Mark Beazley picks the Trace Recordings artistes with great care, and it is easy to see why they have chosen to release the first album from bass and voice duo Being. Not only does the bass couch the restless and emotive vocal in a dreamy gauze, but the overall sound draws the listener closer into the pervading melancholy.
According to the notes, it is all bass and voice — but at points, the bass does evoke a cello that throws a sombre shadow over “Fragile”, and here the voice turns into a whisper. There is a touch of a less gruff and more accepting Mark Lanegan at certain moments, but full of longing for something that can’t be retrieved. I see an empty, early morning light-dappled room in “Not OK”, which is more of a lullaby than what has preceded it, and inhabits the sort of twilight world that the first Blue Nile album did. That world of waiting and longing the bass drone of “There Is No Light” definitely tries to puncture, the decaying sound that curls round the main motif seem to clear the air a little, but only so that the skeletal nature of this track is drawn out into unexpected moments.
The bass has such sweet tones at points that it could be mistaken for a guitar, particularly on penultimate track “Dangerous”, which injects just a little more pace as the album draws to a close, with an addictive circular organ motif swirling in the background. The loose hold on reality seems to be relinquished on the final track as words drift out rhymeless but thought-provoking, as if the pain felt is being channelled right there and then, freshly plucked. It lends the album an air of some terrible event being turned into a work of spectral beauty once the music and vocals combine in the embracing atmosphere of a recording studio. It isn’t always easy, but the journey is really worth it.-Mr Olivetti-
