The bass on Telekinesis’ “12 Desperate Straight Lines” sounds like a wealthy teenager noodled around in his basement for 75 hours. Michael Benjamin Lerner explains.
The bass sound on “12 Lines” is warm and fuzzy and excellent—how long did it take you to nail it? Do you want to share any secrets with the kids? Because one time I interviewed Billy Corgan and asked him about a particular sound somewhere on “Siamese Dream” and he said, “Oh, you’ll never be able to figure that one out.”
As for the sound of the bass on the record, I unfortunately had nothing to do with it! Chris Walla is responsible for that! And he’s a genius. It’s amazing, because he totally does all things unconventional, and they always turn out great. For the bass, I remember we were running it through Chorus pedals, and very old guitar amps, and all sorts of other weird tricks. We were really going for this particular bass sound on a lot of the songs. It’s this band called Flin Flon. Their bass sound is dreamy. I think we got pretty close!
I hear you wrote some songs on bass—are you inspired by guys like Geddy Lee, Les Claypool and Eric Avery? Or did you just feel like you could tap into something else with a new palette to work from?
I don’t think I’m directly inspired by those people, because I’m a drummer first. I mean, Geddy Lee scares me. In all facets. He’s a monster. People say that drumming and singing live is hard (which is what I do in Telekinesis live), but Geddy Lee plays all those fucked up Rush bass parts, and sings LIVE. And that’s insanity. He’s not human. Just listen to his voice. But I think I was more influenced by Flin Flon’s bassist, Nattles, and Peter Hook from Joy Division and New Order. All their bass parts are so melodic, and play such an important role in the melody of the song. I’m intrigued by that, because I’m all about melodies!
