Bassline/Bassline House etc

btw is it really true that t2's working with madonna on her new album? she's a bit fresh, if so.

he said in a rwd mag interview that he's "been asked to collaborate with people like Madonna". i'll remain suspicious til further notice.

listening to it again, and you know in terms of a practical link though i might argue tropical could have represented a sort of lost southern coeval to bassline bosh; what began as a jokey todd homage for the summer emerged as something totally personal and of its time, something pounding with a nameless pell-mell rage (the smart challenge of “come ring my bell” and how it swirls into a mania of mocking voices, a hall of mirrors; then waking up into the absent-minded smile of 'mash', sat flat on its arse modelling a looney tunes tweetybird wreath; and THEN faster and faster and happeningalloveragain) but also in places with this strange sorrowing placidity, the ambivalence of an observer, and maybe a glazed syrupy tiredness too. ('flow' plainly into 'melody & voice' - because why bother naming them otherwise? "now it's machines, ines" rolling on matter of factly, the longing of 'holiday', bumping and rising away like airplanes from heathrow but really just waiting, waiting like the sun in the smog - WELHAM YOU'RE A GENIUS.) so yeah, maybe think of the album as burial for those who aren't glibly superficial spastics, i dunno; maybe even think of the denial of this album, and its descent into anonymity, as a fitting epilogue to a glimpse of grime's knotted subconscious.

GREAT thread!

in all seriousness, I woke up this morning with basslines in my head. Listening to this music is a bit like eating ten bags of Skittles.

Not that I've ever done that.

"so yeah, maybe think of the album as burial for those who aren't glibly superficial spastics"

RTC for prez.

prez of petty digs and vague tautologies yall.

prancehall, asking the questions that had to be asked.

If you're a teenager living in a council estate anywhere north of Grimsby, you won't be spending your weekends at home practicing WCW wrestling moves on your terrified cat, smoking weed, and listening to Ghetto's new mixtape. No, instead the chances are you'll be riding in your 1992 Ford Fiesta down to your local nightclub with your Rockport loafers, fake D&G shirt and enough diamante encrusted jewellery to choke a murder of crows to listen to some banging bassline house.

haha. i was thinking about geezers in lurid birdsnbassmobiles as well - these guys have never ever ever let speed garage go, and maybe it was a matter of time before a bigger culture sprang up around them. will dissensus kru be rolling out a 50,000 page ballardian sexghost in the machine disquisition, do you think, or is that just too easy now?

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b128/drdragon666/IMG_3248.jpg

WAMP WAMP, WHAT IT DO

cor, even the old boy reynolds has woken the fuck up. when was the last time he did something as simple as sticking the radio on? good piece.

like the little point about northern soul too.

it's kind of hard for simon to turn on the radio and hear any bassline. he lives in new york.

given that his piece is about him listening to 1xtra internet radio, i don't see how that's relevant. but thank you for your kneejerk apologism all the same.

man who knew that to be an apologist is as you'd expect but that apologism generally refers to some completely different metaphilosophical thing! not me!

how unfun.

what are you talking about? sorry i misunderstood you.

(am expressing surprise that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apologism is not the state of being an apologist like i thought it was, is all. can take it to the copyedit/grammar fiends thread, if it surprises you too.)

ok my point wasn't literally about the radio, just that new yorkers are not exactly down with what's happening in sheffield, no matter how actively they're seeking out new sounds. one friend of mine who lives in new york and used to be the biggest craig david fan ever, and before that the biggest dj ss fan ever, has never even heard of bassline house!

i dunno if this has been answered already but is this really offering much new from old uk garage? the tracks ive heard that do seem to be 'real bassline' have this brilliant hyper happy energy to them but ive only heard them in mixes so dont know which are just older bassline (when it still pretty much resembled UKG) or actual UKG (which seems to have been quietly ticking along all this time) and new proper bassline which seems to adopt grimey synths as well as the hyper happy vibe. just wanna make sure this isnt the emperors new clothes.

