D4VE was the third album in the DAVE series (wrap your head around that one, fucko). This one took me the longest to finish, around 5 months of work, but I think that is due to me putting all of my creative ideas into DAVE 3, and being busy with other stuff. And depression.
All Hail the Time Cube!
This song started out as two different songs, one called All Hail The Time Cube and one called Agamemnon Counterpart. This song was one of the first songs to be completely finished, but then I redid the bass a few days before the release of the album.
Despair Code
I don’t have much to say about this song that wasn’t already said above. This song is very fun to play on bass. Yeah.
Warm Ketchup on a Sunday Evening
One of my favorites to play, and was sort of a sign that I would be transitioning into more odd beats and harder basslines. The bassline is played with only downstrokes, and if I remember correctly, was recorded with my amp in the bathroom, while my brother sat in the other room waiting on me to finish so we could play Call of Duty. The name was suggested by Alaina.
Sphinx’s Riddle
This was the first song I recorded with my new bass. The original title of this was Mantua, and I got that name from a local band that I follow. Their account got hacked and started posting fake giveaways, so I spent an hour gaslighting and wasting the time of the hacker behind the account. Eventually I got bored, so I sent him vore and said it was my PayPal login, and after that he deleted the account. Then one night, Sam told me to change the name to Sphinx’s Riddle, and I liked that more, so I changed it.
Fighting Kangaroos
I don’t have much to say about this one, other than this is the second song I have made where I double tracked the bass. Also, this was originally called Fizzle Crew, and was played with the distortion turned all the way up on the demo version.
Empire State
The bassline on this one is actually the old Coastal bassline, just better and without a guitar over it making it sound bad.
Tomb of the Noid
This was originally called Tomb of the Mutilated, courtesy of Teddy, but my mom listened to it and she thought of the old Domino’s mascot the Noid, and I combined the two. Probably my absolute favorite song on the album, I achieved the pattern on drums by moving my high tom and cymbal over to my right side. The bass was just me using my entire hand to hit the E and A strings, and I had a bruise on my hand where it had hit the bass from doing it so much. The drums were all done in about two tries, while the bass took only a few more.
Solitaire
This one was originally called I Stayed Up All Night Playing Solitaire, based on a real story from my life, but I figured it was too long. This one started as only the last part, and underwent the most amount of changes ever for any DAVE song. I believe there are 4 separate recordings of this song, each with a different intro. One of them had a minute of me just messing around with the distortion on, an homage to Cables by Big Black. The song itself, or at least the last half, is an homage to the song Texas by Big Black, off of the same album.
Soundcloud Overture
I had been meaning to remake a lot of my old soundcloud songs, and I still might, but I had the idea to make this song while I was in the shower. After I took the shower, I wrote down the outline for the song on my way to Target. I recorded guitar that night, but it sounded horrible, so I had to finish recording all of the instruments (bass, two guitars, and drums) and mix the song all only a few hours before it was released. I think it turned out good, and being the lone song with primarily guitar on it, I think it was a nice change of pace from the rest of the album, a good closer, and a nice sendoff to my old soundcloud material.
ORIGINAL OUTLINE FOR SOUNDCLOUD OVERTURE:
SoundCloud overture: A song chronicling my shit music on SoundCloud
Open with the voice clip from help.wav
Go into Speedage
Slide down on guitar
On last note, play the beginning note of waking up the neighborhood
Go into new year, new me (slow part)
Gradually get faster
After like twice through the fast slow part, go into the actual song
Do two hits after a little bit
Slide down on guitar and drop out for the beginning of going postal
Go to Going postal
During the last part, have another guitar playing Coastal slowly fade in as the other instruments fade out
End abruptly
RICH GUNS
This is a cover of a NoMeansNo song, with the singing done by Sam. The bass part took a collective two and a half hours to get relatively good, while the drums took three takes. Also, it is the first DAVE song with a no-no word in it.
FUN (?) FACTS (?)
- Brennan was originally going to have a part on D4VE, but he never sent me one, so I never added it
- The back cover was one of three that I had chosen, but I liked it the best so I chose it.
- Originally I wanted to have two separate EPs release, with one on Christmas, and the other on New Years. One of them was going to be an EP with the song titles being references to weird or obscure internet things. The only other song with a title referencing something on the internet was the Despair Code. It was to be entitled GGGQ EP, a reference to the gadolinium gallium garnet quantum electronic processor copypasta, but I just decided to make it a DAVE album instead
- The album was released at 4:20 on February 14th, 2022, as real BasementDwellers fans do not have partners, and can put their full attention into listening to D4VE
- The address listed as the place where the album was recorded is the same address listed on the back of Spiderland by Slint
- “The CMike”, who is listed as playing guitar, refers to Colin (from Matchhead), who provided the little snippet of Never Meant in Tomb of the Noid
- “Roland”, who is listed as playing drums, is a reference to Big Black, as they always credited the drum machine they used on their albums as Roland. Can you tell they had a lot of influence on me?
- “Joe”, who is listed as doing the vocals, can either refer to Joe Mama or Joe P
- The song Agamemnon Counterpart has a sample from a video of the same name (the part where the guy is screaming in the background).
- This is the first publicly available version of any of Sam’s songs
- The front cover was taken at Ben Webster’s house, where Sam is talking on a phone that Ben modified to plug into an amp, with a suit jacket and nice pants on. He is also wearing a shirt that has Garfield on it, which reads “When I die I may not go to Heaven, I don’t know if they let cowboys in.”
- The back cover was taken at Sam’s house, while I was recording bass for a song called “Never on Time”.
- The description of the video, specifically the “Recorded in collaboration with Sam Parker, famous yodeler man from Matt Chead. His solo album, Yodel Rink, is coming out 4/1/22, look for it on holotape” part was put there because I thought it was funny, and the holotape part is a reference to Fallout: New Vegas
- This is the first time any sort of musical release has been put on my YouTube channel only, and not my Bandcamp
I had the idea to post a single to YouTube after I made the Rich Guns cover with Sam, as I wanted people to listen to it. I needed a second song to put on there for it to be a real single though, so I recorded some stuff when Sam came over to work on playing DAVE songs live.
I’m not going to talk about the Rich Guns cover again because I did above.
Goosebumps
Also known as Loose Dumps, this was recorded in my basement. It is one of my favorites off of Sam’s currently unreleased album. This came from a session where we were playing a couple songs off of that album that I knew. I debated putting a DAVE song on instead, but I decided against it.
