.WE, THE ANTS
It’s crawling with ants. Worldwide. In the ghettos of Kingston, in Berlin’s fuck-up joints, in the streets of Miami and Tampa, in London’s dubstep laboratories, in documenta city and in the bohemian bars of Paris, these busy little creatures are eating away tirelessly musical, cultural and political legacies – and every night, they can be found where people get their cultural updates while dancing for bliss: In the clubs.
The thundering echo of the global techno and hip hop revolutions is trembling in the speakers and millions of basss-infected slaves to the rhythm are screaming for more when the idea for this compilation comes about on one warm summer club night. Ralph Raabe, who runs the legendary underground club A.R.M., DJ and producer Michael Schmeisser, as well as Anne Khan and Robert Defcon from A.M.T. in Berlin formulate a mighty plan to expedite pop culture – a precedent case for the global music industry.
Creative know-how and a wealth of experience and contacts in the international music business are bundled into the new enterprise founded by Defcon and Khan: BRD BASSS. With a series of releases, interviews and events, they take this network of seemingly unrelated basss-atoms and make it publicly visible as what it is: A common ground for a hard-won irreverence. Everywhere, the basss-ants devour the foundations, which are tottering thanks to wars and crises, and process them into cash with which to layer a swirling structure made of banknotes around the multi-gendered queens upon the ruins that remain.
The ladies among the queens set the pace: Lexie Lee, Yo! Majesty, Rayzaflo with CLP, Sasha Perera (Jahcoozi), Anne Khan (A.M.T) and Terry Lynn, zapping back and forth between stilettos, battle, business management, family and big bellies abruptly revealed onstage as confidently as pimps between their playmates. These post-feminist gender-benders have reached a plateau beyond gender trouble. True, some things would be easier without a pussy, as the lesbians in YO! MAJESTY have determined – but it’s just more fun with one. Lexie Lee meets all questioning looks with a shout of »Peace, bitches«, while the ghetto-Jamaican Terry Lynn topples the system with a coy smile.
But the electrified basss-brains gathered around the ladies up the ante in the realm between techno, hip hop, Miami bass, dancehall, grime, garage and dub: The pioneers CLP, who have been pushing the basssy shit at the highest international level for years now, sound avant-gardist Pole, beat-shredder Robot Koch, bit-hopper Ben Mono in the mix by star-DJ Shir Khan, schizoid Marsimoto with his clever texts and basss-beatnik ComixXx must not go amiss here, and nor shall the club-excess monsters dOP from Paris and the Kassel-based Minimalists Schmeisser/Jean Daniel, who present their chilled-rocking basss-formula. Even the fattest basss-speakers explode here, like when RQM blew Missy Elliot’s subwoofer to pieces in front of 7000 people at a festival in Malaysia.
Underground is where the ants really get busy– like with DJ Maxximus, who has been opening dancing-ears up to deep basss for years with his »Bass The World« series at Berlin..s Club Maria and as a label operator, producer and remixer – here with Dirk Leyers on a Hiem remix – that’s grime-pioneer Roots Manuva rapping. And A.M.T, Mailerdaemon, König Quasi and Blake Worrell, known as an MC with the Puppetmastaz, provided the necessary developmental help in the underground at the improvised »Berlin Bass Sessions« in Berlin..s dreaded ghetto Moabit 2008 – before it got too cold down there and the ants returned to their actual mission: Starting a fire and burning up the money. Ultimately, the pressure of the basss-waves creates sparkling diamonds from the resulting debris. Diamonds being known to be the hardest material of this world.
We, the ants: We want more. More fuel to burn. And then we want to chill with dataMC in the taxi, whistling »Chapachapa« and waving at the people on the street with a broad grin. »BASSS Brains« assembles these 29 purveyors of basss-music on one compact disc for the first time.
Let the deep bass bang from the hubble-bubbles
James Joyce
