IMFmag

IMFmag was able to catch up with Lorin Ashton, known better by his moniker, Bassnectar, for a interview hours before his massive set at the inaugural Electric Daisy Carnival New York. We chatted about his early start in music, his preparation and production for each show, his latest album and tour and much much more. Special thanks to Chris and Carlos for setting up the interview!

IMFmag: Besides Metallica and Nirvana, who else would you say has influenced you?

Bassnectar: I’m influenced by the heavily emotional rock music like The Cure, or REM. I would also include Metallic and Nirvana in that. I’m really influenced by the genres or black metal and death metal. That was kind of like my high school days where I wanted to turn up that heavy rock influence a little bit more intense and then when I was 18 or 19 I started finding earlier, experimental rave music like acid techno and weird kinds of electronic jazz, trip-hop and house music and all that kind of stuff. It’s basically been an avalanche from there, every year finding new sounds and new artists. I’m not really interested in genres, I’ve had my short runs with certain genres where that’s all I want to listen too but now I just fucking love everything.

IMFmag: How old were you when you first started producing music?

Bassnectar: I was 12 or 13 when I started learning guitar and I was in death metal bands when I was in high school. We got pretty creative pretty early on, basically when I started smoking pot. We had little primitive four tracks, so we would record our own death metal demo tapes but I had a guitar effect processors for my guitar and there was a death metal show on the college radio station when I was 16 or 17 and it was on hella late at night and afterwords there was a techno show. I would set my tape before I went to bed so the tapes would be recording the death metal show and then bleed over into the techno show. So I just started listening to these weird sounds and trying emulate them with my guitar effects processor and get a mic to give myself a beat and just fuck around. It was a pretty emporhis exploration period, it wasn’t like a specific date that I started. When I got to college I took the program in electronic music and I’ve been full-time producing since 95 or 96.

Hit the jump to read the rest of our interview with Bassnectar!

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