Back in 2024, after 10 years with alt-rock icons the Pixies, Paz Lenchantin departed in order to concentrate on her own projects. Her debut album, Triste – featuring former A Perfect Circle bandmates Troy Van Leeuwen and Josh Freese – is now due for release on her own label, Hideous Human Records.
“I had to make this record on my own – not to prove anything, but just to have faith that music can nurture me back,” Lenchantin said in a statement. “And it did.”
Happy to be a musical chameleon, Lenchantin has steadily reshaped her bass playing since being thrust into the limelight with A Perfect Circle (with Maynard James Keenan of Tool) and Zwan (with Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins).
“I’ve played with some amazing players over the years, but every time I plug in, I do it without any thoughts of past or future,” Lenchantin told Bass Player back in January 2010. “I’m just really present with my instrument. It makes me feel timeless.”
While this may seem like a feat that very few bassists achieve, it is something that goes almost unnoticed to Lenchantin.
“I never know what’s going to be thrown at me next, and that keeps me from getting trapped in one genre or a specific sound. The picture is always very different with each project I’ve done. I just try to evolve with whatever I take on.”
Born into an Argentinian family of musicians, Lenchantin was classically trained in music theory at a young age. A multi-instrumentalist, she is fluid on almost any piece of gear she picks up – most notably the violin and guitar – but in her teenage years she found her passion in life when she first picked up the bass.
“Bass is absolutely my favourite instrument,” she told BP. “I feel so at home on the bass. I don’t know what made me want to play bass, but it was something that I was really drawn to early on.”
Finding her own path proved difficult, as her family often shunned anything beyond the realm of classical music. “My whole family was classically trained and were strict purists when it came to music. I used to hide my bass playing and was never allowed to amplify it.
“I used to lock myself up in my room and put my teeth on the top of the body of the bass to be able to hear what I was playing. That was the only way I could feel the vibrations.”
“I would do that and play along with Paul McCartney and John Paul Jones. It was the only way that I could get away with playing that kind of music. It was like my teeth were my amplifier back then!”
Lenchantin started out using only her fingers to play the bass, but quickly found that it would be a useful tool in her arsenal to play with a pick.
“Playing with a pick is a total tone thing – it’s an attitude towards the song. I didn’t know how to play with a pick before my time with A Perfect Circle, so at first learning to play bass with a pick was like dancing with two left feet.”
“I felt I had to entirely relearn the bass and I would spend hours trying to figure it out. But now I understand the value of the tonality. It’s just different and it’s nice to be able to use both ways of playing.
“I want to keep moving forward and growing and learning more and more than ever before. I never want to be stagnant or repetitive or boxed in – I’ve always tried to avoid those things.
“I’m not trying to find a sound and stick with it, I’m trying to make music that never gets tired. I never want to become a cliché of myself.”
- Triste is out October 17 via Hideous Human Records.
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