Whenever you put an album on for the first time, it doesn’t click with you. That’s the same that had happened to me before. Whether its E.L.O.’s Out of the Blue, Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica, Keith Tippett’s Blueprint, or Magma’s Mëkanïk Dëstruktïẁ Kömmandöh, they didn’t grab me at first when I heard those albums originally. But it took me a long time to appreciate the work that they’ve accomplished and how much I’ve grown up to admired them.
Well, now here we are in 2024 and Steven Wilson’s solo project Bass Communion has unleashed a new album in over 12 years on after his ninth studio release Cenopath on the Tonefloat label. The communion’s new album entitled The Itself of Itself is one of those albums that’ll need repeatable listens to get an understanding on why Wilson himself has pushed the envelope, and go beyond that heavy rotation.
I’ll admit, listening to The Itself of Itself is unsettling, disturbing, challenging, and uneasy at times. There are moments that’ll make you startled. For example, the unexpected jump scare on ‘Unperson’ will really get you going. You feel you’re in space, being the last survivor on this isolated spaceship as Earth is on the brink of collapse.
Wilson has paid attention to the composers of Stockhausen and Ligeti very well as an admiration from Kubrick’s point of view with his sci-fi epic 2001: A Space Odyssey. The droning atmospheres behind ‘Apparition 3’ makes it a very anxious composition, walking through the darker corridors of Schulze’s compositions with Tippett handling the production levels which speak of the Irrlicht years.
Both the nightmarish shriek of ‘Blackmail’ and the 13-minute musique-concrete forms of ‘Bruise’ are trying to make a last effort to reach communication back to home base, but the planet is now in a vegetated form of radiation with a crackling effect. There are some massive forms inside the ship that something had gone horribly wrong with its gauzing effect that spreads throughout the entire piece.
It reminded me of the first two video games of the Dead Space franchise where Isaac endures some of the mystery behind the Ishimura and the Sprawl. Bass Communion’s music sets the tone to go through the surviving-horror aspects in its sci-fi texture while the 10-minute title-track is where Steven embarks into the parallel universe of Philip K. Dick’s world with the usage of a Mellotron flute goes up and down to an alarming effect.
Wilson goes through the Delia Derbyshire space station with nods to both Tangerine Dream’s Zeit and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop that speaks of ‘Ziwzih Ziwzih OO-OO-OO.’ I mean, why do you think that he has a huge amount of source material behind his love of the electronic genre? Think about it for a second, and you might want to take note of that.
The Itself of Itself may not be for the faint of heart. It took me a while to get into. Will it be a dividing line in the sand? Yes. But for Steven, he has kept the tightrope of Bass Communion’s sound going for 30 years. And you might want to be prepared for multiple listens on the new album. Because the danger itself, has just gotten even bigger.