“I would hear punk bass which was more head frequencies, and then they would drop into dub and that was totally chest frequencies,” Dub Gabriel told me in a 2004 interview, regarding his musical upbringing. “That made me totally rethink the bass. I experienced it in a different way. It was the vibration, you could feel it in the chest, it was like a chakra hit.”
Pulling from aforementioned punk/dub roots, factoring in a longtime inquiry into Eastern and Middle Eastern philosophies and swirling them into a Brooklynite tendency toward experimental fusion, the result is Bass Jihad. Dub Gabriel’s second solo independent release (following ‘03’s Ascend) continues his unique blending of Moroccan and Arabic instrumentation into a digitally textured, dubbed-out head experience. From the heart, of course.
More than a meeting ground of theory and music, Gabriel’s dissertation is sonic. Heavily influenced by Gnawa ritual, the commonality is trance-like repetition. Bassist by trade, he uses the four-string bass as a Western sintir, finding penetrating grooves to ride out a full six minutes while sprinkling higher-pitched layers along the journey. Thus a circumnavigating low-end, filled out by sharp percussion and, on occasion, digeridoo (“
Garden of
Light in the Shade of Grey”), is pierced by saz, ney, santur and mizmar. Just because he deals in loops and spiral does not make improvisation irrelevant.
The opening cut, “War in the Poppy Fields,” propels you in the midst of his aural jihad, exploring a dissonant mizmar set into a palate of rolling percussive stabs. Drums lead the way on “Zooklyn” as he finds a fuzzy hip-hop cadence to pronounce his predatory existentialism. On “Rumi Go Through Me” Gabriel draws a slow conga-led circle to draw the listener in. Above this the santur and melodica play harmonies off one another, a rather interesting partnership that completely works; he might consider changing the title to “West of the River Ganges.”
Trance is heavy on “Musique de L’âme.” Bass Jihad’s slowest number is a mindbender that’s as seductive as sedating. Gabriel borrows heavily from Bill Laswell’s bass-up-front mentality, coaxing the earpods to a seven-minute sprawl of head-nodding hypnotism. By the end you’ve realized your head has been nodding “yes” the entire time. This sort of bass transfixion closes the record on “Second Coming of the Urban Mystic.” Featuring the bazantar, a five-string acoustic bass featuring 29 sympathetic strings and four drones, Gabriel went to the source for inspiration: inventor Mark Deutsch joins in and creates a musical conundrum of hallucinatory effects. The final effect is splendid.
“A lot of my music stems from a personal spiritual search,” Gabriel said. “Music is the essence of the celebration of God, and it should always be. The first person you should be performing for is God. You tap into that and that’s it. It’s like ‘OK, I’ve tapped into my sacrifice, now time to tap into my bliss.’ I’m not trying to bullshit that I’m this spiritual whatever. I’m still a kid who grew up liking Jane’s Addiction and come from dude culture. I’m not trying to come off as anything different than I am. But I do think that whatever I do I need to do it right.”
Featuring some of the most intriguing song titles filled out with the gusto to match, Bass Jihad is a search and a destination, a questioned answer and answered question. Whatever Dub Gabriel is doing, it sounds just right.
"Zooklyn"
