Music
Bassline’s bigger and louder than ever before
Many years after the Niche club’s heydays, bassline remerged with a contemporary spin on the genre. Now young ravers are driving the scene to new levels without the traditional music media.
There are many self-described music lovers out there who’ve got no idea about the movement that’s been taking over raves up and down the UK this year, soundtracking Generation Z’s formative rave experiences. The music mags and record shops aren’t much help, but take a closer look at the club circuit outside of London and it’s obvious: bassline is the biggest phenomenon in dance music.
In the space of a couple of years, the Northern rave sound has bounced back, spreading from its old haunts of Sheffield, Rotherham and Leeds right up to Newcastle in the north, Brighton in the south, and now even LA and Tokyo. A fresh wave of artists like Skepsis, Holy Goof and Darkzy are breathing new life into the genre, while long-established figures like DJ Q, Bassboy and Mr Virgo are playing to bigger crowds than ever.
It’s very inclusive, musically, as long as you like hype party music... You can step into a clubnight and get it straight away.
Bassline first developed in the early ‘00s in one specific location: the Sheffield nightclub Niche, opened by owner Steve Baxendale way back in ‘92. Spun out of speed garage and house by trimming back the vocals and bumping up the low-end, early bassline was both upfront and slinky, a complementary yin and yang of warping basslines and bubbly pop melodies. Pioneered by DJs like Shaun Banger Scott and Jamie Duggan, for a while the sound was known simply as “niche”; in its late ‘00s heyday, as vocals came to the fore, you’d hear it called “4x4” too. As it spread across the Midlands and the North, and then out to Ayia Napa, bassline took on a life of its own. In 2007, the scene produced a breakout hit in the shape of T2 and Jodie Aysha’s Heartbroken, which spent five weeks at #2 and introduced the entire country to this long-gestating genre.
Niche itself had serious troubles throughout its life and afterlife; in 2005, 300 police officers raided the club on the pretence of a drugs bust, though no arrests were made. The club reopened at a different Sheffield venue in 2009 but lasted only a year; a third incarnation in 2017 managed just a few months until a violent incident led to a final closure.
To an extent, bassline never really went away in its home territories. But recently, the sound has revved itself up again: bigger, harder and heavier than ever. Cue up some bassline hits of the last two years, like Skepsis’ Goes Like and Notion & Holy Goof’s Sweet Talk (VIP), and the evolution is clear. With a brawnier stance, fewer vocals and a ton of huge, filthy drops, the current wave of bassline shares its screwfaced energy with jump-up drum ’n' bass, or the tear-out dubstep of the early 2010s.
Bassboy
© Liam Goodyear
It’s gone a lot louder. There’s this new angle and sound which is more bass generated.
Birmingham’s Bassboy, who’s been making bassline “since round one,” says the last two years have seen dramatic changes. “It’s gone a lot louder,” he explains. “There’s this new angle and sound which I would say is more bass generated – you don’t really need vocals to make a song.”
Software developments have also nudged producers in a different direction, Bassboy adds. “A lot of new plugins have been introduced into the sound and you can hear [them] in a lot of producers. The main two are Massive and Serum. I use Serum for everything now to keep up with the sound. It’s gone a lot harder, more four-to-the-floor and a lot louder. Creativity wise, I think it’s gone a lot simpler. You don’t need to do so much in a bassline track for it to really resonate with the people. Louder drums, the bass sounds are hitting – the dynamic of what it’s doing to a human body is very different.”
South London’s Skepsis, one of the scene’s breakout stars, isn’t even keen on calling this new sound bassline. “It’s pretty far off what it was the first time,” he suggests, “and obviously it’s 4x4, but I feel a bit restricted by labelling it.” Like many of the younger producers, Skepsis cites the Bristol-based duo My Nu Leng as a major inspiration; their low-end fusion of garage, grime, house and dubstep is an important template for the latest wave. (Skepsis also one of the people behind Lengoland, a Facebook group for tunes, parties and track IDs with almost 20,000 members.) “The first time I heard them was about 2013, I was about 17. My mate wasn’t into bass house or garage, but he was like, ‘You need to check out this track’ – it was The Grid. I was blown away by it. What they were doing at the time... they were the first people doing it.”
Skepsis
© Press
Not all bassline fans are convinced by the genre’s new direction. Ian Yoxall – also known as Bassline Yox – was a regular at Niche and other regional parties in the late 2000s, driving down every week from Middlesbrough to hear DJ Q, TS7 and the like. For him, the new tracks don’t match up to the classics. “In 2007 there were more [bass] warps and a lot more vocal tunes, whereas now I feel like it’s more like mindless drops. Any mindless drop and the crowd goes mad – they could do a Postman Pat drop and everyone would go mad,” he laughs. “When it was peaking, I knew I’d still be listening to it 10 years later, which I am. But I don’t know if these kids will still be listening to it in 10 years’ time.” One thing Yoxill definitely is enjoying, however, is seeing the original pioneers get their dues. “DJ Q, TS7, Mr Virgo – all them lot who were putting work in then, I like seeing them selling out shows and smashing it, ‘cos they deserve it. They’ve been grafting since 2006.”
