MELISSA AUF DER MAUR TO RELEASE “BASS WOMB ROOM”

Melissa Auf Der Maur will release BASS WOMB ROOM: My ’90s 4-Track Demos x Field Recordings on September 4 through Envision Records. Available digitally and as a limited edition cassette, the album marks her first release in over 15 years and features never-before-heard demos and interludes written, recorded and self-mixed by Auf der Maur in the 1990s.

Created in her living room home studio on her trusted Tascam 4-track, the songs were often anchored by acoustic guitar and layered with vocals, bass, a vintage Ross phaser guitar pedal and a cheap keyboard. Auf der Maur also experimented with lo-fi recording techniques such as flipping cassettes backwards and pitch shifting, while incorporating field recordings of mundane, everyday sounds captured on the pocket-sized cassette dictaphone she carried alongside her camera.

The lyrics emerged from streams of consciousness and direct readings from the diary in which she wrote every day, reflecting on blistered fingers, desire and the moon landing. Recorded at home in Los Angeles during her years with Hole, the demos reveal a very different side of the music Auf der Maur was making at the time. There has been no modern intervention in these recordings beyond mastering, preserving the sound, process and experimentation of the original sessions.

“I wrote these songs in the context of rising pressure from the major label-driven music industry on myself and my peers to make glossy hit songs to dominate radio airwaves,” says Auf der Maur. “These songs are the sound of my internal experimentation and a way of keeping the Montreal art girl alive inside. These sounds are the quiet and private side of the girl who joined the big American major label rock band.”