Name: Because
Member: Randy Bembrose (multi-instrumentalist)
From: Portland, OR
Label: Brian Noyes-Watkins, Plume Records

MUSIC

PRESS PHOTOS (credit: Shannon Wolf)

COVER ARTWORK

BIOGRAPHY
There are classics enough for a lifetime of listening and loving, with more releases coming out every year than there are ears to hear them. So why make a record? For Randy Bemrose, the brainchild of Plume Records’ latest release I Want To Be Your B, there are many answers, but ultimately, just one: Because.

Because there was time. If the skills he fostered over 5 years as a multi-instrumentalist, engineer, and producer with Radiation City made for a fertile field, then the band entering the studio in 2014 to record their third LP without him left it an empty one. Bereft of the tropes, trappings, muses and musings of the band, on I Want To Be Your B Bemrose found a renewed savor in speaking with a singular voice, and hearing it sound from his own throat.

Because there was space. Randy has owned his home (the greenhouse) in his native NE Portland for over 10 years now. Once a mainstay of the house show scene in the mid/late aughts, the basement venue was recently transformed into a project studio along with roommate and fellow producer Riley Geare. Over the course of the last three years, much of the signal chain of I Want To Be Your B was hand built or modded by Randy himself, from the c-12 picking up the bass amp, to the Neve clones pre-amplifying it, to the 1176 compressing it. Because grew out of this spirit of holistic craftsmanship, experimentation and testing.

Because in an art world where assimilation, aspirations and audiences have gone global, it’s become harder and harder to find things that aren’t for and by everyone. While influenced by sonic experimenters and classic songwriters alike, I Want To Be Your B showcases a sonic palette that was built quite literally from the ground up, for its own sake. The walls of the studio, to the hackintosh living at the heart of it; the tube condenser mic’ing the bass amp to the compressor taming it; much of the gear used on the album was custom built by Randy. It’s apparent that this spirit of hands-on craftsmanship is carried over into the music holistically, part and parcel of a new project that’s been a long time coming: I Want To Be Your B, available on LP/CD/Digital from Plume Records December 16th, 2016.