If Wagner played bass

Wagner who? You might ask, and recall some German composer or other who was the possible author of the Ride of the Valkyries, which song was the inspiration of the Robert Duvall character in the film Apocalypse Now, the soundtrack playing as the Americans bombard the Vietcong and him saying, "Don’t you love the smell of napalm in the morning?"

And if Wagner played bass, Ride of the Valkyries and all, he might have been transplanted to another lifetime in the person of Rizal Dondi Ledesma, who plays the instrument and variations of it like they were his babies. Credit Ledesma, studio whiz and one-man band, for reinventing the bass guitar and stretching its possibilities to the inexhaustible limit.

In Die Black Rat and the later released Nova, both solo albums by Ledesma in the strictest sense of the word, he plays all instruments (mostly bass and its variants) and writes all songs, and does the vocals as well. One might easily conclude that the guy is a studio monster: laying each track painstakingly on one instrument, then overdubbing other parts and endless curing and post-production polishing afterwards.

Die Black Rat I first heard in a friend’s rented house along Don Pedro Street in Singalong a couple or so years ago, reminding me of the time we chased a vagabond rat that intruded into our own apartment a block or two away, and it hit me as a kind of post-metal ensemble approach, with rush-like precision arrangements down to the last programmed drum beat and suppressed ethereal cry. For even if Ledesma is a virtual do-it-all playing bass, fretless bass, piccolo bass that serves as lead guitar, flute and keyboards, he at least forsakes one instrument in the drums, and opts to rely on programmed percussion or sequencer.

For all the creativity brewing in his albums, Ledesma’s one Achilles heel is the percussion part, as having a drum machine pound out the rhythm can have an anesthetic effect on the sound, all dried up and bleached amid the smoking basses. Then again maybe that’s Ledesma’s method of counterpoint.

But back to Die Black Rat, and perhaps throw in Nova as well, the music shouldn’t at all seem strange to those who grew up on Yessongs, Focus’ Hamburger Concerto, and German avant-garde bands Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream. The aforementioned are kindred spirits of Ledesma, whose swirling soundscapes and alternately melodic and disjointed chord progressions are both a delight and challenge to the ear. One might even venture to say that the music of DNDI, for that is his text cipher, is an acquired taste, and for true fans converting the unconverted becomes only a matter of time.

No doubt a number of the cuts will linger, some segueing effortlessly into the other in a mind-bending blur of discordant notes and impasto chimes. Sloblo from Black Rat could be a distant cousin of Four String Blues from Nova. Then there is Return to Evermore, a likely tribute by DNDI to the old Led Zeppelin song Battle of Evermore which Heart in turn did an acoustic version of in yet another unplugged compilation.

And the scales on the piccolo bass (look, ma, no lead guitars!), hark back to the Arabic a la Blackmore, as well Schenker and Howe and other names both droppable and undroppable because they hovered between light and heavy, scales like babusta coffee beans or Johnson yata yan.

The only misgiving, aside from the aforementioned drums, is that we can never get to hear DNDI play this live, which is a pity because imagining it can really exercise the eardrums.

It’s very likely fans of the bass wizard might want to catch him on his instrument with Wally Gonzales at Kiko’s along Makati Avenue on Thursdays, a gig already written about in this same space by Tinnie Esguerra. Would it be too much to expect, say, Wally and Dondi dueting on Wally’s Blues and later slipping into Four String Blues? That would be something to look forward to, and more, except that parking’s so hard in that part of town, and the rakers and tow-away artists are forever on the lookout for wild-eyed nether jeproks out for a little night of bass and blues, whatever.

There’s talk too of how Ledesma has ably helped in laying down the tracks for Pepe Smith’s already mythical rock and roll album, more than half finished we’re told, and so we are eagerly awaiting that too, among other further developments before the Valkyries ride, ride, ride.