The HEAVIEST bassline EVER

william_kent

Well-known member

Aswad - Mosman Skank

promised land riddim

with badman chat

maybe my favourite version

( actually there's a "dubplate" version on the Jah Shaka Dub Masters LP that is heavier and that's actually my preferred version, but I can't find it on youtube )
 

william_kent

Well-known member

Johhny Osbourne & Pappa Tullo - Back Off

i once tried to explain to a friend that early 1980s Roots Radics "produced" by Junjo Lawes, mixed by Scientist, and mastered by Kevin Metclaffe ( the unsung hero of reggae! ) pisses all over "metal" when it comes to heavy, but she didn't understand, no matter... this tune is deadly, tramples all in it's path

heavy bass isn't about "sub", it's about a crushing forward momentum, preferably in a minor key
 

john eden

male pale and stale
@william_kent a friend has an incredible recording of Shaka playing “Promised Land” in Dalston when he’d just got back from Ghana. (Late 80s?)

He runs the tune without the bassline and talks to the crowd about his visit and the people he met and links with community projects etc. Asks them to get involved.

Then plays the whole tune again, with the bassline, chanting Rastafari etc. Just amazing.
 
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john eden

male pale and stale
In fact here are the words. Recording sadly gone.

 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
I've listened to his whole album and i like it fine but can remark that he seems to be doing good production rather than good music -

this is a strange thing to say given that the whole r41s0n d'3tr3 of dissensus is to champion anti-music. of course Craner has been trying to corrupt the forum with his laddish nonsense, but so far only managed to corrupt Luke. So in that sense he is the evil cult leader. I appreciate his stealth in that regard. Honour of the thief and that.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Years ago I remember there was this "uk bass scene" that was getting some hype as a kind of Uk response to... well, to ghettotech and the like I suppose. As far as I can tell it never really took off cos I stopped hearing about it pretty soon afterwards (although maybe I'm totally wrong and it's massive and all you lot have been into it for years, raving to it every weekend, feel free to educate me if so).

The only names I can remember were Cutlass Supreme and this guy Debasser. I don't even know what the former did but Debasser had a big tune called Fat Girls and, checking his stuff out, it all seems to be variations on that track with these sort of funky heavy basslines between breakbeats. Sounds nothing like the US stuff it was being compared to to my ears but maybe they meant it was similar in "spirit" in that it was fast bass music with loads of childish lyrics about tits and sex.



Can't imagine something like that going down too well these days. And maybe that is no bad thing cos it is kind of mean spirited. There is one girl who comes to our gigs every time in Porto, like she always gets there right at the start and stays to the end. She is a bigger girl and I was thinking that if I played something like that then I would feel like I was taking the piss out of her.. and then I thought that if there is a record which I play and it crosses my mind that it might make someone feel bad then maybe I shouldn't be playing it at all. Not that I was gonna play that anyway but you know what I mean.

what are you on about? birds line up at the front whenever dj funk's in london town. Mans a playa
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
not that i play out (i mean i would love to, what a dream that would be, hard to imagine anyone would want to listen to me start and stop songs on itunes though) but have a similar issue with that vybz kartal tune romping shop, which is just fucking brilliant, a pinnacle of love slash sex songs, totally joyous, but has this unmistakable right up front right at the start of the tune bit of very unsubtle anti-gay bit. so to play it anywhere in public or not? the answer obviously is to not.


again, certain nights in london that cater to lgbt jamaican crowds would play it.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
djs are such hypocrites lmao. they play to people on chemicals produced by criminal gangs who engage in all kinds of physical violence against minorities, and then suddenly think cos they're entertainers this gives them a social conscience? Well if you're studying to make the world a more equitable place (an admirable goal) you certainly won't be playing in nightclubs on a weekly basis, be them in London, Glasgow, Lisbon or even Rio de Janeiro. It screams Jürgen Klinsmann levels of tone deafness.

Don't have an issue with djing, i do it myself, but its really not that deep. Not different to football, and in some senses worse, because its insular participants take it as the be all and end all (not you idlerich, more referring to technotwitter...) although funny to see Roy Keen pontificating on Qatar's heinous lgbt laws whilst taking the Qatari £££ - we see you... the same establishment who happily sells them eurofighter typhoons.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Yeah but he's promising some action not calling em ugly


pretty sure i've heard him play traxman hit it from the back which has the line 'bend over bitch' repeated at 135 bpm. Take that as you will.

