Bass Works: As I Venture Into

Brown vinyl. « Bass Works: As I Venture Into » is the debut solo album by bassist Martina Berther. The Zurich-based artist has been exploring and expanding upon the sonic potentials of her instrument in her live practice for years. The twelve pieces draw on her improvisational approach, but were continuously refined as fully fleshed-out compositions that Berther recorded in one take, with no edits made or overdubs added afterwards. « Bass Works: As I Venture Into » hence serves as a lively snapshot of an on-going explorative process, collecting these pieces in one place to give them a space in which to unfold
Starting with the lush drones of the opener ‘6Chords’ to the crunchy rhythmic noise of ‘Wool’ and the almost elegiac closing track ‘Mini Gong’, the album sees Berther indeed venture into the untapped potentials of her instrument as well as into unknown territory herself: She travels through the strange limbo between the concrete and the abstract, the liveness of improvisation and compositional rigour, open-ended experimentation and a unique artistic vision
Berther is at home in many different musical words. Trained in jazz, she is a member of genre-bending bands such as Ester Poly and AUL, has worked as a live musician for Sophie Hunger and recently collaborated with Philipp Schlotter. Since 2017, she has been playing fully improvised live solo sets using pedals, preparations, and additional objects as well as unconventional playing techniques. “During rehearsals for the concerts and on stage, I discovered a plethora of new sounds”, explains Berther