(photo by Shaun Bloodworth)
For fans of forward thinking electronic music the end of summer was overshadowed by the announcement that Mary Anne Hobbs would be leaving her radio show on Radio 1 after 14 years. I could carry on endlessly about how important this show has been to me personally and to the music I love. In recent years the focus on Mary Anne has deservedly centered around her championing of the Dubstep scene. However, for me it was in the years leading up to Dubstep’s emergence into wider recognition in 2006 that MAH was her most vital. The electronic music landscape was pretty bleak circa 2004 - 2005 and after her hero John Peel passed away Mary Anne’s Breezeblock was one of the only places you could hear fresh new sounds on a regular basis.
The blow of Mary Anne’s departure was softened somewhat by the series of climatic headline mixes lovingly assembled by some of her favorite producer/DJs. In particular the mix by Shackleton and the final mix by Kode9 and Burial were outstanding. Both mixes manage to be challenging, uncompromising and yet extremely intimate. They were the absolute best examples of what made the show such a special institution all theses years. You can d/l the final shows at the excellent CoreNews mix archive.
Two particular club nights stand out from the past summer. The first was Demdike Stare at The Bunker. On a night that saw a disappointing, technical difficulty hampered , live set from the Caretaker and the Mike Huckabee playing amazing edits from a reel 2 reel, the Modern Love boys stole the show. Taking the crowd from fathoms deep beatless meditations to hard driving, big system techno and back again with a spattering of exotic percusion and Turkish Psych thrown in for good measure. At points, when the bass opened up, the sound rattled all of the club’s duct work adding a layer of accidental percussion to the proceedings. Brilliant.
The other big night out was the mighty Dub War’s 5th anniversary. 5 being a sacred number for any Joe Nice fan you knew the place was going to full to bursting the shouting and stomping masses. Mala DMZ was joined by “secret guest” Skream for an extended b2b set of bass-bin destroying bangers. If you have seen either selector before (and if you haven’t I advise remedying that quick like), there were few musical surprises. But for once, in a club night that prides it self on being ahead of the bass music curve, it was all about straight forward celebration. Even serious technical issues could not keep the vibes down as all had come to skank it up until dawn.
As far as home listening, the last year or more has seen a fertile ground develop along the margins of the UK’s various bass/urban music scenes. Making things even more interesting is that many of the new sounds have more in common with classic U.S. dance sounds than Dubstep or UK Garage. Case in point the Juke and B-more influenced Work Them by Ramadanman, close sibling to the unstoppable anthem Footcrab. Other housier summer vibes were provided by Jam City's wonderful Ecstasy (refix) and Space Dimension Controller’s epic The Love Quadrant.
One of the best showcases for these various developing sounds has to Kode9’s DJ Kicks contribution which came out at the Summer Sostice and has been a touchstone for me all season. Drawing from a wide pallet of cutting edge bass music, it’s Kode9’s attention to the essential low-end groove that unifies this mix, creating a whole that is far more than the sum of its tracklist. Other shining examples of a unified groove theory have been recent mixes from Oneman, Ben UFO and Ramadanman (who has to be the hardest working man in bass music at the moment)
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