Advance Base is the melancholic soft rock recording project of Chicago, IL singer/songwriter Owen Ashworth (formerly of Casiotone for the Painfully Alone). Using a two-handed arsenal of electric piano, Omnichord, samplers, effect pedals & drum machines, Ashworth builds minimalist, heavy-hearted, & nostalgia-obsessed ballads around his conversational baritone. The warm, electronic sound of Advance Base has been described as “lo-fi,” “depressed” & “weirdly uplifting.”
Animal Companionship, the third & most recent “studio” album by Advance Base, was released September 21, 2018 by Run For Cover Records / Orindal Records. GoldFlakePaint & Various Small Flames both listed Animal Companionship among their favorite albums of 2018. Since then, Advance Base has released Wall of Tears & Other-Songs I Didn’t Write, a home-recorded collection of (mostly) country/Americana covers arranged for electronic instruments & Live at Home, a collection of mid-quarantine livestream concert performances & the closest representation of an Advance Base live set commercially available. A new single titled ”Little Sable Point Lighthouse” was released on March 31, 2022.
“It’s with no exaggeration we describe Owen Ashworth as one of the most consistent and important songwriters in contemporary indie music. From the earliest Casiotone For the Painfully Alone demos to most recent Advance Base single ‘Little Sable Point Lighthouse‘, Owen has crafted a catalogue of characters and circumstances with few rivals in the modern era. His is an ever evolving body of work which stands out in its deftness and humility and empathy and care, bringing to life individuals from across the spectrum of human experience while remaining unerringly attuned to the tender, fallible heart at the centre of each.” – Various Small Flames
“A Raymond Carver short story collection set to music by a Joan of Arc-era OMD” – MOJO Magazine
Lessons is the new record from bobbie. This is their first release with Orindal Records. bobbie lives in Western Massachusetts, where they alchemize dream pop ethereality, twinkly ambient abstraction and intimate vocal clarity into their unmistakable sound.
Distorted Omnichord autoharp looping, layers of drone-y synthesizers and low, reverberating guitar crack open into a wide sonic landscape. bobbie architects this atmosphere then introduces rhythm (often just Omnichord pre-set drum beats but also live drums from Lessons engineer, Felix Walworth of Florist and Told Slant) and then adds the lyrical presence. The songs are deeply layered and spatial but with a clear vocal throughline. There is harmony and dimensionality to this assemblage.
bobbie evokes the ambient qualities of Enya, Brian Eno and Cocteau Twins as well as the pop-y poetic vibes of Dear Nora and Frankie Cosmos. Influences range widely from artists such as Laraaji, Beach House, Arthur Russell, Bill Callahan, Beverly-Glenn Copeland, Alice Coltrane, Astrud Gilberto, to projects like Plantasia and to recurring dreams + visions. When they wake up in the morning, bobbie often records themself dictating and attempting to make meaning of the previous night’s dream. Much of their album’s imagery comes from this practice.