“I think you should pour orange juice on Sting!”
Bass players are not competitive by nature, but the mere mention of the Police man’s yen for touting the wonders of Tantric sex has lit a fire under the artist/bassist known to the world only as HB3.
“To me, the most successful music written by bassists relies on the strength of the composition as a whole, not as a showcase for the instrument - and that includes super technical players like Stanley (Clarke) and Jaco (Pastorius). Anyone can be a hero on any instrument, if they know how to write for it. But that’s the key. Even the most amazing riffing grows quite boring. I’d like to think I’m brining a number of things to the table - but that’s for other people to decide.”
Most other people would be amazed to learn that no electric guitars (with the exception of one track) were used or killed in the making of Luminosity. HB3’s virtuoso command of the piccolo bass (an instrument which is an octave lower then the usual guitar and an octave higher than the traditional bass) run through a myriad of sound effects is the stuff of innovation not heard on the pop music scene in eons. It’s all HB3 on this record.
HB3’s humble beginnings as a recording artist can be traced to a weekly show on Live365’s Radio Enigma entitled “From The Laboratory.” In addition to his playing in such bands as Ack-Ack, Jirar, Soko, 3rd Story Blonde, Skippy’s Hot Heaven, and Nature, 3 was an “infrequently published” LA Weekly and Spin magazine writer and lays claim to being the “worst selling” author of fiction. A novel Avalon is due sometime in 2007.
Comparing HB3 to musical artists that predate him is useless. Analogies to Beck and Jane’s Addiction, which are included in the official HB3 press package, aren’t totally off the mark. However my ears detect homage to Frank Zappa, Primus, and Stax soul. “Turkish Delight” simultaneously parodies and revels in 1960s sexualized spirituality. “Bundewehr,” according to the artist, “adapts music from a 1970s German TV commercial and adds lyrics about an aging hippie accosted by inter-dimensional transsexuals.”
Dare we declare Luminosity genre-less? And can genre-less music become a genre unto itself?
“It already is” proclaims Mr. 3. “If someone’s got a compelling vision and communicates it - that’s all I’m interested in. And I want that to be idiosyncratic. On the other hand, I’m basically using traditional song structures: verses, choruses, bridge…the sensibility may be unique, but that’s how it should be. File it under alternative rock and forget about it? I mean, are there any music stores left to mis-file me?”
Now comes the tough part - rendering the songs live. HB3 has enlisted a talented ensemble aptly dubbed The Zegnotropic Rock Society. With keyboards copping some of the low register bass parts which tend to get muddy at high volume, along with a baritone guitar and HB3’s “vintage, drony, Hendrix-y tone” the artist promises that the gigs will be a high and low tech, aggressive, lush, and highly danceable affairs. “The sense of otherworldly ecstasy is really starting to come through!”
--Tom Semioli
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HB3’s Luminosity is available now on Zegnotropic Records.
http://www.hb3.com
