Ralph Cumbers has put out a breathtakingly broad array of records in the past decade—under different disguises. With four albums and quite a few EPs, singles and remixes, his Bass Clef releases have popped up on Trilogy Tapes, Happy Skull, Idle Hands, PAN, Alter, We Can Elude Control, Mordant, and Iberian Recordings. His other alter ego Some Truths—a more stripped-down excursion into the realms of modular synths—has also seen more than a handful of releases. And then there’s Oscilanz, a three-way improv project with This Heat drummer Charles Hayward and performer and composer Laura Cannell. Add several other projects in between and around the ones mentioned and you get the full picture.
Nonetheless, Cumbers’ new Bass Clef LP 111 angelic Midi Cascade, released today on UK-based imprint Slip, is somewhat special in the sprawling catalogue of the producer, trombone player and synth composer. It’s a departure from the sonic palette of his work as Bass Clef up to this point: A seemingly weightless and joyous goodbye to all of it.
It’s a beautiful record that seems to draw implicitly from the work of French philosopher Michel Serres, even though—apparently—it has not been a conscious influence at all. For Serres, the figure of the cascade as well as the notion of the angel as an archetype of a messenger have been central concepts for his groundbreaking media philosophy, connecting ancient scholastic thinking with the contemporary global space of information. Both of these terms pop up in the title of Cumbers’ new LP. But as it is the case with a lot of his work—and same goes for Serres’ neoplatonic dialogues and fables—there does not seem to be any conceptual overweight to any of it. It’s just a subtle, humorous, but nonetheless precise celebration of the volatile and fleeting (and thus, as Serres has proven, the angelic). Fascinated by this, we sent Ralph a handful of questions—and he was kind enough to take the time to answer them.
Ralph Cumbers: I hate repeating myself, so there’s always some kind of internal agenda or set of rules when I’m trying to make an album. I think in the past few years with the 12”s for Trilogy Tapes and Happy Skull I’ve made some of the most straightforward (for me) dancefloor tracks of my career. I’ve always loved rhythm and texture, those are the happiest areas of music for me to work in. I have a fear and dread of working with melody and harmony. So for this record I just decided to face those head on. There’s a handful of drum noises and a lot of rhythmic patters though, it’s not a drifty or drony record.
Six years is a long time, and my life has changed a lot. There have been probably five or six Bass Clef-albums made in those years but none have fully come to completion. Either me or nobody else wanted them to be released so they have ended up being fragmented or just abandoned. I think it’s a necessary part of the whole process. Or rather I have come to realize, not always happily. [Laughs]
When a project is finished or almost finished, I tend to send it out to probably three or four people maximum. They might be labels I think it would work on, or other musicians I really like, or some of a handful of close friends who I know will give me an honest opinion. If none of those people seems that infused about it then I will shelve the material.
MS: How did you become interested in clairaudience and mysticism? Would you consider yourself to be a spiritual/religious person?
RC: These are quite big questions I’m struggling to answer, especially succinctly. As a child I was really into ghosts and parapsychology. One of my stepdads left behind several tarot decks, which I used to play around with. One of the first books I remember buying for myself was an I Ching. My teenage friends and me spent a bunch of time hypnotizing each other and trying to astrally project.
Then I guess as an adult I was much more into science and quite anti-organized religion—including somehow an (ongoing) failing to be buddhist. Nowadays I’m something else that grows from all of those positions but is perhaps too much of a work in progress or thing in flux that I am not sure I could sum it up. I guess the shift towards focused thinking about those kinds of ideas more has been gradual for me—let’s say the last half decade or so—and is perhaps deeply tied into coping mechanisms for depression and anxiety. Trying to find ways to not be so trapped in the world of thoughts. Understanding that my experience of my life doesn’t just have to be listening to my thoughts go on and on endlessly.
The music I have repeatedly come back to over many years of my life is often (but not always) facing towards those concepts. I’m thinking of Eliane Radigue and Alice Coltrane in particular. Obviously I am nowhere near their levels, but it’s the most fascinating area of music for me at this point in my life.
A few years ago I read a lot of histories of alchemy, and learning that turning metals into gold was just a metaphor for improving your self and your soul, rather than the goal of the process kind of blew my mind. Eventually I read the angelic diaries of John Dee, which are a record of this prolific waterfall of information communicated to him during scrying sessions. They are just an absolute deluge of celestial hierarchies, a new language, number tables and complex systems of names and invocations.
At the same time I was thinking about how the most beautiful moments when playing a show or just playing an instrument, or recording a piece of music, are when you can sort of “get out of your own way” for long enough that all this music comes to you, and it doesn’t feel entirely like you made it. Somehow your inner critical voice just shuts up and you can collaborate with something inside you that is otherwise non-verbal and submerged.
So I kind of fudged those two lines of thought together in the back of my mind. It didn’t matter if I believed if John Dee really contacted angels or not, he had doubts but ultimately was totally convinced and committed to his process, and the writings and information that he got are just deranged and alien and often boring—but beautiful too.
MS: How does this relate to Midi as a technology/sound?
RC: I’m not sure actually. MIDI in this case was the medium in which I hoped and imagined that the clairaudient information would manifest. As opposed to Control Voltage or Automatic Writing or Visions In A Crystal Ball or what have you.
MS: The press release states quite unequivocally that “this is no ambient record.” Is there a particular reason behind this statement? Is the record supposed to be anti-ambient in some sort of way?
RC: I guess it’s a little bit defensive, and even a little paranoid, of a statement to include. [Smiles]
It wasn’t in my mind whilst making it, but when it was done and ready to go I could see that “album without drums” could very quickly be pigeonholed as “ambient album.” Why so keen to avoid that? I guess ambient (at the moment) is often shorthand for a particular kind of music, either a little nice and fluffy world but not fully committed to it’s own beauty, or a sort of dark and vague sludge with the kind of edgy posture of high art.
This album is really clearly not either of those things, for me—it’s propulsive, rhythmic—there are even things akin to drops. It’s supposed to be joyous and uplifting in the way dance music is (and other kinds of music that move your body and heart).
Bass Clef’s 111 angelic MIDI cascade is out on Slip today on tape and in digital formats.
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Cumbers was featured as Some Truths in zweikommasieben #8 (German only); get a copy here.