Bass Solo The Vagabond Prince 2016

With the bass player in the band it's always one of those things. In the rock 'n' roll hierarchy, both singer and guitarist are at the top, the drummer sits in the middle and bassists are more like the red lantern, although they are often favourite musicians for many fans. If they swing their instruments groovily and with a strong sense of rhythm, you can say: "Bassplayers build the house, the other players live in"! You won't hear a good bass player, he orientates himself on the basic tones, sets the heartbeat with his low frequencies and becomes the connecting element between harmony and rhythm, without which a good song would simply fall apart. Virtuosity is reserved for the guitarist. At least that's what I thought until I heard the 4-minute bass solo Anesthesia by a certain Cliffort Lee Burton from Metallica's debut album Kill 'Em All, which went down in the history of rock music as the first thrash metal album.

Cliff saw the light of day as the third child of Jan & Ray Burton and already stood out in the third grade due to his far above-average reading ability, later due to his pronounced passion for music. He learned to play the piano, studied the playing of well-known bassists but also scales and notes of Bach or Beethoven and - with the firm will to want music full-time - joined unknown bands like EZ Street and Trauma. The gentlemen Lars Ullrich and James Hetfield, quasi the motors of the then rather insiders known band Metallica, heard a wildly distorted solo at a Trauma concert, which they wrongly assigned to the guitarist, until they realized at second glance that it was the hippie-clothed bassist who was playing wildly hand-banging and brilliantly soaring. Both recognized the enormous musical potential, tipped beer over the pickups of their own house bassist Ron McGovney's Washburn bass and ingloriously threw him out of the band overnight. Cliff took his place shortly after his nineteenth birthday, whose dynamic and sense of harmony gave Metallica the decisive impulse towards a world-class band.

So, but what does a bass solo actually sound like?
Or, how does it actually smell?
To anticipate: Bass Solo is an (almost) pure and in addition a really nice creamy wood scent! Just one look at the pyramid reveals various used woods. But the direct opening is surprising. If the dark bottle with the pretty wooden cap still looks gloomy, the scent starts surprisingly sharp-light green, spicy with a pleasant warmth, paired with some lime. The solo begins. A waxy, oily note develops relatively quickly in the interplay, as if the instrument was given a kind of care polish as a precaution before it was actually played.

Later the lavender sets in, appears cooler and more contrasting to the other aromas. Duchaufour uses it to represent the metallic aspect, i.e. the strings of the instrument, and according to "The Vagabond Prince" management was also quite choosy in the choice of the lavender used.

Little by little the woods show their strength, giving the fragrance a nice warm base note. Now individual facets show up as single notes, merge with each other and the bass is played further. A milky fig appears, smoky birch tar forms another exciting contrast, then it becomes creamier, everything balanced to a wonderful carpet of sound.

Woods of different kinds, dark as well as light, fit into the melody, but remain and form the foundation of the game. Cedar wood, sandalwood are perceived, flanked by resins, which in turn provide warmth and depth.

What I can't judge is how the wenge wood smells. According to the perfume database, the fragrances in which few are used are quite manageable. Optically, it is a beautiful dark brown African wood, which is often used in the production of musical instruments due to its decorative appearance (mainly for necks and fingerboards), but it also has tonal strengths and provides for distinct mids and soft, cuddly basses.

On my skin, Bass Solo ends after a good 9 hours of creamy sandalwood. Although in my opinion it is easy to wear and seems quite linear, the devil is in the details. The subtleties of a piece of music can almost only be heard through the headphones. And these subtleties are also offered by Bass Solo with its fine balanced melodies, all balanced with great skill and like on a good record you want to put the needle back to the start at the end to listen to the sounds of the game from new ones.

On 27 September 1986, Metallica set off on their Damage Inc. tour in the early hours of the morning with their new tour bus on the way to Copenhagen. Cliff and guitarist Kirk Hammett played cards in a contest for the windowed bunk in the bus, which Cliff won and moved into the more comfortable bunk. At 6.30am, for reasons as yet unknown, the bus left the road, slipped across the road for 20 long seconds before tipping over on its side, throwing the band members out of their beds. While the other band members got away with relatively minor injuries, Cliff was thrown out of the window and buried under the bus. Today a gravestone erected in 2006 with the coordinates 57°00'00 "N 14°00'09 "E reminds of him.

Although Cliff Burton was only 24 years old and can be heard on the first three Metallica albums, his finger-based bass playing is considered innovative and revolutionary, which has been a style defining characteristic of the band. But would he have worn bass solo himself? I can really imagine that the scent would have suited him, even though we will never find out, of course.....
I would like to thank Eyris for the generous testing opportunity and DaveGahan101 for the fair souk deal!