Tranquility Bass
| Tranquility Bass | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Michael Adam Kandel |
| Born | 1967/1968 Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Origin | Los Angeles, California, United States |
| Died | (aged 47) |
| Genres | Trip hop, ambient house |
| Years active | 1991–2015 |
| Labels | Astralwerks, Exist Dance |
| Associated acts | Isotope 217 |
Tranquility Bass was the stage name of Michael Adam Kandel, (1967/1968 – May 17, 2015) an American musician whose music has been variously categorized as ambient house, trip hop, and funk rock. He released various singles during the 1990s, followed by his first full-length album, Let The Freak Flag Fly, in 1997 on Astralwerks.
Kandel was born and raised in Chicago. He learned to play guitar and keyboards at age 12. By the age of 15 he had begun to record experimental electronic music in his bedroom.
Kandel attended the Chicago Academy for the Arts, after which he moved to Los Angeles in the early 1990s to attend CalArts. It was there that he met Tom Chasteen, with whom he started the Exist Dance label in 1991. The two released several singles, including some as Tranquility Bass, later that year. In 1993, Kandel released the single "They Came in Peace", which has been described as an ambient-house classic and appeared on the Mo' Wax compilation album Headz the following year. After the duo released this and a few other singles, including two songs that appeared on the FFRR compilation album, California Dreaming in 1994, Chasteen left Tranquility Bass and relocated to Tucson. Tranquility Bass's touring bassist, Matt Lux, is also the bassist for Chicago-based band Isotope 217.
In 1994, after Chasteen's departure, Kandel joined Tyler Vlaovich to record an album on Lopez Island in Washington. More than two years later, the album was released as Let the Freak Flag Fly on Astralwerks Records. Kandel sometimes ceased talking to people, or from using his voice, for two or three days on end during the recording process. According to Billboard, the album led to Kandel developing "a cult following that spans several genres beyond the dance realm." The Los Angeles Times gave the album a rating of three stars (out of four) and described it as "the electronic progeny of acid rock." It was also reviewed favorably by Greg Kot, who described it as "a grand journey through nearly a century of recorded music, a densely layered montage of electronic manipulations and live instruments made under conditions that were certainly unusual." The album contained the song "We All Want To Be Free", made more popular by its airplay on MTV's Amp.
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