EVERY GENRE PROJECT - November 12 - Bassline
Genre of the Day - Bassline
Album of the Day - Est. 2003 by DJ Q (2022)
To point out a good, potent bassline—particularly if you are not a player of the instrument—is entry-level, but essential, music nerd behavior. An effective bassline is like the yeast of a song, lifting the sum of its parts up and lending the whole operation more power even if its presence can be so baked in as to be imperceptible. There is a whole genre, though, that pays homage to the greatness of a bassline, even if we’re working with electronic basses out on the dance floor rather than with wood or metal.
UK garage (UKG) is one of the genres I hold most fondly. It piqued my interest a few years ago and I delved into its world; this, in part, laid the foundation for my interest in music genre distinctions generally, so this is actually quite a joyful full-circle day in this column’s story. UK garage developed as an irresistible synthesis of its predecessor garage house, jungle’s drum sample trickiness, dubby production techniques, and pop’n’b in the ‘90s. It was promulgated outside of the clubs first via pirate radio and then achieved a brief commercial hot streak in the last couple years of the decade. A certain subsection of DJs and fans remained reverent to its charms even after that brief high-exposure moment, and bassline bubbled up (sort of like UKG’s bubbly riser noises) in an unlikely corner of the UK.
Sheffield is known as the UK’s largest village. It is also the spawn point of bassline as a genre. Though the sizable municipality is home to half a million people, urban expansion has been limited by the hills and protected green belts that surround its borders. What a curious and Britishly quaint distinction. Being an elephantine village evidently doesn’t preclude a healthy nightclub scene, though. Through the 2000s, Sheffield’s Niche nightclub pulsed with a speedy, bass-heavy style of UKG replete with highly-pitched RnB samples on the other end of the pitch spectrum. Going to hear some bassline was not without back-alley risks: the club’s owner joked that they would check customers for weapons, and if they didn’t have one, they’d joke that they should probably obtain one. This dedication to wry humor even in the face of actual stabbings and gang activity, with such frequency that the club shut down by the end of the decade, is tragically endearing. A far healthier danger was the sheer intensity of the sub basses that drove bassline’s rhythms, that was reportedly so strong some clubbers would feel sick.
A marriage of two-step, a rhythmically jittery iteration of UKG, and bassline blossoms on classic bassline producer DJ Q’s 2022 Est. 2003, referencing when the genre first flourished in the early aughts while asserting the style’s continued relevance. The basslines slide (“I Can’t Stay”), pulse (“Speedy Gs”), weave (“Heavy Like Lead”), overreach, and draw back in a single album’s journey, remaining propulsive and captivating throughout, eluding your ears when you try to follow it too closely because he always has a new sonic trick up his sleeve. On the more trebly side, the vocal samples are so sliced and diced that they’re crystalline like the ear candy of “It’s You,” though that choppiness can thematically compliment more R&B-nodding tunes like “I Can’t Stay[‘s]” splintered relationship. It’s a consistently grooving ode to a potent chapter of UKG’s history and a niche feast for the ears.