Miles Francis & Jas Walton - Basement Tape
Miles Francis & Jas Walton - Basement Tape
- available August 7
- clear green tape edition
- only 100 copies made
- feat. handprinted J-card by Adrian Patino at Barrio Print
“It’s somewhere between NSYNC and Steve Reich,” says drummer Miles Francis. “It’s like taking one element you would hear in a Talking Heads song, freezing it and elongating it, and then diving into that. Instead of just popping over to the next idea, we stay there and explore, savoring every little morsel of what a composition or what a song could be.”
Longtime friends and collaborators Miles Francis and Jas Walton – former members of Antibalas and founders of NY-based band EMEFE – started experimenting and making beats in Miles’ basement in the fall of 2015. Both are usually very meticulous when it comes to details and revisions, but these afternoons would “just be this initial burst over a few hours and we would do everything we could,” says Miles.
On August 7, 2020, Figure & Ground marks its tenth release with Basement Tape, an all-instrumental album comprising eight original tracks by Miles Francis and Jas Walton. The tape release features a handprinted J-card by Adrian Patino and a clear green cassette and includes a digital download of the single “Ruffing It.”
Jas describes: “our relationship has historically been to work with some kind of intention that is either afrobeat or EMEFE-related.” Walton was also playing saxophone with Leon Bridges, Father Figures and Sinkane among others at the time. “With this project, it’s totally free from baggage for me. That’s what feels so fresh about it. You can hear so much of the process in the actual product because there’s not a whole lot of other production stuff happening – it’s like, here are the elements of the ideas and here’s how we organize them, and just step back and listen.”
Basement Tape is a follow up to the duo’s first album Explorations in Drums & Sax (2016), also on Figure & Ground. “This is almost like a deconstruction of what went into our first record. This is where it starts – naked, in a way,” says Francis. This time, the tracks were mixed at home by Lily Wen, the head of the label.
“Miles and Jas have been a big part of my musical life,” says Lily. “I’m constantly inspired by what they make and how they play. Mixing this record, it was easy to just let everything come through naturally, as it was recorded and as it was being put down. I wanted to keep as much of that original energy as possible. The songs are so nuanced that all the production elements are already there – they do it in real time.”
Francis says, “I think about every part of a beat like it’s its own little hook.” Francis is a protege of Tony Allen, legendary afrobeat drummer who recently passed away. “When Tony plays, every one of his limbs was its own world in and of itself, yet they all worked together. So, when I sit down to make a beat, I try to remember that there’s composition in every layer – everything is its own little undulating force.” Walton adds, “the Dawn of Midi-trance thing is also one of the elements of music that Miles and I both have separately but in parallel really embraced as one of the most important generators of gravity in a piece of music.”
As well as what was seeping in influence-wise from their various rehearsals and gigs around the city, Francis says, “we were really into comedic improv back then, like UCB stuff and the concept of ‘yes and.’ Taking an idea and adding to it instead of denying it. That’s definitely a big part of how we both would approach composing in the studio when we would make these together. It’s important to hold on to – that openness to ideas and rolling with something and not overthinking it. There’s a specific book called ‘Truth in Comedy’ that Stuart Bogie showed me early on – and we both have to acknowledge Stuart – at that time and in the years before that, he was definitely an influence on both of us. ”
