Bask Find Comfort in the Void on “Long Lost Light”
Posted on July 22, 2025
More information about The Turning
While they’ve shared bills with fellow Southern trailblazers, after 12 years, Bask still sound like they belong to their very own time and place. On their upcoming fourth album, the Asheville natives take their signature style of Heavy Americana to a whole new dimension. But as laid bare by its latest single, to reach The Turning, the band had to go through one hell of a trip.
“This is the heaviest and most emotionally challenging song on the record”, Bask says about “Long Lost Light”. “There were times when we had to walk away from it. You can feel the emotion in every single note”.
Watch the hypnotic video for “Long Lost Light” on the Season of Mist YouTube channel.
The Turning comes out August 22, 2025 on Season of Mist.
Pre-order & Pre-save
https://orcd.co/basktheturning
To kick off this heavy and heady new frontier, Bask are touring the East Coast later this summer. Hear them perform songs from The Turning during the album’s first trip out on the road.
The Turning 2025 East Coast Tour
August 20 – Atlanta, GA @ 529 [TICKETS]
August 21 – Savannah, GA @ El Rocko [TICKETS]
August 22 – Asheville, NC @ The Orange Peel [TICKETS]
August 23 – Raleigh, NC @ Chapel of Bones [TICKETS]
August 24 – Richmond, VA @ Fuzzy Cactus [TICKETS]
August 26 – Philadelphia, PA @ MilkBoy [TICKETS]
August 28 – Searsport, ME @ Starboard Lounge [TICKETS]
August 29 – Providence, RI @ Parlour [TICKETS]
August 30 – Wallingford, CT @ Cherry Street Station [TICKETS]
August 31 – Boston, MA @ O’Briens [TICKETS]
Can’t wait to sink into The Turning? Hear all of the new album before it comes out by RSVPing to Bask’s upcoming Bandcamp Listening Party.
The Turning Bandcamp Listening Party
Wednesday, August 6 @ 7 pm Eastern Time
RSVP
https://basknc.bandcamp.com/live/the-turning-listening-party
The Turning is still grounded in the natural-born sounds of Bask’s home in Appalachia. “Long Lost Light” drifts amidst keys that flicker like fireflies along a riverbank. But while they’ve always been a tight-knit group, newest member Jed Willis adds more swirling colors to their homebrewed heaviness. His shimmering pedal steel bends and breaks with the quiet force of a current, as if guiding them by starlight.
“When we started writing The Turning, the songs were twangy but also spacier and more psychedelic than anything we’ve done before”, says the band’s vocalist and guitarist Zeb Wright. “And so I asked myself, ‘What does this feel like? What do all these things come together and make?'”
The overarching concept behind The Turning truly straddles the fence between cosmic and country. Whereas Bask’s previous treks were inspired by tall tales one might expect to hear around the campfire, this album spins a yarn from the fantastical reaches of their own imagination. “Long Lost Light” acts as the emotional centerpiece in a story that spans not only galaxies but generations in man’s never-ending quest for immortality. After trying to dodge fate, our star-crossed outlaws finally face the existential void. However, despite being admittedly “out there”, its dwellings on family, aging, death and rebirth hit close to home.
“Can you feel the moments move so quickly?”, Wright wonders, only to have his call answered by the quiver of a high, lonesome fiddle.
“We’ve been through so much together”, reflects bassist Jesse Van Note. “We were robbed while on tour in Sweden. A tire literally fell off our van. Then we were knocked down by COVID, then Hurricane Helene.
“We’re also older now and there are challenges and responsibilities that come with that”, he continues. “I have two kids. Some of us have bought houses. We’ve all been through marriages and different relationships. For things to snowball on top of the band one after another, it kind of had us feeling like maybe this was the end of our era”.
The weight of the past few years comes to bear on The Turning. Despite moseying along with a wearisome snare shuffle, crashing cymbals send “Long Lost Light” tumbling down a black hole filled with piercing feedback. “The line was my fault“, Wright cries beneath wave after wave of doomy bass. While the writing and arrangement came together quickly, the album’s latest single was so personally draining that Bask weren’t sure if they could see it through the finish line.
“I remember us wondering if this song would be too hard for us to listen back to”, says guitarist Ray Worth. “We only worked on it when buried within the darkest of moments. There were times both in rehearsal and the studio where we had to set it aside. It’s a hard one, but that’s why it turned out so damn good”.
“It’s like we had taken all of the bad and put it into something we felt was positive and beautiful”, adds Van Note.
In order to bring “Long Lost Light” out into the open, Bask needed a helping hand. Fellow Asheville native Franklin Keel turns the tide with deep melancholic churns of cello. “The way Franklin bends the note, right as things get heavy”, Van Note points out, “it acted like a release for us”. As the song’s rushes to a head, a guitar solo crests above the cosmic fray, beaming like a satellite beacon.
“COVID, Hurricane Helene and just life in general threw much instability at us, but I think the resilience of the band and our music shines through”, drummer Scott Middleton says. “It’s been a challenging five years, but I think we did a good job weathering the storm and expanding our sound on The Turning“.
The video for “Long Lost Light” was created by Garrett Williams and Mason Bayne.
More praise for Bask
“I’ve heard the components of Bask’s music before: Baroness, U.S. Christmas, Bruce Springsteen, Crazy Horse, Across Tundras and so forth. But I’ve never heard them together as one unit. If someone were to ask me if it were possible to be heavy without being brutal, I’d refer them to Bask” – Invisible Oranges.
“Such a knack for expressive music is Bask’s bread and butter” – Angry Metal Guy
“This is the kind of band you want to see grow. Join the party now” – Heavy Blog is Heavy
“The entire thing rocks your socks off with gripping guitar riffing” – Metal Bite
“… a remarkable demonstration of melodic genius created by a shrewd horde of big-footed giants…behold and bear witness to legends among villagers!” – Outlaws of the Sun
“…undeniably both infection and innovative” – Metal Storm
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