Miles Francis & Jas Walton - Basement Tape (2020)

“It’s somewhere between NSYNC and Steve Reich,” says drummer Miles Francis. “It’s like taking one element you would hear in a Talking Heads song, freezing it and elongating it, and then diving into that. Instead of just popping over to the next idea, we stay there and explore, savoring every little morsel of what a composition or what a song could be.”
Longtime friends and collaborators Miles Francis and Jas Walton – former members of Antibalas and founders of NY-based band EMEFE – started experimenting and making beats in Miles’ basement in the fall of 2015. Both are usually very meticulous when it comes to details and revisions, but these afternoons would “just be this initial burst over a few hours and we would do everything we could,” says Miles.

On August 7, 2020, Figure & Ground marks its tenth release with Basement Tape, an all-instrumental album comprising eight original tracks by Miles Francis and Jas Walton. The tape release features a handprinted J-card by Adrian Patino and a clear green cassette and includes a digital download of the single “Ruffing It.”

Jas describes: “our relationship has historically been to work with some kind of intention that is either afrobeat or EMEFE-related.” Walton was also playing saxophone with Leon Bridges, Father Figures and Sinkane among others at the time. “With this project, it’s totally free from baggage for me. That’s what feels so fresh about it. You can hear so much of the process in the actual product because there’s not a whole lot of other production stuff happening – it’s like, here are the elements of the ideas and here’s how we organize them, and just step back and listen.”

Basement Tape is a follow up to the duo’s first album Explorations in Drums & Sax (2016), also on Figure & Ground. “This is almost like a deconstruction of what went into our first record. This is where it starts – naked, in a way,” says Francis. This time, the tracks were mixed at home by Lily Wen, the head of the label.

“Miles and Jas have been a big part of my musical life,” says Lily. “I’m constantly inspired by what they make and how they play. Mixing this record, it was easy to just let everything come through naturally, as it was recorded and as it was being put down. I wanted to keep as much of that original energy as possible. The songs are so nuanced that all the production elements are already there – they do it in real time.”