Bass Communion
Litany (EP)

When people wake up in the morning, many wear a mask. This allows them to be accepted by others and express themselves without showing their true nature, perhaps due to fear of being mocked for their ideas, perhaps out of terror of taking risks, or maybe, simply, for convenience.

The same happens in music: over the years, a band gets categorized, regardless of genre, and the group's releases are confined to a specific category, where genre enthusiasts buy blindly. In short: it's preferred to tread the old path rather than forge new ones, and changes will usually be brief deviations and not explorations of unknown worlds.

We show ourselves as people want to see us, not as we truly are.

But, in reality as in music, there are spaces where a person can retreat when the mask they wear has become almost suffocating and, by discarding it, they can say: "Here, this is me". Bass Communion is the electronic/ambient/drone (entirely instrumental) music project of Steven Wilson, leader of the Porcupine Tree.

The side-project, born in 1998, but always part of Wilson's nature (see the track "Light Mass Prayers" contained in "Signify"), quickly became the secret oasis of the English sprite, where he can drink from the source of creativity without reservations, without thinking about contracts, sales, and constraints often imposed by the genre of the primary band. A place where our Steven has often taken refuge over the years (with 25 albums, EPs, and collaborations) to escape the pressures—or the routine of only publishing certain sounds.

Here, in contrast with Porcupine Tree, the watercolors used have hues of various colors (though often black dominates), but what emerges is a musician expressing himself in total artistic freedom. The record in question ("Litany") is a short EP, released in 2009, which contains only one musical track divided into two parts with a total duration of 23 minutes. The music presented here is well described by the cover: a sad and desolate landscape, dominated by a grey and cold sky, while in the distance you hear the celestial but melancholic song of female voices: new sirens attempting to charm the intrepid sailors of this sea of sadness. An "nocturnal" album, to be listened to with headphones under the covers of one's bed, perhaps while a cold wind blows outside.

A side-project that will surprise lovers of the latest Porcupine Tree, who will struggle to recognize Wilson behind this music but which shows us a (dark) side of the English musician sometimes kept hidden. If progressive is born for the mind, this is music for the senses: close your eyes, silence the world around you, and be transported into a new one.

Worth trying.