News / bass
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1 min read
Zeds Dead - The Return
Read more . . . →I had this on in the car and missed my exit, which is the most honest review I can give The Return. Zeds Dead pitched this one darker and more purposeful than a lot of what floats out of the bass scene right now, all forward momentum and a bassline that stalks the low end. The title fits the mood: it sounds like a track built for a comeback, the lights-down moment in a set when the crowd has been softened up and it’s time to remind them why they came. The drums hit with real intent, no clutter, every...
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1 min read
Wingz - Like That
Read more . . . →“Like That” comes in low and mean, like a truck left idling outside your window at 3am, and I have not been able to stop playing it since this morning. Wingz has been one of the more reliable names in the UK bass world for a while now, moving between dubstep and drum and bass without ever sounding like he’s guessing, and this is him locked squarely in half-time menace. The bass patch does a thing where it bends downward at the end of every phrase, like the note itself is losing its nerve, and it drags the whole track...
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1 min read
Virtual Riot & Tokyo Machine - STATIC
Virtual Riot vs Tokyo Machine, NCS vs Monstercat, and STATIC actually earns the marquee billing. Glitching chaos that somehow grooves.Read more . . . →Subscribe →Weekly digestWhat you missed this week, minus the corporate emo. -
1 min read
Zeds Dead - Angel 2
Zeds Dead sound like they're having fun again on Angel 2, roughing up their own melodic bass template with a grin and a boot to the low end.Read more . . . →Get the tee →Support the blogSome shirts are statements. This one is a verdict. -
1 min read
Joker - SETI
Joker's SETI sounds like a cathedral organ rewired into a spaceship. The Bristol legend still makes the strangest dubstep around.Read more . . . →Get the tee →Support the blogMade for people who left the room during Yellow. -
1 min read
Jkyl & Hyde x SampliFire - Play With Fire
Read more . . . →Two producers whose whole job is making a speaker cone regret its life choices, on one track, is bad news for your subwoofer and good news for the rest of us. “Play With Fire” is exactly the kind of maximal, mid-range-shredding dubstep that gets sneered at by people who think the genre peaked with a Loefah dubplate in 2007, and I do not care, because it works. The first drop is a growl that keeps mutating; every two bars the bass finds a new way to be uglier than it was, like it’s showing off. There’s a half-second of total...
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1 min read
Blanke, EDDIE & Nevve - Entropy
Blanke and EDDIE turn Nevve's pretty vocal into bait before Entropy tries to remove your face. Turn it up till a neighbor reconsiders their lease.Read more . . . →Get the tee →Support the blogLooks like Helvetica. Sounds like a closing argument. -
1 min read
SHOSH & BEANIE - Villain
Read more . . . →This is the sound of a subwoofer being asked to do something it will regret. SHOSH and BEANIE built “Villain” to hurt, and the second drop is where it drops the last of its manners. The intro is almost a fakeout, a creeping little melody that draws you in close right before the floor gives out under you. What I like is how filthy the sound design gets without collapsing into pure noise; there’s a real groove holding the chaos together, a swing in the drums that keeps your head moving while your chest takes the hits. I made the...
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1 min read
Rival, Biometrix, CRVN - Nobody Around
Read more . . . →Why does music this aggressive make me this happy? “Nobody Around” is Rival, Biometrix and CRVN piling into one track and refusing to leave anything on the table. It’s a bass-heavy, mid-tempo stomp with a vocal that turns brattier every time it circles back, and a drop that hits like a car door slamming in the best possible way. Three producers on one tune usually means a pile of competing ideas, and instead this feels weirdly focused, everyone pulling in the same nasty direction at once. The bass in the second drop has a metallic snarl to it that I...
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1 min read
NGHTMRE & Jordin Sparks - No Air
Read more . . . →Remember crying to “No Air” in 2008? NGHTMRE just turned it into a festival weapon and somehow kept the heartbreak intact. Getting Jordin Sparks herself back on the hook is the move that makes this work. It would have been so easy to chop the old vocal and call it a flip, and instead she re-sings it with seventeen more years of weight sitting in her voice. NGHTMRE builds the first half like a proper pop record, all space and tension, letting that famous melody breathe before he detonates it. The drop is huge and bass-forward without ever burying her,...
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