Which I wouldn't play but that's more contextual than anything. I'm not someone who lives in chicago, I'm a Kurdish disabled guy who lives on the edge of the suburbs of London. I'm not going to pretend to be something I'm not - that is to say an extroverted person who is a hit with the lahaydies. I'm more, psychotic weirdo who spends most of his time locked in his room spewing invective on the internet but refusing to talk to physical people because they are braindead enough on the internet, even more braindead irl.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
I think more people should approach their djing conceptually. not in the political sense, but the story of Brits infatuation with american music is so cliche now.

Part of why I rate Marc Acardipaine so much when he said 'we need to find .. the sound of the streets of Europe.' Techstep was the sound of the streets of West London.

Cos on one hand Americans are 100% correct that we should invent things of our own, although having said that they can get quite self-centred. So it's a double edged sword really.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
pretty sure i've heard him play traxman hit it from the back which has the line 'bend over bitch' repeated at 135 bpm. Take that as you will.

Which I wouldn't play but that's more contextual than anything. I'm not someone who lives in chicago, I'm a Kurdish disabled guy who lives on the edge of the suburbs of London. I'm not going to pretend to be something I'm not - that is to say an extroverted person who is a hit with the lahaydies. I'm more, psychotic weirdo who spends most of his time locked in his room spewing invective on the internet but refusing to talk to physical people because they are braindead enough on the internet, even more braindead irl.

That's the thing isn't it. All that DJ Funk, DJ Assault, I love their sets but most of it is at least cartoonishly nasty and there are always a couple in there that seem to cross the line into being outright nasty with nothing cartoonish about them. But the point is, they are different people from me and (apart from being about a million times more famous and successful) they are ultimately more of the kind of person who can get away with playing those tunes than I will ever be. That one I was talking about above - Fat Girls by Debasser - is not even particularly nasty, it's just that's once I had thought of it as cruel then it had kinda become cruel for me and I would not want to play it cos I wouldn't want to feel cruel. But I'm not at all saying others can't or even shouldn't play it.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
That's the thing isn't it. All that DJ Funk, DJ Assault, I love their sets but most of it is at least cartoonishly nasty and there are always a couple in there that seem to cross the line into being outright nasty with nothing cartoonish about them. But the point is, they are different people from me and (apart from being about a million times more famous and successful) they are ultimately more of the kind of person who can get away with playing those tunes than I will ever be. That one I was talking about above - Fat Girls by Debasser - is not even particularly nasty, it's just that's once I had thought of it as cruel then it had kinda become cruel for me and I would not want to play it cos I wouldn't want to feel cruel. But I'm not at all saying others can't or even shouldn't play it.

I was humming that bend over bitch hit it from the back one under my breath when I was in an assessment centre of the dwp. Glad I checked myself before they actually came to escort me up. A earworm of a ditty though!

Also on the topic of cruelty, I take the no u-turn mantra. hurters mission, hurt people with the concussive force of the beats. im just not a playa, and don't wanna disappoint my adoring public on that front.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
With the beats maybe but not with childish insults. Earworm is right of course though... I'm not sure i would have been able to row back in that circumstance. A narrow escape, well played!
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
With the beats maybe but not with childish insults. Earworm is right of course though... I'm not sure i would have been able to row back in that circumstance. A narrow escape, well played!

I love this one to get dropped at nights with dance music journalists, always sure to give them an aneurism on twitter. It's not even particularly offensive or insulting, just base and profane as opposed to being sacred and magical. It's quotidian, which is why it sends their prissy suburban backsides into flatulent overdrive.


 

Pearsall

Prodigal Son

Johhny Osbourne & Pappa Tullo - Back Off

i once tried to explain to a friend that early 1980s Roots Radics "produced" by Junjo Lawes, mixed by Scientist, and mastered by Kevin Metclaffe ( the unsung hero of reggae! ) pisses all over "metal" when it comes to heavy, but she didn't understand, no matter... this tune is deadly, tramples all in it's path

heavy bass isn't about "sub", it's about a crushing forward momentum, preferably in a minor key

oof, what a tune. I'm not really a reggae expert, anything else you would recommend in a similar vein?
 

william_kent

Well-known member
oof, what a tune. I'm not really a reggae expert, anything else you would recommend in a similar vein?

that tune is a perfect combination of relentless bass, passionate vocals, and rougher than tuff chanting, it's hard to top, but...


Barry Brown - Separation ( 1980 )

early 1980s "dancehall" has so many crushing bass lines, check for Coxsone Outernational sound tapes from that era

but another good starting point is:

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Haul and Pull Up Selecta

every tune on this compilation is a killer
 
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