So we’re doing the Taylor Swift thing with dubstep now, and honestly I’m not mad about it. “Bass Cannon” is one of those 2011 records that basically built a generation of teenagers’ speaker problems, and re-recording it as “Flux’s Version” with Crankdat on remix duty is the most knowing move Flux Pavilion could make. The original was already a blunt instrument, and Crankdat doesn’t try to make it clever. He makes it bigger, tighter, meaner, the low end re-tuned for systems that didn’t exist when the first version dropped. There’s a real risk in touching a track this nostalgic, because the people who loved it loved it at fifteen and they will notice every change. But the new low end has that modern weight to it, the kind that sits in your chest instead of your ears, and the old vocal stab still lands like a punchline you’ve heard a hundred times and laugh at anyway. I went in cynical and left grinning. Sometimes the dumb fun is the point, and a bass cannon is supposed to make you feel fourteen again.
More Flux Pavilion? Always. Previously: Flux Pavilion - U Want Me