Advance Base – “Brian’s Golden Hour’

DIY veteran Owen Ashworth used to put out music under the name Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, and he’s been known as Advance Base for many years now. Under either name, Ashworth writes mordant, specific, often emotionally touching songs, reciting them in a reserved baritone over his own swirling synths. Nobody else really sounds like him.

Later this year, Advance Base will release Horrible Occurrences, his first album of new material since 2018’s great Animal Companionship. We’ve already posted lead single “The Year I Lived In Richmond,” and now he’s also shared a new song called “Brian’s Golden Hour.” It’s about an invented character named Brian who’s “15 and paralyzed and lucky to be alive,” and it fucked me up. Here’s what Ashworth says about it:

“Brian’s Golden Hour” is a song about Brian, a fictional teenage skateboarder in the fictional American town of Richmond, the same place where most of Horrible Occurrences takes place. Brian has glorious plans to film himself skating off his parents’ roof and down a ramp that he’s set up in the alley alongside the house. Brian is going to perform the trick just after sunrise during “the golden hour,” when the light is most beautiful. Standing on the roof at sunrise, Brian has a premonition that the trick won’t go as planned. He sees a terrible future stretch out before him in a flash. But Brian’s fine. It was all in his head. It isn’t too late to change his mind. That’s what I keep telling myself, at least.

I recorded the instrumental passage that introduces “Brian’s Golden Hour” on an Opus 3, a paraphonic synthesizer introduced by Moog in 1980. I have a sentimental attachment to the Opus 3. I first played my friend Jason Quever’s Opus 3 at his recording studio while we were trying out some different arrangement ideas for the song “Your Dog” from the 2018 Advance Base album Animal Companionship. The Opus 3 was just what the song needed, and I really fell in love with the sound of that synthesizer that day. So, after Joe Pera licensed “Your Dog” for his comedy special, Relaxing Old Footage With Joe Pera, I used the licensing fee to buy my very own Opus 3. It appears on four of Horrible Occurrences’ eleven tracks, including the album’s first single, “The Year I Lived in Richmond.” The way I use the Opus 3 on Horrible Occurrences was inspired by John Carpenter’s scores for his early horror films like Halloween and The Fog. It’s the sound of apprehension, a warning that something horrible is about to occur.

Listen below.

Horrible Occurrences is out 12/6 on Run For Cover.