Fitting the Pieces Together: FIT NYC v.1

Seeing Trouble & Bass members Luca Venezia (Drop the Lime) and Patrick Rood (The Captain), and later Star Eyes at the inaugural FIT party on Saturday night made me already miss New York City. It was not unlike watching the street wear movement begin to infiltrate Rap’s upper-echelon as I sat at my laptop freshman year of college. Then last summer as I roamed the cozy confines of the Lower East Side I naively expected the ALIFE store on Rivington to take up the entire block. Don’t believe the hype. Or do, and make sure you get to the ALIFE store the night before to get those new Puma collabs.

FIT, sponsored by the Dallas based Unit One Productions and an official arm of the “Heavy Bass” community here in the states, is of a similar DIYmovement involving a small community of like-minded and inspired individuals. Unlike Electro here in the States and abroad, the Bass community (Dubstep/Bassline/UK Gaage) has a more niche following. While Bassline has exploded in the UK with the likes of T2’s Pop charts hit “Heartbroken,” the States have been reluctant to respond. But that should come as no surprise because the States have been playing catch-up to Europe’s club scene since Jungle first appeared in the 90’s.

Saturday night at the Knitting Factory was one of a few burgeoning examples of the States response to that movement. The only things absent all night were the sounds of American producers. But at FIT that night was one of a handful of producers who have rightfully crossed the Atlantic, and Drop the Lime’s playful enjoyment of DJ opener !ANJAMZ colorful Bassline set was just another affirmation that yes, the State’s Bass Movement has begun. With more than one appearance at the legendary Fabric in London as well as appearances by fellow crew members Math Head and Starkey, the DTL and the T&B franchise has bombs and bass pointed East.

And to witness fellow bass heavyweight and headliner Jason Mundo on Saturday night confirmed the worthiness of the “Bass Odyssey” for those of us unsure how cities like New York and Dallas would fare in both the love affair and contest occurring between the pond. Mundo, Unit One associate from Dallas and part of Dallas’s infamous Dub Assembly, took the stage around 2AM and played out to an auspicious crowd of 70-80 people as diverse as any crowd I’ve ever seen. A clear Original Gangster in support of UK Garage and Dubstep, Mundo made me feel like I was young and naïve again. I didn’t know a single tune and how refreshing it was. The smiles were slathered on like messy ice cream and the high-pitched divas of Mundo’s Garage records were enough to make me giggle. And looking over at the night’s founder, principle promoter and MC Than Ngyuen, giggling and prancing were all he was capable of.

Saturday night was family night and the warmth present in that room was enough to invite even the most naïve and farthest flung into its community. Because whether you’re on the 1’s and 2’s, handing out flyers, or just dancing your tail off, it’s a family affair. Than (MC Tiny) follows in the footsteps of his forbears, hosting the night’s event as an MC and hype man, a position most commonly seen in the Hip-Hop community. The importance of that figure in the Hip-Hop community often seems superfluous, as there isn’t just one hype man there are five, and they all seem like they’re just along for the ride. On Saturday, Tiny made FIT an event. It was his to drop to the floor, or his to make memorable. With so many club events left to the DJ’s control, it can feel like a disparate relationship. On Saturday the vision was clear and the crowd was not left alone. Sometimes booze speaks too loudly and the genuine feeling of community is distorted. Luckily with the touchstone of an MC, there is no room for hiding in the darkness of the bar.

Much of the dance music we here today and especially that which is most popular in Europe, is influenced by the subversive and uniting forces of Hip-Hop and Reggae. Most overtly through Baltimore Club, Dubstep and Ragga, is the evidence of those founding vibrations. Sometimes those origins are taken for granted by the seduction of pop-culture’s ability to amplify and sensationalize, but what I found on Saturday night was a “thank you,” “try this, “and “wow.” Watching the awkward shuffles of Drop the Lime’s stringy legs and the B-Boy bounce of a Latino woman’s calf-high Chuck Taylors, I saw not the vision for FIT, but of a global sound and a unifying rhythm, and we all fit right in.

Dubchild @ Trouble & Bass: Ready To Rumble

Friday night saw the arrival of Grime/Dubstep OG Dubchild to the famed Trouble & Bass monthly at Love in the West Village. Dubchild, like many T&B invites and inspirations, hails from the 4/4-rich United Kingdom and shares bills with heavyweights like Caspa, Rusko and Hatcha. A short, stout and smiley man, Dubchild brought the T&B regulars to their knees on Friday night with a dub-heavy set that left the crowd both mesmerized and unsure what to do with their bass-fractured bodies. Looking around at the dead, I could see some bewildered folk. A particularly batty front-section of the crowd clearly knew Dubchild’s work as well as that of his colleagues, leaving a crowd majority feeling like they were on the wrong side of the Atlantic.
Many of Dubchild’s initial tunes were minimal and fragmented, a more heady and traditional flavor of Dubstep that left some of the T&B Crew fans a little impatient. But at one crucial point in the set, 145 BPMs of Bassline bubbliness came ripping through a chunky dub track throwing everyone to the wall and bringing out the two-finger gun points, confirming Dubchild’s ownership of Love & bringing the Trouble & Bass crew back from the bar.
Trouble & Bass is commonly known as the DJ crew comprised of founder Luca (Drop the Lime, Curses!), Math Head, principal promoter and DJ The Captain, Star Eyes, and new additions Starkey and AC Slater. Recently acquiring their LLC as a label, Friday night also celebrated the release of Math Head’s EP “Turn the Music Up.” Putting out a more prolific series of Drop the Lime releases as well as others, Trouble & Bass will more quickly find its immortality as a label. Combining the rising power of Dubstep and Bassline in the UK, Trouble & Bass has managed to fuse the powers of Electro and Baltimore Club here in the States with the bass heavy leanings of UK’s club scene. While Dubstep has become the most recent kin to UK Garage and Drum n’ Bass, there has yet to be a State side re-interpretation of those genres. On tracks like Drop the Lime’s remix for Moby’s “Alice”, it becomes apparent that there is a conversation going on.
As a result of that conversation, to see Dubchild on Friday night felt strangely familiar to those of us who know the context. The “brratt, brratt” of the gun mimics were second nature, and even some keys came out towards the end of the night. As the glint of those keys glinted in Dubchild’s eye, he looked a bit shocked and even a little flushed. To receive the welcome that the Internet had been preparing us for was overwhelming for him and to go back and listen to Skream interviews about Dub War, you realize the power of American taste when it’s at its most proactive.
And what Dubchild did on Friday night was to remind us of the roots. Dub & reggae, more than anything in that room Friday night, was what created Friday night, and the Jamaican patois was no doubt thick and fitting. It’s that very synthesis that the States is starting catch up to, the torch that Trouble & Bass finally took and that Dubchild is currently leading the pack in.
As things were powering down around 3AM, Dubchild decided to say thank you. Still yet to be found in cyberspace, Biggie’s “Kick In the Door” came remixed to gritty perfection at time when our bass-faces were nearly cached and we were ready for a round of applause. At the juncture between Dubstep and Rap, death is upon you. Unless Jeezy or Biggie is rapping over sonorous horns or epic synths, the feeling of those men’s voices paired with mind-numbing 4//4 drums and dystopian bass creatures is enough to make me drop out of school and start e-mailing Project Pat my beats. But what I realized Friday night was that come 01.20.09, I’ll decide to stay in school to watch America usher in an answer to what the globe has been talking about, and maybe we’ll have something bass to say to the UK.