#basementscene

Our debut album Sistahs is out this Friday 30th November, and to celebrate Estella put together a guest mix for Basement Scene! Listen back and read more about her choices below!

1. Trash Kit - Medicine I love Trash Kit - their energy, the rhythms they use, their energetic live shows... they're such an exciting band. I can't wait to hear the new music they've been recording! 2. Charismatic Megafauna - Theresa May Charismatic Megafauna are a London 3-piece that deserve to be known everywhere. They play drums, percussion and synths (often having all 3 members on the drum kit at once) and make danceable political hits. They also pay attention to visuals during their live performances, often with costumes and projections, so they really put on a show. This track is from their brilliant album Semi-Regular, which was released this year and recorded by Mark Jasper from Witching Waves. 3. Screaming Toenail - Ad Nauseum Screaming Toenail are one of my favourite London bands! They describe themselves as "ANTI COLONIAL BELLIGERENT QUEER SCREAMING PUNK SASSY TOE NAILS." I love the smart and artful lyricism from Jacob V Joyce in this song, and their guitarist Niadzi's catchy verse riff. Screaming Toenail are currently recording an album with Margo Broom of Hermitage Works Studios, and from the little snippets I've heard it's going to be really special. Keep an eye out for it in 2019! 4. Solution Hours - Into the Sea Solution Hours are a really cool and relatively new 2-piece band from London. Their drummer and vocalist Charlotte uses spoken word and poetry techniques, whilst guitarist Andrew offers up subtle and discordant guitar work to form their unique sound. This year they released a great 4-track EP called Try Again (another one recorded by Mark!).

5. Child's Pose - Feral I'm really excited to have Child's Pose supporting Big Joanie at our London album launch in December. Their bio says they "deliver a refreshing take on pop informed post-punk" and I couldn't agree more - Iove the fun and spiky energy of this song. And if some of the band look familiar, it's because they feature members of Sauna Youth, Woolf, Nekra and Sarcasm. 6. No Home - Peach Seed I've seen No Home three times this year, and each time I'm in awe of their presence and power on stage. This is one of my favourite tracks from their Self Preservation EP. 7. CXR (Camp X-Ray) - Death to Women Haters I first met CXR at Thurston Moore's surprise 60th birthday party. They were calm and friendly, and gave no hint of the frenzied energy of their live shows. Big Joanie played 4 dates with CXR in October and this track was always a stand out for me. 8. Dubais and the Wolfs - Blowhard Dubais and the Wolfs played the UK in May this year, and consist of prolific artist Dubais (Nadia Buyse) and her fellow Wolfs: Allison Wolfe (Bratmobile), Steve Dore (Comet Gain) and Phillip Hucknall. Big Joanie were lucky enough to support them in London, and then Nadia and Allison paid a visit to Girls Rock Llove their poppy/bratty sound, and am chuffed to have Dubais supporting Big Joanie when we bring our album tour to Brighton this December!

9. Current Affairs - Breeding Feeling Current Affairs are another band I can't help but dance to - they are so fun live, and Joan's vocals are so powerful. This song is so urgent and catchy, and it's from last year's release Object. 10. Kapil Seshasayee - Caustic Wit Sticking with the Glasgow-based artists for now, here's Kapil Seshasayee. He performed at this year's Decolonise Fest (a London-based music festival run by punks of colour, for punks of colour), and his new album A Sacred Bore is a masterpiece. 11. MOLAR - Auslännerwalrecht I can't wait for the release of Molar's new record Straniero - I really like the immediacy of this track (which I'm pretty sure was called 'Luxembourg' in its early iterations) and vocalist Eilidh's sarcastic delivery. 12. NEKRA - Blood Nekra opened the first Decolonise Fest in 2017 with a short, blistering set of hardcore punk. 'Blood' is from their 5-track release Demo 2017, which in its entireity is less than 7 minutes long. The opening riff of this song gets me every time.

