When Basement came to The Panda Studios in 2012, they already had a record out.
While we were making their second album, Colourmeinkindness, they decided to put the band on indefinite hiatus.
As far as anyone knew, this could be their last record.
That changed the way I approached it.
If this was going to be the final Basement record, I wanted to make something so good that people wouldn't let the band disappear.
What We Did
We made Colourmeinkindness entirely at The Panda Studios.
I produced, engineered, and mixed the record, pushing the band into a much bigger sonic world than their first album.
I wasn't trying to make Basement sound like some other bigger band. I wanted the size, weight, and atmosphere of the production to match what was already special about their songs.
Drums. Guitars. Rooms. Amps. Pedals. Layers. Textures.
We experimented constantly, and those sounds became a huge part of the record's identity. More than a decade later, producers, engineers, and musicians are still referencing the drum and guitar sounds we created.
Three days after the record was announced, Basement announced their indefinite hiatus.
Then the opposite of what you'd expect happened.
The Record Kept Growing After The Band Stopped
While Basement wasn't touring, Colourmeinkindness kept growing.
When the band returned, they came back to a much larger audience than the one they had left behind.
When Basement came back, so did our working relationship. I mixed Further Sky, then they returned to Panda for a full album.
Promise Everything
In 2016, I produced, engineered, and mixed Promise Everything, continuing the sound and identity we'd established together.
By then, the reason to keep working together wasn't just familiarity. It was trust. They knew I understood what made the band work and how to keep pushing it without turning it into something it wasn't.
"We trusted him. We thought, 'why try anyone else?'"
From there came international touring, shows with Turnstile and Defeater, a deal with Fueled By Ramen, and eventually arenas with Weezer and Pixies.
Then, more than a decade after we made Colourmeinkindness, the record exploded again.
"Covet" went viral on TikTok, introducing Basement to an entirely new generation. The song has since been RIAA-certified Platinum, Basement's first Platinum single, more than a decade after Colourmeinkindness came out.
More Than A Decade Later, "Covet" Went Platinum.
The music we made didn't just connect when it came out. It kept reaching people, found another generation, and continues to matter more than a decade later.
A million streams every week.
Colourmeinkindness is still doing roughly 182,000 Spotify streams a day.
Fourteen years after we made it.
The record didn't just survive the hiatus. It kept finding new people.
The Two That Lasted
Basement have made five studio albums. I produced, engineered, and mixed two of them.
Those two are the band's two most-streamed records, and it isn't close. The album that came directly before mine and the album that came directly after them each sit at about a tenth of Colourmeinkindness. The smaller of my two still has more than double the lifetime streams of anything else they have released.
| Album | Year | Spotify Streams | Daily Streams |
|---|---|---|---|
| I Wish I Could Stay Here | 2011 | 34.4M | 10.2K |
| Colourmeinkindness | 2012 | 335.9M | 182.6K |
| Promise Everything | 2016 | 73.7M | 25.5K |
| Beside Myself | 2018 | 27.3M | 9.1K |
| WIRED | 2026 | 8.7M | 22.7K |
The gap isn't only history, either. Colourmeinkindness on its own still does more than four times the daily listening of the other three albums combined. Promise Everything is ten years old and still doing close to three times the daily streams of the record that followed it.
Two albums, out of five. They are the ones people keep going back to.
The record they made on the way out became the record that wouldn't go away.
Basement went into those sessions thinking they were ending the band.
Instead, we made a record that became a foundation for everything that came after.
A breakup.
A reunion.
Another record together.
Fueled By Ramen.
International touring.
A song exploding again more than a decade later.
Millions of people still listening every month.
And a sound musicians are still trying to recreate.
Sometimes the job isn't just making a great record.
It's making something that lasts long enough to change what happens next.
