Back catalogue: Bass

Review: Following up releases by the likes of Mark Seven, Florist and Cygnus, Ari Goldman's Washington D.C-based World Building returns with this awesome varioust artist compilation. Neighborhood Watch Volume One features a wide selection of moods and grooves: NativeSun vs JamesBangura get stuck into some dark dubstep on 'Demon Mode' much like The Khan does later on the deeply meditative 'Part Of Me (Ode To DC), while Sami gets their swing on with the classic house of 'Marty & Jack', Juana's tunneling 'It's Low' gives you a dose of heroin house and over on the flip Max D gets deep down and dirty on 'No Snare'.

Review: Sam KDC's voyage into parts unknown continues apace on this latest release for Samurai Music, as the producer takes tropes of d&b into ever more meditative, swampy surroundings. There's a creeping intensity to 'Indra's Net' which will go down a storm with anyone exploring that fertile crossover between deep techno and tech-step. 'The Shroud' is a more mystical affair, while 'Metempsychosis' leans in on hidden layers of detailed synth work and a slowly modulating time-stretched snare that lodges itself in your skull. 'Rhea's Revenge' finishes off on a taut note, bringing its own sub-tropical climate and a plethora of subliminal details to get your very far outside your body through the power of sound alone.

Review: In a fit of complex hybrid future funk, Second Storey and Appleblim consolidate their first three EPs for R&S into a long player that shows the full breadth of their sound in glorious technicolour. It's a thrilling world full of contorting shapes, glossy melodies and large doses of psychoactive fairy tale ingredients, with a gutsy techno heart pulsing away at the centre. Hearing all the tracks in one sitting gives a worthwhile context to the artists vision as they contort in and amongst each other, while new piece "Arpegmonger" opens the album in utterly glorious fashion. Craftily blending the notion of home-listening music and dancefloor madness, ALSO will have you twitching wherever it infects you.

Review: Stark, uncompromised body music from one of the most interesting unapologetic duos to emerge in recent times - Sha Ru make their debut on Monkeytown with this outstanding five tracker. Visceral, political but, most importantly, fully physical; 'They Are Textural' flexes deep shades of electro, breaks and even d&b in provocative brew. An exploration of queer identity that sits somewhere between Madonna, Modeselektor and Massive Attack but through a brutalist, industrial lens; Sha Ru have a powerful and intoxicating vibe that's genuinely one of a kind. Essential.

Review: Simone Menomale debuts on presumably his own new label SM000 with music that is as sparse and abstract as the imprint's own name. These three tracks are eerie and empty rhythm explorations that come built on skittish bass frequencies with icy percussion. Sometimes the beats are broken with glassy textures, at others they are punchy and floating. This is music for the small hours, for cosy back rooms, for heady crowds who like to do lots of their own work with minimal input. It's a great start to a vital new label.

Review: Radioactive funk abounds as SIN and NAP bring together their extensive freeform collaborations that have been bubbling away behind the scenes for the last two years. Rhythmic, pulsating body music with strong roots in both techno and dancehall, Sinnaz shimmers with 3am mischief. 'Consentido' hits hard both vocally and as a rhythm track while 'Concha Dub' ripples and twangs at a Wink-level of 303 freakery. Finally 'Taki Taki' takes us right to the alien edge before bringing us back to earth with MAW style tribalist percussion. Heavyweight.

Review: Sir Hiss is a Bristol-based bass head who has had a fine recent outing on Idle Hands' City Road label 32A but now steps out with a three-track solo effort on Innamind. 'Uderzo' is some seriously weighty post-dubstep tackle with grinding and tough synth sequences over lurching drums with crisp hits up top. 'Sleep Paralysis' is a tripe mix of what feels like sound effects from a video game over icy beats with distant chord vamps adding some flesh to the bones. Last of all is 'Till The End' which features slow and precise drum loops under a hypnotic vocal wail.

Review: On Tell Me, Skeptical capitalises on the freedom afforded by his own Rubi label by dialling back his established d&b sound and presenting a half-time trip into downtempo territory. That shouldn't be mistaken as a softening of his production chops, because there's still massive amounts of weight as he warps snarling bass around stark drums on 'Tapestry'. 'Atomic' goes further into a minimal, dubbed out sound with carefully executed low end growl which carries the torch from DMZ's earliest soundsystem meditations.

Review: WNCL is back to provide more high grade dance floor explosives here in the form of a potent 10" battle weapon from Skin Teeth. Up on the A-side is 'Void 93,' a terse mix of busted breaks, heavy bass hits and jungle energy that's run through with dark vocal snippets. It's a hard-ass cut that will fill the club with a caustic sound. On the flip is 'Knuckle Bone' with more dub-wise vocal elements and heavy, tumbling drums and neck-snapping hits. It's as physical and uncompromising a beat track as you could imagine.

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Review: J. Dugdale returns under his Sumgii alias for Swamp 81 again with some meditative and minimalist rollers. Judging by the pic on his Facebook page, he definitely likes the green, and the collection of tracks featured on Who Is Genre Anyway are perfect for getting blunted. It's total fire on the A side, from the deep, down and dirty grime of 'Absurd' followed by 'Chunks' and it's bouncy wall of sound. On the flip, things get more hi-fi on EP standout 'Skanker' before deconstructing nefarious techstep sounds of the late '90s on the fittingly titled 'Dark Side Burns'. The jagged and off-kilter bass experiment 'Wollop' closes it out.