MOAR BASSLINE

less forelock-tugging + cunty refusal to read what ppl already wrote

if nothing else won't someone else weigh in on tropical?

rtc, you might be interested to know that MJ Cole has now jumped on the bassline bandwagon too, under his old Matlock alias! a clip of "Watford Gap" can be heard here, and... it's rather awful. i mean, if he's gonna do bassline he could at least stick to xeroxes of his Lamb remix from way back, nu-gen bassfarts don't suit him really.

on the other hand, "Love on the Rocks" still sounds wonderful as ever, and Midnight Circus' "MILF" is good for a chuckle or two.

lol i started listening thinking "i will forgive him this if he gets on the paino for the intro" and THERE IT IS! also that is the intro to BoC geogaddi and i claim my 5 pounds.

truce 'treat u right' sunship dub is my stuff.

I'm a total novice here--have a few mix-CDs I've bought and d/l'ed over the past couple months--so can I please ask what you mean by that mouthwatering phrase, "tropical"?

seriously mj i love u but why you're pissing around making ukg and not doing megabucks film soundtracks i'll never know.

matos, tropical was 2006 mix cd side project of, i guess, modern uk garage made apparently on a whim by jme, skepta and plastician. here's the myspace.

boy betta know! i've got tropical and maybe it's more exciting if you've been following all the internecine conflicts, victories, negotiations and defeats in and amongst various speed garage progeny.. i think it's nice, but i have to say it sounds like a less snappily delicious, sparser, more straight-ahead version of 2-step - also the mixing is somewhat shit

yes... those craving for the snappily delicious may well be disappointed.

does seem a little churlish to highlight the mixing of an album of tunes they've specially made themselves (ie not a best of, or retrospective, or anything), particularly when a good few of those tunes suggest that a straight-up partymixx was not quite the intended alpha and omega of the thing. take it on its own mysterious terms, at least.

i mean i'm really not trying to say everyone should subscribe to my take on it (god forbid), but peering through a predictable 2step pince-nez at it and ignoring what it does manage to achieve in being sparser and more driving seems unfair either way.

What's curious about Tropical is that it's simultaenously great and inscrutable - as music it kinda doesn't make sense, almost. In this I'd venture to suggest that it's closer in spirit to the early proto-grime than to 2-step, it feels malformed and unfinished and this is part of what makes it exciting.

I'm kinda fascinated by the notion of sounds that have an early window where they've yet to coalesce and cohere, and everyone's waiting for the moment when everything snaps into place, at which point all the music (including the preceding, seemingly incoherent stuff) all makes sense.

Like, with grime, I think that Nasty Crew set from the beginning of 2003 was (for me) a crucial moment when the music suddenly felt viable (as in "we can make a sixty minute set with a really solid identity"), at which point all the randomness of 2002 made sense as well.

All of which means "could there be a Nasty Crew version of Tropical and what would it look like?"

My comment in the Wiley thread about the potential belated rise of colourful 4X4 grime is partly inspired by "I'm Going Out", partly by Tropical, and partly by bassline (esp. the stuff with MCs). But when rtc brought up juke house it clinched for me the idea of what I want, which is kinda like grime/garage that has a juke structure - slow, lurchy verses, fast bouncy choruses.

Imagine a tune that was like JME & DEE's "Serious Thugs", only instead of just speeding up in the chorus it went 4X4 as well... This would be the best thing ever I think.

2step pince-nez = where can I buy one?

I’m always confused when a promoter says 3,428 DJ’s at 1 venue? Isn’t the single venue a given for a party?

there's a joke in there somewhere. new horizons? tj glasses-cases? cough.

have jammer and some bird vocalling holiday instead, for what it's worth.

also at the time of tropical's gestation i put up this radio clip of logan mixing todd edwards over roll deep's babylon burner, presumably cos i'm just nice like that innit.

most grime is boring now. getting some of that bassline/4x4 type energy is what the scene needs. tropical sounded like old garage to me, not fresh like bassline. i dont know what funky house sounds like apart from one or two songs but bassline has that energy grime has lost.

