BASQUE: Basque

Basque

Basque

© 1998 Lacqua Records (634479525452)

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ambient vocals floating across ethereal otherworldly bass lines, painting pictures with rising and falling sounds.

tracks

1 Ave Maria
2 100 Degrees
3 Swollen Stranger
4 Let All Mortal Flesh
5 Twilight
6 The Mountain Song
7 Woman in the Room
8 Jab

notes

I knew I was in for something different when I opened the package from Basque and saw a CD, a candle, and a customized book of matches all packed up in a purple ziploc bag.

Basque is made up of Brandt on bass and Maryasque on vocals - basically a Tuck & Patti with a twist: subtle and soothing new age sounds that seem to float from your speakers.

The songs are complex in their simplicity - the vocals float effortlessly across the dancing bass lines, painting pictures with rising and falling sounds.

Maryasque's vocals are less lyrical than they are instrumental. There are words here and there, but they are delivered as if they were mere musical notes.

The end result is unexpectedly beautiful in its sheer bareness--revealing a depth that you would not expect from just a bass and vocals.

This is a remarkable piece of work, and has to be heard to be believed and fully appreciated.

(above review from MISH MASH ISSUE # 11 OCT'99

reviews

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  • Love This!
    author: Joy Oestreicher

    I love this music! "Mountain Song" is my favorite here, but there is not a single song on this CD that I would leave off my playlist. "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence" is probably the darkest piece I have heard from them, yet it isn't grim and it isn't boring, just fascinating. I also like the jazzy "100 degrees."

  • Organic ambient music.
    author: Craig L. Gidney

    Basque, Self-Titled. The NYC-based group Basque is a duo made up of Maryasque on vocals and Brandt on bass. It’s very open, airy music, with lots of silence written into the tracks. Maryasque has a beautiful, strident voice, highly reminiscent to Sinead O’Connors’. She slurs and mangles her lyrics until they don’t quite sound like English—though you can make out bits and pieces. It’s a technique that’s closer in spirit to Rickie Lee Jones than to Liz Fraser. Brandt’s bass-playing is incredibly expressive; he bends and twists the notes, pounds percussively on the instrument, creating evocative shades of sound. The songs are precise and haunting—I couldn’t get the song ‘Swollen Stranger’ out of my head for days. Basque sounds like a cross between Tuck and Patti and Hugo Largo, with a bit of Low thrown in for good measure.

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