett Uni, during a symposium on music education - Not having played with Ray before, I really didn't want to miss out on the chance to play together a little... so we volunteered to be the lunch time entertainment. It was fascinating to play in a context where we'd just been talking about music for hours, describing it, discussing it, and listening to a few recorded examples, but we were there just playing for the joy of it. We weren't really 'demonstrating' anything, though we did a little bit of a deconstruct afterwards, but it was just joyful exploratory music making as an oasis in the middle of the brain-food. 

Such fun! Really looking forward to playing with Ray again soon... this one takes a few sharp turns, hence the title :) 

Steve Lawson and Ray Russell - a Drastic Change In The Weather

Ta-daa! here's the first public thing from a brand new and v. exciting project: a collaboration with Poppy Porter, painter and jeweller, who has synaesthesia. We met up at the London Bass Guitar show (she's a bassist too!), and Poppy commented that my music triggered a lot of strong images in her synaesthetic brain... 

So I did what I always do and suggested we collaborate on a project. The idea for a live show with art and music happening simultaneously and influencing one another was an easy one to conjure, but the logistics of it are a little more tricky, as well as the exploration into what else this might mean, what it makes possible, the bigger story it tells... 

So we met up for a play (I was SO tired having had a v. late night the night before, and Poppy was v. patient with my general wobbliness) and quickly saw that there was a) LOADS of potential in the project, and b) a huge open playing field of exploration to dig around in. 

Straight away, it became apparent that I play v. differently when I'm thinking about 'triggering' images. The back and forth conversation about what sounds look like shaped the way I played, the way I brought ideas in and out... not a usual compositional path. Seeing the way that patterns and shapes formed, how pitch, timbre and even surprise affect the images that Poppy is capturing - it all feeds back into the music. 

The music here is definitely a co-creation between Poppy and I... there's a whole fascinating exploration here about the nature of authorship, and the degree to what real time interaction changes our understanding of influence vs co-creation... 

For Poppy, there’s a whole other area of ‘woah!’ - that of being a ‘private producer of finished work’ suddenly getting (having?) to view her process as performative. There are time constraints, spacial considerations, interaction... myriad layers to consider that haven’t previously been factored in. 

We’ve got a whole load more things we’re talking about, discussing, experimenting with, and I don’t want to give away all the magic now - the sketch in the image here is the beginnings of one of the drawings from that first session (I don’t actually think it was from this piece, which will mess with poor Poppy’s head no end!) 

This is a really exciting experiment for me, and I can’t wait to do more of it :) Please do check out more of Poppy’s work at http://www.poppyporter.com 

Steve Lawson + Poppy Porter: Synaesthetic Journey Pt 1

Bass and Voice cover of this Slipknot track, from 'The New Standard' - the Edinburgh Fringe show that Julie and I performed for a week or so the festival in 2006. 

The arrangements on this project are some of the trickiest I've ever done, this one was particularly satisfying. 

(also of note is that I still had flatwound strings on my fretted bass at this point, hence that gorgeous warm jazz guitar-ish tone :) ) 

for more about Julie and what she's doing now, see http://www.juliemckee.com/ - lots of lovely music there! 

Steve Lawson and Julie McKee - Vermilion (Slipknot Cover - 2006)

Taken from the album, Closing In (only available to subscribers at http://stevelawson.bandcamp.com/subscribe ), this is another step on the journey towards my other new solo album. This one is an exploration of the impact of imperfection on the music - I've just had to switch from my main Looperlative (the looper I use) to my back-up (which is the original prototype), and it generates a lot more noise and pops and clicks than the new one did... it used to annoy me, but now I'm actually thinking it might add something interesting to the music, like vinyl crackle does... So this is that - let me know what you think..

the piece itself is an improv, starting out with a new-ish sound that uses a quite extreme tremolo setting to establish a rhythmic basis, with pitch-shifted reverb creating that initial ambient texture... fun times ;) 

For more on the new solo album journey, and how you can be a part of it, see http://www.stevelawson.net/2015/07/crowd-funding-my-next-solo-album/ :)

Imperfection - Steve Lawson (live solo bass)

So I just got a Keith McMillen Quneo - it's a MIDI controller/touch surface that can be assigned to loads of things. I'm most interested in using it as an instrument, playing percussion and synth parts on it. 

At the moment, I'm using Ableton Live as a sound engine, and then running the audio into my normal bass+looping set up. So no pre-programmed or presampled loops, just a load of experiments in live playing and my usual exploration of wobbly time. 

I've always found ambiguous time to be more interesting than things that are metric, but it's really interesting what happens when you do that with drum sounds, where your ears really expect them to be closer to in time (I know the reactions I've had from some students when first playing them D'Angelo tracks or J Dilla productions...) - so I'm seeing how far I can push this... After repeated listening to this, I hear the slightly out-of-tune-ness of the very first bass note as more 'out' that the rhythm ;) 

Here's the first publicly-listenable experiment from that set... Enjoy!

Nearly Human (bass + Quneo live looping experiment)

The end of a two day practice drought - hadn't played much for ages, sucked for two days, pulled out the Quneo and this beat was the first thing that came out of it... first half has me soloing over it, 2nd half is for you to play over... enjoy :) 

Funky Hip hop practice groove for you to play over :)

Recorded in April 2005, during a period when I was exploring the possibilities for collaborative improvised, looping-based music. Cleveland Watkiss and I got together a few times over a period of a few months and just improvised, seeing how our musical worlds came together. Along with some parallel experimentations that I was recording with BJ Cole, and my prior work with Theo Travis and Jez Carr, this is what formulated the idea for the Recycle Collective - a monthly improvised music night in London that ran from late 2005 til early 2007, and that I'm looking to resurrect in Birmingham soon. Keep an eye on twitter.com/RecycleCllctv for more :) 

Gregorian (Steve Lawson and Cleveland Watkiss)

This is the opening tune from my first ever solo gig - the melody wasn't even written at this point - just the loop and the two layers of a little bit of the tune... This is where it all started. The only way was up ;) 

A later version became the opening track on my first solo album, And Nothing But The Bass

Steve Lawson - The Inner Game (original version, from first ever solo gig)

I recorded this version of the Jaco classic to go with a transcription I did of the piece for a Total Guitar Magazine Bass Special issue - it's probably the only time I've EVER learned anyone else's solo bass tune note for note. I'm not normally one for putting NOTHING of myself into a tune, but this was all about getting as close as possible to the original, and to my ears, I got closer than pretty much any other version I've ever heard (there were a couple I heard that came with transcription books that were MILES off...) Anyway, here it is - no idea if the bass special mag is still available as a back issue order. If I find the transcription, I'll put that up too... 

Portrait Of Tracy (recorded for Total Guitar Magazine)

Solo bassist (solobasssteve on most of the internets), improvisor, looper, social media experimentalist, lecturer, writer of blogthings. I use Soundcloud less these days, and am uploading new stuff for my Bandcamp subscribers. Check that out :) 

This music is brought to you by the words bass, looping, live, cinematic, ambient, jazz, improvised, electronica.

solobasssteve

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