Review: Noise vs. Beauty- Bassnectar

Lorin Ashton, aka Bassnectar, has been releasing albums and a ridiculous amount of mixtapes for quite a while now, and finally seems to be getting some major exposure with the surge in popularity of electronic genres in the past few years. I myself was turned on to Bassnectar in college through his Timestretch EP and through his mixtape output, which blends some great hip hop, rock and metal into his eclectic production style, which includes elements of trap, brostep, and house. I have always thought something was missing from his sound, and with the release of his new album, Noise vs. Beauty, I think I may have put my finger on it.

This album is full of intense danceable tracks with plenty of bass drops and breaks for Bassheads. The problem I have found with this album is what I have found with the others; the sounds of the programming. Don't get me wrong, Ashton is a great producer, and his mixtapes are always amazing, but the sounds of the drums and synths sound a little prepackaged. The thing that I admire about Aphex Twin, and to a lesser extent Skrillex, is that they can program and tweek synthesizers and drum machines to produce radically innovative and off the wall sounds. No one can listen to Skrillex's belching bass tones or Aphex Twin's drum sounds or synths and say they aren't unique. The drum machines that are on a majority of Bassnectar's output are very similar, and are also quite similar with a lot of recent hip hop production. This is not to say that he doesn't do interesting things with these sounds, but there is a difference between working inside the box, and destroying the box entirely. This leads me to another whole problem I have been  having. Trap music, though popular, may be one of the most stagnant and least innovative sub-genres in electronic music. Lex Luger perfected trap beats, and stripping the raps off and adding little blippy synths is not particularly interesting or groundbreaking.

Now that that's out of the way, I feel like this album is pretty solid, but I think it does little for Ashton's growth as an artist, and though it will likely keep Bassheads happy, he may be retreading ground at this point. Say what you will about Deadmau5's latest project (I know I have), but it was definitely a direction towards some unknown territory. A solid effort, but I think Bassnectar can afford to mix it up and try out some new directions and tinker with some synth settings to produce some radically new sounds. Looking forward to see how he mixes these tracks into other. That Immersion Music tape was ridiculous.

Out of a total of five stars, I give this:

"Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use."