Broadcast on BBC Radio 1 on Monday, Generation Bass explores the evolution of UK bass music from the roots of dubstep to some of the more genre-defying efforts of recent years. With interviews from Skream, Benga, Hatcha, Mosca, Disclosure and a fair few others, there’s a decent amount of enlightening opinion and snippets of history here that will put you in good stead if you ever go on Eggheads and have to compete with Daphne in the category “UK Bass Music”. It could happen.
Filmed over seven days using 960 pieces of custom cut vinyl, the video for Benga’s ‘I Will Never Change’ depicts a beautifully realised waveform. Created by design and direction agency Us, which consists of Luke Taylor and Christopher Barrett, the finished product is like a more interesting version of the Soundcloud player. Yeah, even the new HTML5 one.
Tracks rarely live up to their overdramatic titles, but this is one that manages to deliver on its grandiose billing. ‘Fall of the Zulu’, from Scotland-based producer Wayfarer, is an unapologetic assault of African percussion laced with the occasional atmospheric inclination. More in your face than a drunken 14-year-old on the rough side of town on a Saturday night, this will cause a serious disturbance in the force. If this had played during the first charge in Zulu, Michael Caine would have dropped one in his breeches and surrendered immediately.
It’s been a while since I immersed myself in the idiosyncratic pleasures of Guido. Even though he launched his new label, State of Joy, at the start of the year, his inaugural single kind of passed me by and I didn’t really get involved. I’m not going to make the same mistake twice though and as soon as I caught of a whiff of ‘Afrika’, I was all over it like appreciative gravy. I’m going to heap praise on it too, not only because of guilt, but also because of the fact that it’s genuinely brilliant. With every producer and his/her drum machine switching up to some kind of genreless high ground, it’s nice to hear an artist offering something consistent with their previous output.
Slated for a late February/Early March release, No Sleep EP is the latest offering from Finland’s mercurial dubstep export Desto. I listen to so much future garage, post-dubstep and [insert other strangely coined genre here] these days, that I rarely seem to indulge in some good old chest-boxing dubstep, and this is exactly what Desto delivers. Accented with a cold melodious twist that transports me to the Arctic tundra, a blast of ‘Monsters About’ evokes vivid images of the outpost in The Thing (which is actually set in Antarctica, but whatever). You should probably appropriate a Russian Ushanka before you stick this on, although the bass will probably warm you up anyway. Have a listen below.
‘Light Years Popsicle’ is a fitting title for a collaboration between Joker and Rustie, two producers whose musical personalities would perfectly assimilate into the retrofitted future of Blade Runner and/or other similar sci-fi scenarios. If Chris Tucker was here dressed as Ruby Rhod, he’d catapult this tune into the stratosphere. Or beyond into, you know, space.
Played by Plastician on his Rinse FM show a week ago, trance chords mingle with electric guitaresque synth in an epic lunar concoction evocative of hallucinatory images featuring an ’80s rockstar floating through the infinite galactic night. Or maybe that’s just me…listen below.
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