New Groovy Mix by Morphamish

No, I'm not being a hippie, that's what it is called. The man himself describes it as "Bassy groovy mix to download - 119-129bpm. Featuring tracks from Morphamish interspersed with others from DFRNT+Paranoise, Four Tet, A Made Up Sound, Untold+Roska, and Hostage+Blackwax" and who are we to argue?

Groovy Mix - Morphamish by morphamish

Free Valta & Minikin

Valta & Minikin - Let's go mental by ragandbone
Remember those bassline loving Ukranians we covered about a month back? Well, we've just stumbled on this wee freebie from them via Rag And Bone's Soundcloud, and it's just as brilliantly wobble-tastic as previous ventures. lovely.

Valta and Minikin - Man Down / Bad Sex

Valta & Minikin - Bad Sex / Man Down (Rag And Bone) released 31 Jan 2011
Rag and Bone continue to belt the living shit out of it, with the debut 12" from Ukranian duo Valta and Minikin; two cuts of wub-mental breaks, shouty hype vocals and punishing bass noise. It's very much in line with the previous Rag and Bone releases from King Cannibal et al, kicking in fast, hard and to the point. Opening with a tightly arpeggiated melody, the wobble lurks in the background, ready to pounce, until the holler of "Man down!" kicks everything into big bassline territory. Strapping James Brown to the operating table and Six-million-dollaring him to fuck, Valta and Minikin create a surgically-enhanced form of breakbeat designed to track down and destroy unbelievers. I remember .at/on, a Ukranian glitch/noise producer explaining a graph where the X-axis is "popularity of dubstep in an area", and the Y-Axis "prevalence of Ketamine in the same area" - clearly the vets in Kiev need to be taking better care of their prescription booklets. Indeed, whilst much of UK bass music is plunging deeper into the abstract, and seperating itself from the full-on rave-phenomena of the past few years, it definitely seems like in Kiev, Bigger is definitely Better. The only exception to the turbo-powered walloping is a gentle steppa's guitar pushing it's way through the mix on occaison; a sound that misleadingly introduces the B-side, setting us nicely up for a RSD-esque skanker before the barking bassline comes back in full force.

To be fair, who expected any kind of subtlety from a track titled Bad Sex? Nah. If you like the Squire of Gothos album (who doesn't?) or other Rag and Bone artists like King Cannibal, NoYeahNo, Stagga etc, you should definitely get this in your record collection. If you prefer your bass to tease, scintillate, and draw you into an atmosphere, put down the spliff and give this a shot. Not suitable for children under 16years of age, women expecting babies, or those of a nervous disposition. May contain chemicals.

Dirty Disco Youth - Minds Off (Tommie Sunshine & Figure Remix)

This is one of the sickest basslines I have heard in a while - the lfo work is outstanding! Waaaay better than the original, this will tear any dancefloor up, as witnessed at Che Camille's Edinburgh Fringe show back in August.



Mr Figure has been a really really nice man and put the track up for download.

Squire of Gothos - We Do Scorpion Things

Squire of Gothos - We Do Scorpion Things (Rag And Bone)
Squire of Gothos are a formidable live proposition who've been making waves across Britian with incendiary live sets, and have been bigged up to me by everyone from Scrabble and Gatr to random munters bumming fags outside of Optimo. Truthfully, I missed them in the face-hugging confines of Max's Kansas City (apologies to Lono for not making that one), so 'Scorpion Things is actually the first I've heard from them. Ooooft - these guys make Deathklok look subtle.

Rave is undergoing a weird reevaluation at the moment; the likes of Burial and Distance flit into the shadows of neon pyres to half-inch mournful synth lines, whilst Optimo and Slabs of The Tabernacle like to ressurect the glory days from time to time, in all their full-on day-glo lunacy. Squire of Gothos obviously have no interest in either post-modern deconstructionism, or nostalgic reminisces - Rave is here, now and right up in your fucking bassbins. Right? Breakbeats, booming 808 kicks and screeching nippy synths are deployed with glorious abandon - if something's worth doing, it's worth doing harder than anyone else can handle. Big Yellow Smiley Faces, with it's wugga-wugga bassline, synthetic strings and fractured "kill everyone now" vocal, shouted at the top of it's voice, proves that Squire of Gothos are happy to act the fool - there's no pretention about hip or cool. It's just awesome.

In most instances, I'd hate the idiotic-ironic ticket, but like Dr McNinja or Axe Cop, Squire of Gothos work by the Ninja-pirate-robot-zombie priniciple - the more you multiply the awesome, the more awesome it actually becomes. Booming in at 135 bpm, opener Dark Thing blithely mixes both the modern and the classic; the hefty bass synth (filtering down to a sub) sounds a lot like the NI softsynth Massive, but the NEE NEE NEE melody and 303 cowbells are retro as fuck, and twice as beefy as anything a laptop can manage. It's a turn-your-brain-off slice of genius mentalism. After Hours Dog Racing and Flex Hype weigh in with a similar heft; all lfo-ed bass, chopped up vocal snippets and monster climaxes that make the lizard brain jump and squawk. Skitting between four four and dubstep syncopation, it invites every genre to join in the clusterfuck. More of the same, essentially, but if you were looking for surprises, then this is not the album for you. Without ever growing too repetitive, Squire Of Gothos manage to beat you round the head with the awesome stick for the next 60minutes (Cum wit Dat's "we're fucked" vocal being a favourite), before the writhing mess of bassline monsters finally gives birth to the glorious Til Da Morning. Four to the floor and wobbling like an early Skream production, its big, but when the vocal kicks in, in all it's harmonised cheesiness, it's hard not to love. This is the bastard-child of Candi Staton; the well-adjusted child of the drug-fuck generation leering about how it wants to "Dance until the morning comes" (slyly rhymed with "kickdrum") just like mommy and daddy did back in the fields of Suffolk.

Turn on, tune in, drop. Horrificaly dumb, but so worth the effort.