Guest Post: The New Urban Jungle

Sanil Sudan, co-owner of The Massive - a DnB/Dubstep collective, gives us a low down on the prevailing urbanist culture in India.

"Is this one of your another stupid boom-boom plik- plok gigs again?" It's a question i get asked often, and the answer is always a "Put a genre here" night. "Drum and Bass/Dubstep" was the invariable answer this time.

"What's that?”

"There's going to be a lot of Bass", I said cockily, pretending with fail to be helpful. They usually proceed with a volley of idiotic questions which are quite frankly out of the scope of this article and sanity in general.

EDM-Electronic Dance Music as we know today has come a long way in our country. From the Goa Rave culture to full blown Festivals and the current crop of International quality live acts & Producers, EDM is getting the recognition it deserves.

Drum and Bass began as an offshoot of the United Kingdom rave scene of the very early 90's. The genre is characterized by fast break beats with heavy bass and sub-bass lines. As befits its name, the bass element of the music is particularly pronounced, with the comparatively sparse arrangements of drum and bass tracks allowing room for bass lines that are deeper than most other forms of dance music. Consequently, drum and bass parties are often advertised as featuring uncommonly loud and bass-heavy sound systems.

The thing that really attracts me to D&B/Dubstep is that you can find influences from all different kinds of music.  Soul, funk, hip hop, jazz to electro, trance, rock and not to forget reggae! This makes it a very diverse genre to play .With over 180 genres and subgenres of EDM (yea that’s right!),Drum and Bass/Dubstep has been making quite a noise lately with quality acts like BASSFoundation (New Delhi), Mental Martians (Mumbai) and Nucleya (Udyan Sagar) among few who are taking the scene to the next level, also Venues worth mentioning like Zenzi Mills (Mumbai) and Bacchus (Bengaluru) playing a pivotal role with regular gigs giving the scene a much needed direction.

BASSFoundation is a monthly night promoted by a collective of Dj's (Maarten Klien, DJ Praxis) and a Brilliant  MC (Taru Dalmia aka Delhi Sultanate).The concept behind this night is simple: Great Music, quality Artist and good vibes. On entering the venue, good vibes instantly hit you with some really Chilled out Drum and Bass blaring through a really big sound system, and you can see Delhi Sultanate vibing it with the Massive and eating Bananas (well quite literally) assuring you of a great night thereon.

Drum and Bass as the Purist will tell you has always been about spreading a message and uniting the Massive or the Junglist as fondly called under the umbrella of Bass and Rhythm. Delhi Sultanate being the Gangsta he is does an A-grade job of what you can say is a quality MC act voicing everything from the IPL to dissing Govt bans and everything which comes in between with his razor sharp Militant attitude.

As the night progresses the whole place packs up to the brim with the Junglist massive, expats andeverybody else having a great time jumping around with some high energy Drum and Bass & a very in your face Bass driven dubstep. Often you have to remove yourself from the Dancefloor to catch a breath and look around the madness being created by them.

Within 1 year of its Conception, the fan following BASSFoundation has created is mind numbingly ridiculous. More often then not you can observe BASSFoundation tags/flyers all over South Delhi roads which is worth mentioning the effort which goes into promotion of their Gigs.

If EDM is the Rock & Roll of our generation, Drum and Bass is surely its Punk brother and it is here to stay and make some filthy noise.

Do visit The Massive's official website for more dope on this junglist movement. Also visit BASSFoundation's Myspace page for updates on their latest gigs.