Hey, so sorry about getting this up late. But seriously? Click this button right here or they’re gonna kick me off the radio.

A pledge of 25 bucks gets you a Nocturnal transmission T-shirt, and there’s pretty much nothing cooler, ever, than that.

And you can take that to the bank, broseph.

Background Tunes: Brad Mehldau – Anything Goes

Tonight’s show features a good deal of music that relies heavily on the lower frequencies of the hearing spectrum. That is to say, they’re bass-y. They contain much bass. They bump. Because here’s the thing…

I really love bass. I mean I really love bass. When I was 14 years old, I asked my parents to get me a subwoofer for my already hand-tuned and bass-jacked Aiwa stereo system. I quickly became the menace of the household.

I’m not alone, as millions of customized Honda Civics with quadruple 40″ subwoofers stuffed in the trunk can attest. However, there’s a difference between bass that gives a piece of music a definite groove, a solid foundation, or a driving thump that carries it deeply into your chest, and bass for bass’s sake.

Examples.

Dubstep, as a genre, puts bass directly centerstage, but doesn’t feature bass mindlessly. It uses melodic bass lines, trips and drops and blips and lines that suddenly drop off a cliff and plunge headfirst into the Mariana Trench of full-on sub bass to create a sense of desolation and fundamental groove that is in such stark contrast to the glittering, metallic percussion so far overhead that it produces nothing short of profound, even at times purely terrifying anxiety. (See tonight’s Burial tune).

By contrast, much modern commercial rap and hip hop uses bass more to add booty-shaking thump to otherwise asinine tunes, and gives the Civic drivers something to play over their 40,000 watt systems with LCD screens in the headrests. It contributes little to the music.

True, producing accurate and wholly engrossing bass requires some specialized and often expensive equipment (especially to experience the sub bass intensities in much modern electronic music, see Burial again). Subwoofers, amplifiers, sometimes even a good set of over-ear cans with good frequency response, all will do a good job at drawing you deeply into bassjoy wonderland, but will surely take a cut out of your pocketbook. And, headphones aside, they won’t make you many friends of your neighbors. Yet so little beats the way you feel the music in a club with a really solid set of subs, or the way you feel the intensity of a symphony when the contrabassoon kicks in, or the way you feel the emotion an artist is trying to convey when standing right in front of the stacks at a rock concert.

That’s what it is. Bass makes music tactile.

I suppose this thought here was provoked by all the coverage of the new Beatles remasters, and how much ink has been spilled about the way the music has completely changed, owing in large part to the new life given to Paul McCartney’s masterful basswork. And for the better, across the board is the general consensus. I haven’t personally heard any of the new Beatles material, but if any fellow bass fans out there want to send me the new box set, I certainly wouldn’t say no.

I hope I’ve made a few folks out there think in new ways about bass. It’s not a nuisance. It’s music made flesh.

So turn it up. Even if just for tonight.

Background Tunes: Medeski, Scofield Martin and Wood – Out Louder

Alright. I’m just going to come out and say it.

I hate hipster music.

I’m talking about the low-fi, half-assed, post-emo, ultra slacker, grunge/punk-wannabe crap that everyone who rides a fixie with BMX handles and a mustache bar and carries $600 messenger bag is into these days. Music with no melody. No beat. No harmony. No groove. No danceability. No sing-alongability. Most importantly, though, no evidence whatsoever that the musicians producing it have even the slightest lick of talent.

Basically, music created in an aesthetic whose intent seems to be as grating and abrasive as possible, but without the creativity and listenability that can come with abrasiveness (see: Lighting Bolt, Parts and Labor, Heck, even Dismemberment Plan to an extent). These groups lack the charm of low-fi acts that came before them (Moldy Peaches, Apples In Stereo, anything Elephant 6-related, really). I’ve tried… I really have. I just can’t find a single redeeming quality about these artists.

Alright. I’ll call them out: Wavves. Danananakroyd. Vivian Girls. Gentle Friendly. UUWWWZ. Lovvers. Times New Viking. Mika Miko. Even No Age, to some extent.

You could be making good music, but instead you’ve chosen to be exceedingly pretentious hipster trendwhores.

Despite the vitriol in this tirade, I am still open to possibility. If anyone out there is a huge fan of any of these artists or their ilk (or if you happen to be one of these artists), and can present a compelling case, I’m game. Hit me. Prove me wrong. Please. Because unless I can somehow reconcile my differences with this particular genre, its popularity will continue to baffle and infuriate me… and I don’t particularly enjoy being angry.

Not when there’s so much good music out there.

Background Tunes: Medeski, Martin and Wood – Note Bleu

Back from the break. You were gone, I was gone for a bunch of it, I hope we all had a great summer. Personally, it was my goal to experience as few of the 100+ degree days in the flesh as possible, hence I spent the bulk of the summer in states as far away from Texas as one can possibly get within the 48.

And thus, autumn encroaches, bringing school, studies, responsibilities, and the like with it.

And the distance has truly returned to its original form. Welcome back to me.

Background Tunes: Medeski Martin and Wood: End of the World Party (Just In case)