Basement State is an up and coming music collective with a heavy focus on modular synthesis and live performance. We at Modbang love what they are doing, so we caught up with Basement State to get the low-down on the thriving collective.
“Basement State is a Seattle-based collective, a small community and a weekly event where musicians try out new ideas for an open minded crowd. Every Friday night we go live at https://twitch.tv/basementstate to jam together and recreate some house show vibes on the internet. It’s an open, inclusive and friendly basement for all.
In its current form we have eight resident artists who play regularly and bring in guests. The rules for who we invite are simple: we’re excited about hanging out with them and they must perform live. That’s it. The lineups swing from noise to ambient and melodic acoustic to techno bangers – we like to surprise, welcome new performers, and embrace technical difficulties.
In early 2020, we just wanted to meet in a friends’ basement and make neighbor-bothering noise together. However, we were also feeling sensible and lockdown-respecting, so we got on a video call instead. Of course that’s nothing like a live show, but even a tiny audience of a few friends was enough to push us to create new tracks every week.
Soon we moved to Twitch and added a few more friends. We keep things low key and no-pressure, but there’s often a sense of trying to one-up the last set you played. Gradually we started to invite guests in each week and structure things under the name Basement State.
The best moments are when artists can try out ideas they wouldn’t usually take to a more formal show. Broadcasting to a friendly audience from your own studio is the perfect place to take a risk and find those moments that surprise yourself and viewers.
Live visuals are a growing part of the night that we’ll keep pushing on – we’re planning some live movie scores soon. We’re also hoping to do some collaborative jams in 2021 and of course we can’t wait to bring this to Seattle venues. However, having a relaxed space to perform remotely is proving to be much more than just a stand-in for IRL shows, so we’re excited to keep experimenting and making noise there too.” -Basement State
