Basement Fire (mixtape)

Basement Fire is the debut mixtape from the American hip hop duo Plot Holes.

Background
The album started as a project between friends Matthew Little and Eli Burkley. One night while partying with Little's roommate Paul, he played a few songs from his album as Ann Xiety, Death and Doubt, which wowed both his roommate and Burkley. Little said, "Paul was just like, 'Matty, fuck writing, you should produce music!' and that really was the first time I ever heard anyone tell me that other than my cousin. I had two people, and also Eli, who thought I was doing something good." After Eli had told Little about her interests in music, Paul suggested they hang out for the night and try to record something. They then departed together and ventured to Burkley's basement.

Recording
Basement Fire began production on December 13, 2016. Both Little and Burkley had been drinking and smoking marijuana, and had taken a few Xanax. They were at first in a small room in the basement where Burkey's mother kept some of her belongings, but then toward the end of recording had moved to a larger area down there after complaints from her mother. The first session produced a few songs along with other miscellaneous recordings using instrumentals Burkley found for free online. Burkley already had a few raps written, and had requested Little to sing or harmonize over the quiet spots when she was finished rapping.

The recording equipment had been the same Little had used for his own music, his iPhone 5S. Burkley supplied the music using her phone connected to a bluetooth Bose speaker. While recording, the music's volume was turned up just enough so Burkey could hear it while standing away from the speaker, as they didn't have a professional booth for isolation, so on most of the tracks the haze from the instrumentals can be heard layered behind their voices. Multiple tracks feature dubbed vocals, either with two separate vocal takes or one single take doubled.

Once they had recorded for a few hours, they would return to Little's apartment and edit what they had captured. Little did all of the editing with Eli present, as he wanted the both of them to have a say in how the songs should sound. Little used the same program that he had used with his own material, Audacity. A few of the songs either open or end, sometimes both, with Little and Eli chatting quickly, and then the instrumental pops on loudly; Burkley liked the idea of using those little moments before recording, as it adds intimacy. She also had an idea about having each song start with some sort of unrelated instrumental before the beat picks up, but Little disagreed and the idea was dropped. A large amount of the vocals were written by Eli, while all of Little's vocals were freestyled on the spot, with some as well done by Burkley in the moment.