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Bass Extraordinaire: John von Seggern / Bruno Raberg / Christopher Hale

By Doug Collette
October 23, 2023
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In both its acoustic and electric form, the bass is too often overlooked in the context of musical performances both live and in studio. Yet it is this instrument that arguably confronts the greatest challenge of all in navigating arrangements and musicianship: specifically, to establish and maintain a middle ground of melody and rhythm that simultaneously serves the song, the chart and the players. Apart from a precious few high profile proponents of the instrument—

Charles Mingus

bass, acoustic
1922 - 1979

" data-original-title="" title="">Charles Mingus and

Jaco Pastorius

bass, electric
1951 - 1987

" data-original-title="" title="">Jaco Pastorius come to mind—its practitioners are likewise the unsung heroes of the ensemble(s) in which they are members. Yet the very courage that moves bassists to take up the instrument in the first place, then commit to it as their instrumental vocation, is exactly the same bravery that moves musicians such as

John von Seggern

bass
b.1968

" data-original-title="" title="">John von Seggern,

Bruno Raberg

bass, acoustic
b.1954

" data-original-title="" title="">Bruno Raberg and Christopher Hale to step forward and assume, the prominence they are so rightfully due.

John von Seggern
Ambient Bass Guitar
Self Produced
2023

A complete solo album, all recorded, produced, and engineered during 2022 and 2023 in von Seggern's home studio within the pool house of his residence in the San Fernando Valley, Ambient Bass Guitar is the logical culmination (at least to this point) of a career begun in 1991. Having taken himself to the Far East and across the United States, in collaboration with the disparate likes of

Reggie Workman

bass
b.1937

" data-original-title="" title="">Reggie Workman and

Jon Hassell

trumpet
b.1937

" data-original-title="" title="">Jon Hassell, the bassist / composer / engineer here adopts the latter's 'one take, no edits/overdubs' approach, utilizing the very software setup the bassist / composer / technologist created for the icon of ambience to create a dozen tracks that simultaneously exist in a space of their own and in a continuity that stretches the duration of the LP. From the opening "Unfolding" to the midpoint of "Mood," then on to "Aftermath," the human touch is redolent, the primary of three major components in play: the artist, his bass and his computer. Ebbing and flowing with life, the end effect of tracks like "Projections" is at once mesmerizing and enlivening and while the cumulative momentum of the cuts may be virtually imperceptible—as is Von Seggern's image in the blurry cover photo—it is nonetheless present: hearing this approximately forty-six minutes is altogether transportive.

Bruno Raberg
Solo Bass
OrbisMusic
2023

Raberg's discerning attention to detail is a virtue evident at the very outset of this near thirty-eight minutes. Plucking and strumming his double bass, the musician/composer/educator is at once precise and abandoned as he leverages a wealth of experience to focus his technical expertise on the contours of a most engrossing melody. Moving immediately to bow his instrument on the original composition "Kansala"—here a segue into

Miles Davis

trumpet
1926 - 1991

" data-original-title="" title="">Miles Davis' "Nardis"—the Swedish-born composer/performer further illustrates his versatility: his command of the bass matches that of his eclectic history. This fourteenth LP of his is thus a personal statement in which he proffers a varied program that features Ellington's co-authored "Prelude To A Kiss'' and the Gershwins' "My Man's Gone Now," alongside transpositions of the kora and the kalimba to his bass(es). Meanwhile, "Chennail Reminiscence" invokes the artist's time studying in India, suggesting these eleven tracks are also something of a guided global travelog. This erudite bassplayer's sense of self abides on the free improvisation of "Gyrating Sphere" and, as recorded by Raberg himself and subsequently mastered by Antonio Oliart, the sound captures all those musicianly niceties, subtleties that are further reflected in Yesim Tosuner's deceptively complex CD cover design.

Christopher Hale
Ritual Diamonds
Earshift Music
2023

Simultaneously a natural extension of the two bass-only endeavors and a logical companion piece to them, Ritual Diamonds posits multi-instrumentalist Christoper Hale in partnership with Korean drumming innovator Minyoung Woo as means to reimagine ritual drumming and contemporary jazz. It's only natural, then, that the first sounds are

Simon Barker

drums

" data-original-title="" title="">Simon Barker's percussion on "Flamenco," yet it's just split seconds before the languorous saxophone of Jamie Oehlers and

Andrea Keller

piano
b.1973

" data-original-title="" title="">Andrea Keller's crisp electric piano join the mix, the potency of an already heady blend further leavened with supple lines from the electric guitar of

Theo Carbo

guitar

" data-original-title="" title="">Theo Carbo wields. The fertile mood thus conjured deepens ever more with the equally disciplined, but nevertheless spacious arrangement for "Ch'il ch'ae (For Kim Juhong):" it is one of a set of slow motion, circular transitions that pervades of this roughly thirty-five minutes, wherein instruments arcane (changgo) and otherwise (trumpet) ebb and flow to imbue tracks like "Radio Mori" with gentle dynamism. The kinetics of this record are, in fact, the definition of understatement as rendered by the bevy of Australian players produced by Hale himself with mixing and mastering by Lachlan Carrick. Only with longer tracks—or perhaps an additional extended cut—could this album be more deeply hypnotic than it is.

Tracks and Personnel

Ambient Bass Guitar

Tracks: Unfolding; Adumbrations; Wanderers; Vision; Reflections; Projections; Mood; Attunement; Intonement; The Gate; Aftermath; Traces.

Personnel: John Von Seggern: bass guitar.

Look Inside

Tracks: Island Pathways; Kansala-Nardis; Chennai Reminiscence; Minor Excursion; Prelude to a Kiss; Gyrating Spheres; A Space in Between; June Poem; My Man's Gone Now; Ode to Spring; Stillness -Epilogue. Personnel: Bruno Raberg: acoustic bass, composition.

Ritual Diamonds

Tracks: Flamenco; Ch'ilch'ae (for Kim Juhong); Radio Mori;; Minor Diamonds; Topollim Sketches; Ritual Diamonds (for Kim Junghee). Personnel: Christopher Hale: bass guitar, baritone guitar, acoustic & electric guitars, kkwaenggwari, ching, percussion; Jamie Oehlers: tenor & alto saxophones; Theo Carbo: acoustic & electric guitars; Andrea Keller: Fender Rhodes, piano; Nadje Noordhuis (trumpet; Yaejee (Chloe) Kim: cymbals, percussion; Simon Barker: drums.

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