Heaviest Bassline You've Ever Heard?

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 :ant:, 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 ā€œstandardā€. Are there particular tunes sound engineers use to test their systems?

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Public Image Limited’s bass was so heavy live my teeth hurt.

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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.

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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 I’ve ever heard.

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I’ve just bought two seven-inch records by the Hamburg band Hallo Werner Clan.
And one of them has the most blatant and intense bass I’ve ever heard on a record.
I don’t have anything like that on ANY of my techno, drum’n’bass records. Nor on any other.
… 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 ā€œDruckkammerā€.
It’s acoustically insulated so that you can have a conversation on the dance floor even at full volume*. …But afterwards everything still shakes.
The sound only comes out of the speakers - there are no reflections.

*yes, that wasn’t my plan - it’s admirable and stupid at the same time.

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For me, ā€˜heaviness’ isn’t just the sound, the pitch or volume.

It’s 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.

Must be getting old :grin:

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Wow incredibly jealous of that, Coil is one I missed seeing live and really regret it.

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Squarepusher live on the Ultravisitor tour…the entire show was one incredible bass line after another, culminating in the total destruction of Come On My Selector.

Squarepusher=Bass God

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Norwegian band Motorpsycho played in a forest where I live. Earth-shattering bass! Loved it

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Plastic People London circa 2006 early Dubstep on a Funktion One System.

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Heck yes; The Bug with Warrior Queen at Plastic People was like being bathed in bass.

See also anything involving Ed Rush and/or Optical at The Rocket on Holloway Road in the '90s.

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This is absolutely my experience. Heavy without making it unpleasant… not easy to achieve, and rare.

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Emalkay on a Dutch festival, when dubstep was cool for one summer.

Sub was mental, flapping trousers.

but pretty much anything on that album tho…

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Going off more recent experience, Stin from Chat Pile is absolutely crushing in his bass duties.

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Used to go to sub dub and iration Steppas in Leeds around that time, wasn’t massively into dubstep but the bass was unreal.

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I’m going to say a lot of Too Short tracks are probably pretty good for the heavy bass. 808+Moog-style bass=Heavy. :smiley:

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. Couldn’t make the opening myself unfortunately.

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Nicolas Jaar had this experimental set up in an old military bunker in the Netherlands. It wasn’t 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 couldn’t see anything and the bass sound quality was insane. Really really good but also frightening at the same time

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