Beneath the pastoral hills, the drooping trees, the ever so slightly side winding roads of Bronxville, there is a sound. It is comprised of a deep throbbing sonic blast, complimented by bursts of treble, shards of 808-Kick-drum hits, virulent synthesizer rave noises that are both terrifying and hilarious, and basslines that make you think somewhere, Kraftwerk has learned how to bump and grind. However, while all this helps steal your attention from the scenic drive that is Westchester, it is the melodies that peek out, and then monopolize, this cosmic blend of dance music; this is where local product Blacklite hits his significantly growing pay dirt. You don’t just move your ass to Blacklite music…you listen, and you become another hapless victim to the endless blevy of hooks, catchy counter-point rhythm lines, jauntily marching electronic drums, and sudden stimulating sweeps, bleeps, and creeps. After that, you look up, and you see one solitary man standing behind what seems like hundreds of wires, weird boxes with flashing Christmas lights, tiny dials and switches, and nary an instrument on stage, making all that wonderful noise…dressed to kill, no less.

Novation

Travis Basso, the alter ego of Blacklite, swapped out his copy of Blues for Allah for Paul Oakenfold discs early in his college days, and realized fairly quickly that dance music was going to be his outlet for musical exploration. Utilizing samplers, drum machines, and any post-apocalyptic piece of musical equipment he can lay his hands on, Blacklite produces all his tracks live on stage, and often it can sound like he’s either a relative of an octopus, or a fantastic juggler. He’s been playing gigs around the Westchester area for years, including several music festivals at Concordia College, where Basso has co-headlined. His shows often combine the best of thumping house DJ sets, with a analog style that more reflects classic electronic music of the late 70’s. Beyond that, however, his knack for counter-point often offers a resemblance to ambient and IDM musicians, even stretching to Steven Reich -like moments on stage, when the breadth of swirling melodic synth lines forms like a crystalline spider web over the drum and bass.

Blacklite pieces together simplistic rhythm tracks that can sometimes sound like the best segments of Mega Man or Contra, but it’s always the attention to writing songs within his confined set up that grabs your concentration. It’s always interesting to learn how an individual crafts his compositions, and in a case like the solo Blacklite, this methodology is especially exciting. I got a chance to ask some unbelievably abstract questions to Blacklite, and he answered the Listening Room like a champ…

Listening Room: What made you decide to push all those different flashing buttons and knobs?

Travis Basso: Well, since I was in high school I wanted to make music (like many teenage boys) and I played guitar but it was in freshman year of college that I was introduced to dance music (Oakenfold/Van Dyke) and jam-band’s that are dance oriented (New Deal/Disco Biscuits) and from there I knew I wanted to make dance music. But I didn’t know how. I tried to study the music with my ears but I could not make the music with my acoustic guitar. For my next birthday my mom said she would buy me some sort of musical equipment and while I was looking at synths and such she pointed to the Korg Electribe AmkII Analogue Modeling Synthesizer (God bless her heart) and it was perfect. About a year later I had a girlfriend who bought me the Electribe EMX1 and the rest is Blacklite. What I liked most about the electribes is that I am not a trained keyboardist (I can barely play piano) but with the electribes I don’t need to be a professional performer (per se) rather I become a professional producer and engineer. Live, I am more of an engineer, deciding when to bring stuff in and out and how is should all sound and weave.

LR: Do you dream about Kraftwerk?

TB: Of course I do! I couldn’t do what I do if I didn’t know where it all came from. It didn’t happen at first but eventually I learned to love disco (did you know there is really good disco out there?!) which gave birth to House music. Most people would never even know I grew up on Grateful Dead and my whole family is Dead-heads. That is why I wanted to do what I do; just plain DJ’ing never seemed free enough…what if the floor is really moving and I want to drop it back into the chorus one more time? Sure a good DJ could probably do it but I wanted the freedom of being able to play the same song a dozen different ways! Well this past summer I played at this amazing festival called “Cabinfest” in Andes NY and it was there that I was properly exposed to real amazing cutting-edge House music as well as DJ’s and people who took music as serious as I do. After that I bombarded myself with Electro-House in order to make that sound. Alongside that I grew to appreciate and enjoy 80’s music a lot more (because a lot of electro-house is coming from 80’s sounds and bands). So right now on my Ipod I have almost only DJ sets that I got free offline: DJ Strex, DJ Mark Starr, DJ Joey Seminara, DJ Peter Worth, DJ Anna Kiss, The Digitalist, DJ Mohammad Ragab, DJ Robonitronicus, Deadmau5, Chromeo, and Armand Van Helden.

