Midweek Mantra Mix 004: Let Bassnectar take you all the way back to 2004’s ‘Divergent Systems of Throb’

Wednesday is humpday, which not only marks the halfway point between the work week and the coveted weekend, but also Conscious Electronic’s Midweek Mantra Mix (M3). We’ve been scouring the web’s most enlightening bass music mixes that align with our vision, to provide “a conscious way to consume dance music.” M3 spotlights both veteran and up-and-coming bass music artists whose music seeks to raise the vibrations of their collective listener base.

The word ‘Bassnectar’ was the name I chose for my ‘band’ … it was (and is) my art project. It was not (and is not) the name of a human. It’s the moniker I chose to name the music and art I was creating.” — Lorin Ashton

What better way to celebrate Bassnectar‘s inaugural Deja Voom Festival, which took place this past weekend, than nodding back to his earlier catalogue. Coming as the third M3 transmission is Bassnectar’s 2004 mixtape, Diverse Systems of Throb (DSOT), an hour-and-a-long album compilation of one of his most spiritually-attuned and overtly-political albums.

A few years back, Bassnectar celebrated the 10 year anniversary of his DSOT album. But before DSOT was an album, it was a mixtape with “over 15 tracks of all styles, speeds, genres, and attitudes, and was woven together with vocal samples from innovative thinkers and activists like Noam Chomsky, Mumia Abu Jamal, Fred Hampton Sr, Michael Rupert, [and more]” according to Bassnectar in a blog post.

As Ashton began to grow his Bassnectar catalogue, he very soon realized his mixtapes were essentially becoming albums, with tons of originals from across all electronic genres. Bassnectar continues,

“As songs and ideas began to develop, and my informal DJ mixes (mixtapes) grew exponentially more customized, I started realizing I was actually writing albums, not mixes. There was no record label who understood the ‘genres’ I was making (perhaps because I named the genre ‘omni-tempo maximalism’ which meant basically ‘I can do anything I want, and there are no musical rules’)…”

The album features songs that have become classics in the Bassnectar imaginary, including the call-to-arms “Intro” track featuring revolutionary theorist Noam Chomsky, “Laughter Crescendo,”  “Inspire The Empathetic,” and “Dubuasca,” which was written by SCI member, Michael Kang, and later performed live between the two at Electric Forest 2015. It’s a defining album that certainly deserves another listen…and then another and another.