What is the heaviest bassline you ever heard out at a concert, festival, club?
I once did some work at a music festival and I was there during the sound system setup for the main stage a couple days before the festival opened. The sound team played Breathe by The Prodigy , and without a crowd to soak up the sound, the bass coming off that track was truly earth-shaking. In many years of festivals and all kinds of clubs not much comes close. Whenever I hear Breathe it reminds me of that moment.
I think they kept playing it so it made me wonder if it was selected specifically to test the system, like it could be a āstandardā. Are there particular tunes sound engineers use to test their systems?
The grooves on the vinyl for the UNKLE remix are so very far apart and walls shake whenever I play this.
Live: hmmm, Swans pretty much every time, SunnO))) on a Funktion 1 at Corsica Studios in Elephant and Castle and a few others properly shook my ribcage. Oh and Coil performing at Megalithomania in London were outrageously bass-heavy, as were Motƶrhead at Brixton Academy, of course.
Nothing comparable to seeing Black Dice for me. The whole room felt like it was being pummeled. My partner had enough in a very short time and we went home. Which is similar to the first time I ever saw them (at a festival) when my friends kept tugging at my jumper to go and I was surprised that a band could sound like this and was lured into getting an album a year later. And then listened to it enough until I got it and they became one of my favouite bands.
Second place goes to a band called Todd. We saw them at the sadly now closed Buffalo Bar in London. I knew them and knew they were a very loud and heavy rock band and was surprised that they had mini toy casio or such keyboards on stage. What I soon realised is that those keyboards were plugged into massive bass amps and were some of the loudest things Iāve ever heard.
Iāve just bought two seven-inch records by the Hamburg band Hallo Werner Clan.
And one of them has the most blatant and intense bass Iāve ever heard on a record.
I donāt have anything like that on ANY of my techno, drumānābass records. Nor on any other.
ā¦ Whenever I have visitors, I play it. 7"!
And (attention, surreptitious advertising):
I am involved in a festival (lalafestival.de)
We have a floor there called the āDruckkammerā.
Itās acoustically insulated so that you can have a conversation on the dance floor even at full volume*. ā¦But afterwards everything still shakes.
The sound only comes out of the speakers - there are no reflections.
*yes, that wasnāt my plan - itās admirable and stupid at the same time.
For me, āheavinessā isnāt just the sound, the pitch or volume.
Itās more about the line itself, when to play, when to hold. The spaces that create the anticipation for the bass again.
Too much volume often kills the pitching of the notes, too. Most inside spaces, the bassline is ruined by the misguided desire to have the bass as loud as possible. Depends on the venue though ofc. Good example, Brixton Academy, the basslines are never clear when too loud.
Squarepusher live on the Ultravisitor tourā¦the entire show was one incredible bass line after another, culminating in the total destruction of Come On My Selector.
Iām going to say a lot of Too Short tracks are probably pretty good for the heavy bass. 808+Moog-style bass=Heavy.
Funny thing related to Too Short, a friend of mine just opened a hot-dog shop here in Seattle, and Too Short was there for the opening. I have a pic of them. Couldnāt make the opening myself unfortunately.
Nicolas Jaar had this experimental set up in an old military bunker in the Netherlands. It wasnāt him playing live, but he had an exposition this bunker where you were allowed with max 4 people. The bunker was initially used to test guns. So it was quite narrow but really long (sort of a tunnel). Most of the time during the exposition there was light and some noise. So you could walk and see some things. But at a certain moment everything went completely dark and you got hit by these intens hard bass sounds. It was a freaking experience because you couldnāt see anything and the bass sound quality was insane. Really really good but also frightening at the same time
, and without a crowd to soak up the sound, the bass coming off that track was truly earth-shaking. In many years of festivals and all kinds of clubs not much comes close. Whenever I hear Breathe it reminds me of that moment.
