New releases last four weeks: Bass

Review: Birmingham's Jossy Mitsu and Bluetoof join headsy forces on their new collaboration for Tempa, colliding the former artist's rinsed, globetrotting UK-troit DJ sets the world over and the latter's "drum specialisms" formerly lent to labels the likes of Shall Not Fade. Transcending the one-forties for a deeper-shades descension, 'Metamorphic' and 'Acid' establish a mood of nightclub meets human biostasis facility, as sci-fi zaps meet brooding, high-sustain bass cues. 'H20' is the sole tune to heighten the mood, its stop-start rollerblade bass and necksnap 808s proffering a jammier digestif.

Review: London's DJ Ojo makes a strong debut on Pain Management with a shape-shifting 12" of heady, system-ready dub music. Known for his murky and slow-burning take on the form, Ojo takes things deeper here. 'Tongue Tied' rides out on pitch-black sub pressure and a ghosted vocal loop, evoking that half-asleep state between the dance and the walk home. 'Oil Dub' warps percussive elements into a cavern of melted delays and filtered hiss - almost ASMR in its abstraction. On the flip, 'Cloud Suck' stretches out into a near ten-minute reverie: digidub's emotional potential pushed to its outermost edge, sun-bleached, swirling and strangely hopeful. It's that rare kind of low-end music that plays just as well from a stack as it does through headphones, carrying a woozy emotional undertow that feels both bruised and comforting. A masterclass in restraint from one of London's most low-key original voices.

Review: Fast Castle opens up its 2025 with a five-tracker from Gent1e $oul that expands his bass-heavy sound into new club terrain. From the swampy overdriven bass of opener '4TC Boom' to the jersey-infused 'Paladin', which is a fine collab with Rolex3k, each track hits with intent. '+390' brings grimy M1 flutes to UK techno rhythms, while 'Steppe Lancer' channels dark, twisted energy for late-night floors. Closer 'Parthian Tactics' dives into introspective dubstep that is heavy yet hypnotic. With rich Bronze Age-inspired artwork by Jonas, Stable Units is both a superb sonic weapon and furtherment of deep dubstep.

Review: PQ (Peter Jones) is known for his role behind the keys in Bugandan-techno ensemble Nihiloxica, but releases like these are where things get interesting. The term "key player" can of course apply to bass music bossmanship inasmuch as it can refer to actual chops on the plastic ivories. And oh boy does Jones know it, delivering a scattershot range of grime and minimal bounce-bass, skirting seemingly every tempo and shape. Not overthinking it, 'Ketty Stepper Anthem' - if we're to insist on using the word "unreal" - has to be the least real tune here, curling through arclit bass design and a mathy crossrhythm, evidencing his ability to keep up with shockingly fast percussive changes.

Review: The debut full-length from Bangladeshi-Canadian producer Raf Reza fuses UK soundsystem culture with his own deep-rooted Bangladeshi influences. Raised in Tokyo and musically shaped in Toronto and Glasgow, Reza blends dub, bleep, breaks and jungle with Baul music samples and vintage Bengali film soundtracks here and it results in a brilliantly original style. The album explores sonic futurism and asks how diasporic and Dhaka-based electronic cultures can intersect. With a unique mix of field recordings, semi-obscured monologues and dubwise textures, Reza's identity-driven narrative comes to life and cements him as a bold, genre-bending voice in cultural fusion and sound.

Review: After years of silence, Colombia's Insurgentes, which is run by DJ Lomalinda and Verraco, is back for one final transmission, and we're here for it: la ultima vez is a superb swan song that comes in the form of Fiera, a powerful long player from Argentine producer Seph that was written between 2022 and 2023. It's his most daring work yet and takes the form of eight restless, shape-shifting tracks that dodge predictability and blaze through techno, 90s IDM, dub and ambient with finesse. Limited to 300 vinyl copies, Fiera pays tribute to Insurgentes' decade-long legacy of sonic rebellion and though it's a bittersweet ending, without Insurgentes, there would be no TraTraTrax and no roots for the future we're now living.

Review: Adam Winchester and Laurie Osborne (probably still best known as Appleblim) are Wrecked Lightship and they have an inventive approach to dub, breaks and bass. Their work creates an immersive world full of rich, atmospheric textures and the latest example of that is Drained Strands, a new album for Peak Oil full of fragmented, genre-blurring sounds. The six-tracker is full of experimentation and new ideas from the off. 'Delinquent Spirits' for example is a jumble of jungle breaks and vast basslines with minimal percussion, 'Reeling Mist' is warm, blissed out dub and 'Somnium Sands' is an eerie and evocative world of synth designs and industrial decay.