The title is the entire instruction manual. Vizzen’s “BOUNCE!” is UK bass built for one purpose, and it gets there around the first drop, which lands like a trampoline with a personal vendetta. This is that springy, rubbery bass-house sound the UK does so well, where the low end pogos, all spring and no dead weight. The vocal is chopped into a single repeated syllable that turns into its own percussion. What gets me is how much space is in the mix: there’s room to breathe between the bass stabs, so each one lands clean instead of smearing into mud. It’s a peak-time weapon, the kind of track a DJ drops to reset a room from zero to feral in about eight bars. Monstercat’s UK-bass output has gotten genuinely nasty lately and this sits near the top of the pile. Great gym music too, if yours lets you make a scene by the squat rack.
January
Chrome Daydream
Chrome stars, jelly hearts and holographic colour. A nod to the glossy, optimistic graphics of the early web.