Review: London-based, Australian producer Surusinghe is next up on Tasker's AD93 label with a thrilling mix of worldly rhythms and earth shattering bass. It is only a year since this artist debuted but already she sits at the top table with a sound so physical it cannot be ignored. Breakbeat, techno, bass and more are all chewed up and spat out in her meticulously cross-pollinated sound hybrids. Heavyweight opener 'Bop' has crushing bass and wiggling synths, 'Bet' has hints of UK funky in the drum patterns and flip side joint 'Boka' will twist floors inside out before 'Brain' is a more slow and purposeful full body workout.

Review: Hailing from Hastings, England, Sustrapperazzi joins the Ilian Beat Series with a dope fonka of a 12".

Review: Sylvere completes his three part EP series from Monkeytown here with the final instalment and it might just be the case that he has saved the best until last. As is always the way, the Parisian producer known for championing marginalized sounds and communities mixes up heavyweight bass, dextrous melodies and snaking grooves. As vital as his music is, his radical arts collective La Creole is just as important as it provides safe space and floors and believes in "partying as a form of campaigning". And if any of these tunes are heard in such spaces, too can be sure of utter destruction.

Review: Having previously worked with SBTRKT, Kanye West, Drake, Jesse Ware and Frank Ocean, amongst others, Sampha is no newcomer. This, though, is the British singer, songwriter and producer's debut album, and it's something of an understated gem. One particularly enthusiastic reviewer called it "an R&B album for the ages"; while that may be pushing it a bit, there's no denying that Process is an impressive collection of tracks. The beats are inventive, the electronics crisp, the samples carefully chosen, and the musical touches pitched just right. At the centre of it all stands Sampha, delivering thoughtful, heartfelt and sometimes poignant lyrics in his wonderfully evocative voice.

Review: SBTRKT has always been outlandish in the music he has made. His new album The Rat Road is another testament to that with its audacious sounds and adventurous electronic styles. This record from composer and producer Aaron Jerome - who for many years kept his real name hidden - is his first in some seven years and it mixes up everything from retro glitch to wiggling drum & bass, nimble bass to 90s-referencing rave cuts. Guest vocalists Leilah and George Riley add some hooky mainstream bait and all in all this is a welcome return.

Review: Composer and producer Aaron Jeromea aka SBTRKT returns with a new album, his first in some seven years. The Rat Road gives him full licence to flex his skillset in full experimental mode, encompassing glitchy styles, off kilter drum & bass, bass and 90s-referencing rave-iness. Guest vocals come from Leilah and George Riley, adding an oddly mainstream counter balance to the instrumental quirkiness happening beneath.

Review: Sarah Sommers' inaugural album HeartCore was captured live at Princess Tower Studios in Berlin. Clocking in at 74 minutes, it's a vibrant fusion of dance music genres fuelled by Sarah's profound passion for electronic beats that span various eras. From dub to techno, house to dubstep, and drum & bass to breakbeat, the record showcases all that and more across nine tracks extracted from Sarah's live sets and previously performed across Berlin clubs in 2022 and 2023. A testament to her lifelong love of the music, this LP epitomises authenticity and comes on lovely gatefold neon pink wax.

Review: The first release on SOS Gunver Ryberg's own imprint, Arterial Recordings, is a great example of how wrong assumptions and presumptions can be when based on labels. And no, we don't mean record labels. Ryberg is an award-winning sound artist, but what do we mean when we say things like that? Is it the dense theoretical and conceptual sonics designed solely as installations within the institutions of art itself, or something more tangibly recognisable as 'music' itself? Maybe it's neither. It can definitely be both. Spine proves that last point wonderfully. Yes, this is electronic music at the bleeding edge, strange aural worlds crafted from noises and gadgets that could be the controls of a space craft from the future for all the average person might know. But the tracks here are definite and deliberately designed to be heard as tracks, whether that's the serene, floating-past-the-cosmos ambience of 'Sensuous Sky', or the frantic breakbeat tension of the title track.

Review: Milan's Simone Trabucchi, whom we know by the name of Dracula Lewis thanks to a rich catalogue of related material, launches his new STILL moniker on Berlin's unfailingly explorative PAN label. The result, however, is something we haven't been exposed to before and, for Italian electronic music, it marks a fascinating new journey into the 'outernational' realm. Each one of these 9 sonic experiments is made up of peculiar ethnic blends that span from Rastafarian culture to Pan-Asian influences; most of them are tagged as 'riddims', attempting to form new and visceral forms of futuristic sound-system culture for the next century. We're not kidding when we say that this is the first time in a while that we've heard something genuinely different, genre-blending and in a sense, utterly mystifying. Dancehall is in all of these tunes' DNA, but the execution is peppered with all sorts of sci-fi-leaning tricks and electronics, making it the perfect sort of material for fans of both dance music cultures. Don't sleep on this one. It's another nutty episode of PAN.

Review: Scottish fusioneer Stillhead follows up last year's album doublet Out Of The Loop with this exceptional wide-armed spread of sounds that flexes from UKG (the beautifully restrained hip-wriggling intro 'Sick Fing') to uncompromising juke jams (the pounding, loopy 'Girl Problems') by way of deep slithering, hypnotic dub ('Social Distance'). All weaves together with large servings of bass and some rather nifty (not to mention cheeky) samplecraft. Stillhead? Still bumping...