Matt Anniss - Join the Future: Bleep Techno and the Birth of British Bass Music

Join the future

bleep techno and the birth of british bass music

Matt Anniss

First published by Velo city Press 2019

v elocitypress.uk

Copyright M att Anniss 2019

Design & Typesetting: Kieran Walsh

Photography: Vanya Balogh, David B ocking, Normski

Matt Anniss has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as auth or of this work

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, in any form or by any means, without permission fro m the publisher

While the publishers have made every reasonable effort to trace the copyright owners for some of the photographs in this book, there may be omissions of credits, for whic h we apologise.

ISBN : 9781913231002

FOREWORD

When I first went to nightclubs, it felt as if bass didnt really exist. As an underage teenager sneaking into what were then mostly still known as discotheques, the one common thread to the music - the majority of it being 80s electronic chart Pop - was the lack of bass. Of course, there were basslines and the thud of electronic drums, mostly via the then ubiquitous Linn drum machine, but nobody was feeling the bass. It was a while later, when I first went to a Dub soundsystem party, that I first noticed the air move, saw a speaker cone vibrate from the sheer power of bass and felt that sub resonate through my rib cage. It was an incredible sensation, and I instantly knew I was in lov e with low-end.

House music arrived and club systems got better and often bigger, but still there wasnt that much bass weight. One of my favourite early House tracks, still much loved to this day, is Phortunes Can You Feel The Bass? Id flip out if I heard it played in a club but my inner monologue would ponder the question in the title and think, Well, not really, no. This didnt mean early House records werent sonically life-affirming (they certainly were) but production wise, at least initially, they werent a huge sonic leap forward in their prod uction methods.

As House music exploded across the UK, producers here started to take the new electronic strains coming out of the United States and added their own distinctive British twist to them. Artists such as Bang The Party, No Smoke, Baby Ford, Renegade Soundwave and A Guy Called Gerald amongst many others were releasing distinctive records that worked on the dancefloor as effectively as anything coming out of Chicago, New York or Detroit. Many of them added a distinctive bass flavour often lacking on US imports.

Then there was Unique 3. From Bradford, they were the first UK act to really bring the bass - particularly sub-bass - to UK electronic music in a way that it hadnt featured before. Britains deep affinity with Reggae and the exposure of so many to severely bass-heavy Reggae soundsystems, particularly prevalent in Yorkshire, meant it was inevitable that bass was going to become a distinctive factor. Unique 3s huge (and now sadly somewhat forgotten) influence on what came out of the UK cannot be understated: Hardcore, Drum & Bass, Dubstep and current UK Bass variants all owe something to Unique 3s bass-prints.

In their wake from the Steel City came Warp Records and the wave of Sheffield Bass, or Bleep & Bass or Bleep Techno (or whatever you want to call it) that begat a thousand imitators. Again, an often-overlooked character was majorly responsible for so much of this music, or at least how it sounded: the mighty Robert Gordon. Co-founder of Warp and remixer, engineer and producer extraordinaire, Gordon is as important a figure in dance music history as any legend one may care to mention. The records he mixed or produced had a massive impact on my then DJ partner, Brainstorm, and I. We were obsessed with bass, which along with these futuristic bleeps sounded unlike anything else, especially when blasting out of a hug e soundsystem.

We were very fortunate that our Edinburgh club night UFO, which soon morphed into Pure, had possibly the most powerful system in the country. When the bass drop in LFOs LFO came in the whole building would quiver, glasses would fall off the bar, old dust would be dislodged from the ceiling and the music would be drowned out by shrieks and screams of bass derived delight. It really did feel like we had join ed the future.

Records by Nightmares On Wax, Sweet Exorcist, Juno, XON, Ital Rockers and a legion of others will be with me as long as I live, and should so many years of sonic abuse one day render my hearing kaput, its slightly reassuring to know that Ill always be able to feel the power of them as they shift masses of air through speakers with their sub-bass and low frequenc y oscillations.

Listening back to many of these records, and particularly anything touched by the hands of Robert Gordon, it is wild how well they stand up to this day, and how dynamic they are, something that is often missing in current productions. In my opinion, this is particularly prevalent when it comes to what gets called Techno today, which has seemingly paused any sonic progress in favour of sticking to a dogmatic kick-drum based template that few producers in that realm seem brave enough t o break out of.

Of course, there is a lot of forward-looking, futuristic sounding dance music with interesting, imaginative and intricate drum programming, perhaps more deserving of being called Techno, being produced today. Much of it comes from that other English bass stronghold, Bristol. This perhaps indicates that bass awareness and progression may go hand in hand. And talkin g of Bristol...

Matt Anniss, author of this mighty tome, grew up in Sheffield and has lived in Bristol for many years, so he is a man who really knows bass. Matt and I first bonded over our love for this music, out-nerding each other on obscure Bleep & Bass 12 singles and nuggets of Bleep information. I have followed the progress of this book since it was merely an idea, and it is incredibly satisfying that it is finally here; it has been the dictionary definition of a la bour of love.

After reading Join The Future I cant imagine another human being who could have done a better job of telling this story and shaping it so that it is not merely a lot of fascinating information, but rather a living, breathing account where the personalities behind the interviews are brought vividly to life. Matts love and passion for his subject shines through on every page. He also challenges some of the supposed orthodoxies of the history of the evolution of dance music in this country in the late 80s, a history many pivotal marginal voices have previously been written out of. Matt rightfully allows some of those forgotten voices to be heard at last.

Hopefully this books very existence will lead to some new ears hearing and falling in love with this music. Perhaps some of those will be inspired to do it themselves and, in turn, join the future like so many of their predecessors did in the late 1980s and early 90s.

JD TWITCH September 2019

WEIGHT FROM THE BASS

There are many imitators, but we are the true creators.

LFO We Are Back, 1991

It is a bitterly cold Sunday night in February 2018, and just over 600 people have squeezed into a former industrial unit in Attercliffe, once the beating heart of Sheffields steel industry. This is the Southbank Warehouse, one of the citys newest club spaces, and the excitable throng has gathered for that most modern of phenomena: a party and live internet broadcast by online dance music chann el Boiler Room.