A preponderance of bass

Ummmm, no.



Much better.

I've had a chest-rattling weekend. The kind of subfrequencies that make your nose hairs stand on end, and make your eyeballs vibrate. 100 hz and lower. Y'know the kind. The kind DJ Craze played last Thursday at Footwork, for his Miami Bass session. I'm not totally familiar with the lingo, but I think the kids these days would call it "totally awesome". Or something like that.

Dancing to his set kind of brought me back to when I was first discovering electronic music, and loving just shaking it to whatever vibrations were pushing out of the speaker boxes - my tastes have refined with age, but I still keep coming back to the root of it all - the warbley backbone, the deep-seated density of a piece of music that gives it shape and texture. They don't call it the RHYTHM section for nothing...but it's what you DO with the bass that counts.


Yeah, funk does it right....

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...and jazz knows what's up.


But really, my favorite kind of bass is that of the mighty island itself...the roots of dub/reggae/rocksteady/dancehall all have a home in the world of bass, and as with most musics, it has had a chance to grow, mutate and become something completely new.



I've talked about dubstep before - for a fantastic lil'history, watch the vid above. The first interviewee, Loefah made his Canadian debut last night at a party called "Time 2 Bass" thrown by the cats at Curbcrawlers. As Mary-Ann Hobbs has proclaimed, "to be at the flashpoint of an emerging scene" is a thrilling prospect indeed. This is NEW music, this is ORIGINAL thinking and doing and acting and dancing. I love it, and am excited to see how each country's take on the dubstep formula will change its shape for the next set of ears to interpret it. I've put together some of my favorite bass-heavy tunes for your perusal.

The first is by ghettotech guru DJ Funk of Detroit, remixing Justice's soon-to-be-classic "Let There Be Light".

Loefah's track "Ruffage" is already a dubstep anthem, and this is pulled direct from the Hatcha mix, "Dubstep Allstars: Vol 4". Absolute sickness.

Digitalism's remix of The Cure's "Fire in Cairo" is an experiment in depth, while the closing track, "Une Bande De Mecs Sympa" by Modeselektor (feat. TTC) is a choppy take on electro-rap with a sharp edge...load this track onto a system with a quality subwoofer, you'll get what I mean.

A selection of bass-centric tunes, from me to you!
05LetThereBeLightDJFunkRemix.mp3
102Ruffage.mp3
FireInCairoDigitalismRemix.mp3
UneBandeDeMecsSympa.mp3
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Enjoy, learn, tell me what you think! THAT'S AN ORDER!