LR: Give us a step-by-step explanation of how you write and produce a track that you end up preforming live..

TB: It is a process. I never have a preconceived “song” in my head. Sure throughout the day I get ideas and inspirations and every time I listen to music I make mental notes of things I notice or decipher that I would like to try or experiment with. All those things float around in my head but I never sit down thinking “ok so the bass comes in like this and the synths start…” A lot of people thinking that being in some altered state is going to help too. No way. Sure, House music was born with LSD and everybody knows rave music is married to “E” but neither of those are going to help you make dance music. The rule of thumb is that being on any drug to try and help the creative process will only result in one of two things: either spending a tremendous amount of time on nothing (“whoa I just spent an hour on my kick drum sound, and it still sucks!”).

I start with the drums – the standard 4-to-the-floor – get the timbres sounding unique but all gelling together. Then I will add some hi-hat flare and if I can hear a good rhythm I might add some more very unique sounding percussion timbres but sometimes, I add them later as the song develops and I can hear what it needs. Sometimes, though, a fairly standard 4-to-the-floor is enough. After that comes the bass synth. I decide what key (roughly) I want the song to be in; many times I write in C because the physical keyboard (digitally I can shift through about 8 octaves) on my Electribe is about one octave going from A to an octave higher C so the C scale just fits perfectly, so I try to stray from that. Then I just play the drums and experiment with playing different bass lines and once I have something interesting I go back and edit in all the style and flair like making one part of the bass slide up or putting in a trill or some sort of effects automation. Then I let that loop and play while I play an interesting synth part using a similar concept of real time playing then going back and adding the flair. Once that is done I have the main foundation of the song. Lately I have been working on more refined songs that rely more on the performance aspect of slowly building and breaking down and building the song to move the song along instead of a series of different “sections”. Also something I am trying to do more often is write all the synth parts without defining the timbre first. That way you can hear whether or not the parts are gelling or fighting each other and then you can begin to define and sculpt the timbres. This was a little more general than specific but is exactly how I wrote “Novation” (see above).

LR: Your shows have a visual element as well; you sometimes will show old newsreel footage of WWII era events, and your self-made art often dresses the stage while you preform. What’s the connection between your music and your art?

TB: Living in this post-modern world everything is characterized by dislocation/disconnection, absurdity, abstraction: we view a war in our living rooms, we meet people around the world at our desk, our idols are people pretending to be someone else in completely impossible situation which we believe to be more real than our own lives; we think “reality” is a television show. This becomes a thread through everything and my art exists to explore this. My painting process is such that I never “touch” the canvas – I pour paint on it, blow on the paint, spray it with wine – I create expressions of emotions and moods and atmosphere and “scapes” all in an attempt to explore the feelings and sentiments of our post-modern society. My music is made primarily through inorganic methods (synthesizers, drums machines) using abstract sounds and absurd sounds all blended together to make people dance; which in essence capitalizes on the contemporary notion of entitlement to gratification. Music is a linear art – it has a beginning, middle, and end as well as a conceivable progression whereas Art exists in the moment it doesn’t begin or end nor is there a perceivable progression – but through the use of film one can capture the process of art and mirror it alongside of music thus weaving the two together to work off of each other was well as with each other. All of this serves the purpose to explore myself and our current human condition as well as to express myself and my thoughts on our 21^st century human condition.

LR: If you could have all the people in the country dancing to your music, would you use your power for good or evil?

TB: Excellent question. It depends on how you look at it. To me I would use my power for good by making people dance 24/7. They could still go to work and such but electro-house would be played all the time everywhere, every day, every second. I would have people dancing at work 24/7 with people taking shifts to keep it all going. I myself would be torn between wanting to only dance and wanting to make my music and perform it. And yes, I would dance harder and longer than anybody (I already do).

BLACKLITE is preforming in Greenpoint, Brooklyn this Saturday (January 24th) at RedStar Bar, at 7pm. You can check out more from the mind of Blacklite, including more free music, here: http://blacklitemusic.wordpress.com/2008/12/30/dance-city/