Artist's Avenue

Alex Langston plays the bass with heavy influence from Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa and Primus. He calls himself Mud Octave. He said he’s looking to make it as a solo bassist, a stark contrast, he said, to all the one-man-acoustic-guitar acts out there. The actual music will surprise most. He doesn’t sing so much as speak periodically, and the lyrics always seem a tad obscure, but that doesn’t matter when the bass line fluctuates with deep beats the whole way through. He said he would probably buy singing lessons if he won the lottery, anyway.

Daily Lobo: So when did the bass start for you?
Alex Langston: I started about nine years ago. It’s got a great range. It’s cool because you can feel it in your body. When you go to a show, the vibration is there. When I am playing the bass, the resonance is so great and the sustain of the notes is such that you can feel throughout your whole body.

DL: So you play as Mud Octave? Tell me more.
AL: That’s been my solo project since 2006. I am in another band called Simfonik Plague.

DL: But Mud Octave, where did that name come from?
AL: So Mud Octave is actually from “My Name is Mud” by Primus and Octave because it is the lower octave. I was 17 when I thought of it, and I thought it was cool. It actually took a little bit for the name to settle in and me to agree with it.
It wasn’t this amazingly brilliant name that all these bands have and you’re like, “Oh that’s great a name. I need to listen to them.” It took a little bit of getting used to.

DL: So I was listening to a lot of your tracks earlier. I don’t want to call it abnormal, but it’s by no means mainstream. What are you trying to do with this sort of experimental music?
AL: I’ve kind of looked at music and said, “Well, that’s been done.” I don’t want to be playing “Blue Suede Shoes.” For a while I wanted to be the best bassist in the world, and now I am just like, “I’m okay. I can handle doing whatever I really want to do. So I might as well do what comes out emotionally.”

DL: Simfonik Plague then — what are you doing with that band?
AL: We’re doing a podcast. We just released our first episode this month. It’s monthly. We’re working on a recording. They have actually been around for 11 years. I’ve been in the band for a year.

DL: If they have been around for 11 years, and you have been in it for a year, what’s that dynamic like? Do all things run smoothly, or do you find it to be a challenge to match their chemistry?
AL: It was great to join a band. I had just quit another band I started. I didn’t want to do that again. It’s too much work to go around and find the musicians, so when I found the opportunity I was like, “Great.” I thought they were well enough established musicians and had their own styles. I can’t write songs for them because I don’t have the same style. If I wrote a song for them it would sound completely out of their range. And I’m fine with that because I got my solo project.

DL: So you hail from Gallup, right? How did that affect your music?
AL: I am actually not originally from Gallup. I was born in Illinois, grew up in Hawaii, lived in Georgia, and then Gallup. I started playing bass in Hawaii, which is really cool because there is a lot of heavy-based reggae music there. I think that had a big role in me starting to play the bass.

DL: So what’s the music scene like in Georgia, then?
AL: I started off in the heavy metal music scene, which is weird because I didn’t really listen to heavy metal music. When I was little I listened to The Deftones, and Simfonik Plague is a metal band. … I joined a band with these two guys and it was called Assault. It was this hysterical thing, you know, Metallica covers and such. The music scene there was all that hardcore screaming and … you know it was back near the turn of the century when that stuff was really prevalent.

DL: So what did you notice when you did make it out to New Mexico?
AL: Before I came here, I wasn’t exposed to Native American culture, specifically the Navajo nation because I lived in Gallup. I had known Native Americans as in Pacific Islander culture, but they are two totally different things. … That
influenced me a lot, not necessarily for the music I have recorded, but more so for the music that I will be doing.