Basement Fire (mixtape)

Basement Fire
Album by Plot Holes
Released	February 17, 2017 (YouTube)
Recorded	Massachusetts, December 2016 - January 2017
Genre	Experimental hip hop, queer rap, outsider music, lo-fi
Length	28:27
Label	Independent, YouTube

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.

During a recording session, they had decided on naming themselves Plot Hole, but after Little discovered that there was a band with the same name, they instead switched it to Plot Holes.

Recording

Basement Fire began production on December 13, 2016. 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.

The mixtape was recorded in three four hour sessions. Some of the songs were mixed the night of conception, while most were further edited in Little's spare time.

Themes

As a whole, the mixtape doesn't have one central theme. Though each song contains different subjects, on a few there are explicit mentions of EBT and poverty, though the poverty aspect doesn't go further than just mentioning the use of EBT.

The first track, "Ann Xiety", is very sporadic and clumsy in its production, which gives off a feeling of anxiety, but the lyrics during Little's part mention multiple things all at once, such as drugs, minimum wage, and violence. Burkley mentions just as quickly a failing relationship, space, feelings, and then, as mentioned before, the use of EBT.

"I Rise" is entirely about love and loss and the great lengths someone has gone for someone they aren't with anymore, spoken in a heavy tone that follows a repeat of the words "You fuck off" said over and over. The following track, "Boots Cost Money", is a loud boast about being in the army, rapped almost like an anthem. "Angels in Hell" came from a story Burkley told Little about a friend of hers who almost died while driving drunk. The track is about those who have died foolishly in tragedy.

"He's Into It" is about a man taking a woman's husband graphically, with no shame in the fact that the husband would rather have sex with another man than his wife. During the song a lawnmower can be heard, symbolizing a father or husband mowing the grass, acting manly. The following track, "Black and Blue" is a tragic telling about problems African-American men and women face from law enforcement, evoking the times of Trayvon Martin and Eric Gardner. The final song, "Role Model", is a another random freestyle that tells about Little not having much faith in an unnamed woman who's apparently an alcoholic, then Burkley raps sporadically about being somebody, someone that doesn't need EBT benefits, and that the duo made all the music from the album "out of pain", but they still smile everyday "even if it's fake".

Cover and title

The cover photo was taken the night of the final session for the album. It is of Little and Burkley in the basement where the mixtape was recorded, with Little kneeling on the ground while looking into the camera as Burkley leans on a bucket of paint while staring at her phone. They placed themselves in front of a large hole in the wall purposely to go with their group's name. The photo was taken and edited on his phone, while the text and parental advisory sticker was added later on Microsoft Paint. They had taken a few photos the first night they got together which featured mainly Burkley sitting by a furnace and in front of a stuffed rabbit sitting on a chair, and one of them both together looking down at the camera with a fire emoji placed on the wooden ceiling, but they weren't used for anything other than promotional material.

The title, Basement Fire, was agreed on mutually; to them it represents as a whole that they were "making fire", meaning they were making good music. Originally, it was to be called Basement 🔥 but Little couldn't add the emoji while on Paint.

Release

On January 23, 2017, they announced on Facebook that Basement Fire was to be released on February 17, 2017. The date was chosen by Burkley, who has a fondness for the number 17, believing it to be lucky. The post had with it an inverted version of the cover photo with the date and the mixtape's title.

Basement Fire was released February 17, 2017 at noon on YouTube. The same day, Little created an advertisement using the "Pass the aux cord" meme and shared it on both Facebook and his personal Tumblr.