While they might not please some fans of the old school sound, those big drops are a central feature of the latest bassline hits. But plenty of DJs play more diverse sets, showing off the genre’s multiple musical connections – whether its Chris Lorenzo repping jackin’ house, Flava D playing true to her UK garage roots, or Royal-T putting the spotlight on MCs with bass ‘n’ grime hybrids. “It’s very inclusive, musically, as long as you like hype party music,” says Elijah, boss of the grime-rooted label Butterz, which is home to TQD – that’s Royal-T, DJ Q and Flava D, one of bassline’s biggest success stories and an example of its deep links with garage and grime. “You can step into a clubnight and get it straight away – it’s not something where you have to understand the nuances of it to enjoy it.”
One striking development, underlining the youthfulness of the current wave, is the way DJs and producers rely almost entirely on social media to promote themselves. Instead of giving interviews to journalists or posting mixes online, DJs build hype by sharing teaser clips from inside the rave, capturing the madness the moment the bass drops on their latest tune. Rather than mixes and downloads, fans are steered towards streams, like Spotify’s own Bassline Bangers playlist or YouTube channels like Cru Cast, UKF and Deep Rot.
“The amount of time that young people spend on their phones, you’ve got to find a way to reach out and market yourself to them,” says Skepsis. “For a couple of years now, [posting] live videos – on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter – has been the best way to preview a new track. That being said, it’s always evolving. I used to use phone videos, and now I only really use professional videos. I’m always trying to up the levels and find new ways to promote myself.”
It’s about meeting the audience on their level, adds Elijah. “With Butterz, we kind of rejected radio and said we weren’t gonna do it anymore, ‘cos our audience, the people who come to our nights and interact with our music, don’t listen to it – or not enough to make it worth communicating that way. People are on Instagram, people are on Facebook. People are generally not using Resident Advisor or Rinse FM or NTS. Those are not people that are coming to the clubs up and down the country, for us.”
TQD at Red Bull Roadblock, Southampton
© Vicky Grout
While the biggest nights are still to be found up north in places like Leeds and Nottingham, the current wave of bassline reaches to the kind of small towns that rarely get visiting DJs of any kind: Leamington Spa, Torquay, Shrewsbury. The market for bassline is “basically anywhere that has a nightclub,” says Elijah. “That means there’s a 30-show loop you can do in the UK – and that’s not including the festivals and bigger events.”
This grassroots approach explains why bassline remains out of the grasp of the music media – fans and DJs have found a way to interact that doesn’t need traditional gatekeepers. “The whole time we did TQD, we did one interview. We were able to talk to the audience directly – and people who’ve come after that have followed the same trajectory,” adds Elijah. “I guess that was the whole point of the internet in general, but [bassline DJs] are actually doing it. The [other] bass music scenes haven’t been smart and taken note of what these lot are doing. If they took note of the way the music was promoted, they would be as big. I don’t think it’s necessarily ‘cos it’s bassline – it’s the way they communicate. They made it enticing to people who wanna go out and party.”
Bassline has also been bubbling up in the US, specifically on the West Coast, where the sound’s filthy low-end and massive drops mean it slots right into the EDM scene. Cementing that link, Holy Goof and Skepsis joined EDM wunderkind Jauz on his US tour last year, while AC Slater, who’s been bringing UK bass to the States for almost a decade, has booked artists like Flava D and Chris Lorenzo for his Night Bass party in LA. He even collaborated with Bassboy and London MC Scrufizzer on his 2017 album, Outsiders. Bassboy himself was finally exposed to his US fanbase earlier this year when he flew over to play the Night Bass party. “A lot of people over there were very in tune with what’s going on in the scene, they had been following me for years,” he recounts. “The show was one of the craziest shows I’ve done – the American fanbase just [had] consistent energy the whole way through.”
Bassline in 2018 is loud, brash and relentless. From the outside, some people might dismiss the new tunes as a bit cheap and cheerful – straightforward club fodder offering a quick adrenalin rush rather than a deep groove. But the new scene has captured the passion of young ravers, and it’s fascinating how the current wave has adapted to new listening habits, inventing a better business model that doesn’t rely on traditional gatekeepers.
Just as UK drill and afro-bashment artists barged their way into the mainstream by building their own channels and speaking directly to fans, bassline’s second flush of success offers a blueprint for how club music can be shared and supported in the future. We’ve not yet heard this generation’s Heartbroken, but it’s surely just a matter of time before bassline 2.0 gets the mainstream break it deserves.
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