Tag: SUNY Purchase

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Los Angeles’ Bass Race Releases a Space-Age Take on Neo-Soul

Los Angeles-based indie pop act Bass Race — Steven Mertens and Laura Benack — features a highly accomplished duo: Mertens formed his first band Satan’s Rats when he was 13 with elementary school friends. That project led to two decades of tours and collaborations. After studying Studio Composition at SUNY Purchase, Mertens joined The Moldy Peaches in 2001 — and he eventually went on to direct videos for an eclectic array of artists including Regina Spektor, Lil Peep, Benee and Sheryl Crow. He has also collaborated with Blood Orange and Here We Go Magic. Benack, who started playing piano when she turned four comes from a deeply musical family: her grandfather was a bandleader, her mom is a vocalist and her father and brother are jazz musicians.

Mertens and Benack met in New York back in 2010. They started dating and immediately started a musical partnership, centered around their love of their craft — and of course, each other. With the help of friends and Benack’s brother on trumpet, they made a bunch of music videos, including for “Clowns Everywhere.” Determined to use every bit of their collective talents, they began combining their music with Mertens’ visual art in 2019 with Bass Race’s Instagram page, which fans have described as “magical” and “super amazing mega fantabulous.”

While the duo cites yacht rock, synth pop, jazz, funk and soul as influencing their sound and aesthetic, their latest single “Chasing the Sun” is a warm and easygoing retro-futuristic, neo-soul number featuring an infectious two-step inducing groove featuring twinkling Rhodes, shimming rhythm guitar, stuttering boom bap-like drumming, a sinuous bass line. Adding to the easy-going yet retro-futuristic vibes, Benack soulfully and suggestively sings lyrics full of playful space age double entendres and references.

“We were in Pittsburgh a couple years ago over Christmas to see my family and we visited our good friend Pete Mudge (Nice Rec) in his studio along with our friends Laura Herrmann and Blane Britt (GrandEar),” the duo recalls in press notes.”There was a snow storm, and it was freezing. Once we were inside, we started to warm up and Pete played us some beats he had been working on. When we heard the track that would soon become ‘Chasing the Sun,’ we all started smiling right away. The creativity started flowing and within a couple hours, I had recorded all the vocals and Steven laid down some guitars. The gray weather definitely inspired the song title, but the song lyrics detail the arduous process of overcoming writer’s block and chasing creative inspiration.”

The duo created a space-age visualizer that follows Benack and an amorphous, cosmic being traveling through space and time in a spaceship — and there’s the sense that our space traveling duo is grooving through the cosmos, as you might be while playing the song.

The duo’s latest album Tender Vittles is slated for a March 19, 2021 release.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Skyler Cocco is a Floral Park, NY-born, New York-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumetanlist, producer and model, who began writing songs as a child, and by the time Cocco was 11, she learned to operate the eight track recorder in her late father’s studio, how to program drums and then taught herself bass, guitar and piano to accompany her songs. Her career started in earnest as a a pop artist, writing hooks and collaborating with rappers as a cowriter, usually by writing hooks or producing beats but while studying studio composition at SUNY Purchase’s Music Conservatory, she further fleshed out her sound, eventually transitioning to a hard rock-leaning pop sound that’s largely influenced by Nirvana, Grimes, Soundgarden and others.

Cocco’s full-length debut Reverie was co-produced by Zach Miller and is slated for release sometime this year and from the album’s latest single “Some Nerve,” the up-and-coming, Floral Park, NY-born, New York-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and model specializes in the sort of anthemic and radio friendly hard rock — er, hard pop? — that’s reminiscent of Paramore, if they had decided to cover A Perfect Circle/Tool; and in fact similar to the work of Holy Wars, Cocco’s latest single, as well as the rest of the material on the album focuses on learning to live in the face of profound grief and heartache.