'Bass Down Low', the Dev, KSHMR and NIIKO X SWAE blast, is done in 3:09; Kieran San Jose's 'Off The Floor' stretches to 6:17, the longest cut of the pack. Between those two poles sit 27 bass house tracks that live off contrast: anthems with decades behind them next to freshly minted aliases, and pedigree techno labels sharing a tracklist with mainstage artillery.
Two revivals at opposite ends
The juiciest contrast is temporal. 'Where's Your Head At', the anthem Basement Jaxx released in 2001, returns in the hands of Steve Angello via XL Recordings: the Swedish House Mafia member had been playing it as a bootleg for years, and the official remix landed after making noise at this year's Ultra. In the other corner, 'Lazer Beams', Green Velvet & Harvard Bass's 2012 classic, comes back on Drumcode with an Alok rework aimed squarely at the groove — built, precisely, to slip into bass house sets like this one.
The rest of the chart reads better through oppositions than in order:
- Club versus mainstage: Drumcode — appearing twice thanks to Danny Avila's remix of 'All over My Body' — and Watergate Records bring pedigree against Spinnin', HEXAGON, STMPD RCRDS and Smash The House, pure festival muscle.
- Giants versus newcomers: David Guetta, Laidback Luke and Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike coexist with projects like Gold Lemonade and WELKER (BR), while San Jose signs the most patient build of the set.
- Narrow band, opposite energies: the tempo barely moves between the 127 of 'Work It Out' and 'Blind' and the 134 of Joel Corry's 'Makina Time' remix, yet that band hides two very different cruising speeds.
Even the key map contradicts the cliché: 16 of the 27 cuts sit in a major key, an unusual figure for a genre that prides itself on grit. Maybe that is the underlying contrast defining this selection: bass house with clenched teeth that still manages to smile.
Sources: DJ Mag · Dance Rebels