T2 is becoming a cult hero among footballers

more T2 sports action

alas the audio link doesn't work, but there's always youtube

Apropos of MC-bassline, the DJ Q remix of "Flex" is pretty great. I didn't think it improved on the original, but then I went back to the original and it suddenly sounded too slow...

A good example though of the extent to which bassline's stiff 4X4-ness is slightly over-emphasised. Yeah it's very electrohouse rigid, but like with (better) electrohouse there's lots of scope for interesting counter-rhythm programming. This reminds me a bit of early bleep 'n' bass in that regard.

Meanwhile "Holiday" is fab, thx rtc.

That's Dizzee's "Flex" I'm referring to there.

but not the Glasweigan DJ Q?

dj q's remix of flex is quite brilliant.

wut's crackin here?

Can anyone name top 10 essential bassline tracks? So far I like:

T2 - Heartbroken
Delinquent feat. Kcat - My Destiny
H Two O - What's It Gonna Be
TS & 7 - Smile

So basically I like bassline with catchy female vocal in it.

like most people here and elsewhere, i've stopped checking bassline some time ago... but i've discovered this incidentally few days ago and it's fantastic:

Love Assassins - The Boy Is Mine (Rebel Bassline Mix)

This is still some of my favourite music to dance to ever, although I still feel like I could do with a decent primer on the style's peak years.

Couldn't give a primer, but yeah this stuff is still great. I hear new tunes every so often but no idea what kind of scene there is. DJ Q and Burgaboy still produce some good stuff.

Dj beez April! Excellent mix.

I think in theory I like poppy bassline best but then often the spooky stuff is erm prettier? If you accused me of doing the classic herb listener of imposing values from other genres I'd be hardpressed to defend myself - probably there's some hallucination of hyper-on experience vs terra danjah vibes at work.

― Tim F, Monday, 16 May 2011 22:42 (52 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Will make people retch on principle but the bassline remix of Katy perry's "E.T" also is very pretty.

― Tim F, Monday, 16 May 2011 22:55 (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ok let's take it over here.

yeah beez april is good innit! i don't even think it's a more-than-sum-of-parts mix that especially articulates anything about bassline particularly wonderfully, it's just competently got all the tracks of the moment and THEY'RE ALL JUST REALLY QUITE GOOD.

i will say that all the lady vocal cuts are pretty much my favourite things in the world.

generally i am very glad to have anyone else cosign some bassline because it's very much like an upside down lunatic alice in wonderland rabbit hole once you get hooked in and i pretty much no longer have any idea if my ramblings on the subject are socially acceptable - meaning i don't really judge maximum sugar/maximum darkness inversions and perversions like the katy perry and ussy tracks by any other genre's standards but bassline's, and they all make the most perfect gleeful nonsense here.

haven't heard that mix in full yet but the 3 tracks off the girls love bassline ep are fab.

yes! taking advantage of the collection format that ep is probably my favourite single release of the year. shame the accompanying mix wasnt quite as good, but still of use as a refresher course i'm sure.

dj beez february mix is my favourite of his i think, it really runs with the gibbering provincial juvenile truant angle throughout (save for a big bouncy mix of gaga 'telephone' slap bang in the middle obv)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpiycgtX4Lo

like you don't question for a moment that this is the actual national anthem of the uk

and in more ~musical~ terms i really loved dj apostle's sounds of the new skool vol 30 - from january so probably a tiny bit dated now but it's just excellent

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-v6LieeMY8

i mean really now how good is this!!!

Really like that. Emvee is a bit good I don't think I've heard much of his more bassline style stuff, I'm pretty impressed. Those drums are madness.

sickness.

what are some new bassline mixes?

DJ Q has done a promo mix for his set at Fabric w/ Butterz: http://www.fabriclondon.com/blog/view/butterz-dj-q-fabriclive-x-butterz-mix

doesnt look like much bassline on there tho