“I think this is it,” you say to yourself staring at a slightly discolored and largely neglected house that has just one small path leading to its backyard where you can hear music that sounds like a jumbled collage of sound rather than a well-coordinated concert.  But it certainly isn’t frat music, so this must be it.  You take that slightly odd path and eventually see a beat-up folding table where a person asks you for a 5-dollar donation.  Sometimes you can access the staircase right from the backyard and other times you have to go through the house.  Did you wear your nice shoes?  That was a mistake.  Well, it’s too late now, anyways, so you eventually find your way to the basement steps and start to descend them making sure to hold onto the sticky railing or paint splattered walls in the hopes that you don’t lose your balance and tumble down.

As all this is happening, the music is becoming a lot louder, and you can hear the joyous hubbub of voices laughing, fake singing, and engaging in conversation, but your main attention is on the setting itself.  The common items, cheap Christmas lights strung carelessly throughout the space, odd carpets barely hanging up from the walls, and a completely tattered washing and drying machine make up some of the most necessary elements.  This will be your new home, welcome to the New Brunswick basement show scene.

Reflecting on my time exploring the scene, I have a mixture of fond memories and surprisingly enjoyable performances with an almost equal amount of self-conscious reflection amounting to something like “why the hell am I even here?”.  But, of course, that is all very subjective.  The one thing that unites all basement show fans is the sense of resolve they find in a nightlife environment that doesn’t just revolve around kegs of Keystone Light and some of the worst music you’ve ever heard in your life being played louder than you’d ever think necessary.  In opposition to Rutgers’ somewhat dreaded fraternity scene stands the humble, self-hosted basement scene; a place that accepts people how they are and doesn’t really promise much but can still offer a lot.  

I believe it isn’t truly possible to convey a sense of what these shows are like without experiencing them for yourself.  I’ve attended concerts for about a year-and-a-half (abruptly ended by covid) that left me truly puzzled, and others that were inspiring and made me want to dance and bop my head without any apprehension at all.  I’ve been to rap concerts, head-banging metal shows, dance-music filled club atmospheres and, of course, the indie-rock shows that seem to be the most common denominator between such a wide and varied selection of music.  Some of these shows combine different genres, too, and frankly I’ve never known what to expect half the time until I’m actually there.  I’ve seen rappers completely fudge through songs they’ve written themselves, bands that couldn’t quite figure out what key their song is supposed to be in, and other artists who start getting stage fright and seem like they just can’t wait for their set to end.  But that’s the whole point of these shows, everyone playing and performing is exactly like you: a little lost, a little uncertain and just desperately trying to find their voice and identity at a school that seems so large and overwhelming at times that it can really make you feel forgotten about.

This article posted in NJ.com provides a counter view to my skepticism and gives a far more optimistic approach, with the headline telling you basically everything you need to know “A sweaty New Brunswick basement just hosted the best N.J. concert of 2017”.  Frankly, I find that hard to believe.  I’m sure it was a great show, but I’ve seen one of the bands perform multiple times and I do recall them being quite good, but to say that it was the best show in the entire state especially considering how many professionally-set-up venues there are throughout a historically music-rich state, this is an extremely bold claim.  Still, I think this kind of article gives you an idea of why they can be so lovable.  It’s not necessarily the performances, it’s certainly not the venue itself, but it’s the kind of energy and feeling that basement shows give you that are truly unique and can, at their best, make you feel like you are at something remarkably special for a few hours.

https://www.nj.com/entertainment/music/2017/03/scenes_from_a_new_brunswick_basement_show_where_nj.html

To understand this scene, you don’t need to understand the aesthetics of the music and the quality of the performances.  They vary too widely to say anything with consistency.  To me, these basement shows are special because of the sense of community and belonging that can be such a difficult thing to find at a school so big and frankly unyielding toward students who don’t feel comfortable being a drink away from blacking out and making horrible decisions.  Basement shows gave me a necessary alternative.  When my other friends had ‘better’ and ‘cooler’ things to do on the weekend, I knew I could find a show to go to where I could feel like I was a part of Rutgers and wasn’t just sitting in my dorm regretting my life decisions.  I’m not sure if many other students there share that sentiment, and a lot of the time I made the journey to these shows on my own which certainly changes the way one interacts in a crowd, but I always had the feeling that these shows gave those that had a hard time finding their place at Rutgers an opportunity to feel accepted and be a part of something.

Images:

https://raritanriverreview.wordpress.com/2014/12/19/the-underground-sound-new-brunswicks-basement-music-scene/