B'More club in 2010
January 14
The Baltimore sound has had an interesting evolution over the last few years. I've got to give props, the first track to really turn me onto it was this Sinden remix of Plan B back in 2006. I caned the arse off it, even if it does have a 2 bar intro, and is on the inside of a 4-track 12".
So anyway, since then we've seen B'More come up to be the hot new sound - after the best part of 15 years barely known outside of Maryland, and then almost as quickly be replaced in the favour of hipsters everywhere by the likes of Kuduro and Kwaito. It's still going, mind, and is starting to change up, I think. Firstly, it's incorporating a lot more 'rave' sounds. This latest effort from Johnny Blaze is a promo for Fly Beat Music and features hoovers and a cheesy electro house bassline alongside the standard heavyweight subs and pulled beat. At about 3 mins in you get to hear the beat on its own - which is great, properly funky:
There's a lot more of that about, but I think a better way forward is to push the hip-hop angle a bit more. I've been noticing a lot more Club producers doing beats for rappers recently, maybe I wasn't looking out before but there's some sick stuff coming through now. DJ Booman has been dropping some wicked stuff - check his mix of E Major's 'Paper Running' here, or this beat for local rapper Mullyman, which uses B'More production but steps away from the standard think-break-and-one-rhythm thang. Feels much more immediate than the Southern clean-808 kind of sound if you ask me:
There's even dubstep influenced Baltimore coming out - check this remix of Dave Nada for instance. Fierce, and released as a free 320! You'd be mad not to.
Handily, we've got this DJ Tameil mix to wrap things up; which pretty much runs the gamut - from the unforgiveably cheesy, to the unforgiveably badly produced, via the absolutely inspired moments of genius - it's all in there. And that's half the fun of it if you ask me - wading through piles of crap to find the good stuff. It's like a 2nd hand record shop, only all the records are dubious bootlegs instead of Neil Diamond compilations.
Anyway, I'm gonna conclude with this DJ Class video. One of the catchiest tracks of last year, dude takes a video camera, makes himself a quick and dirty video and gets 81,000 youtube hits. I love it.
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Posted by bassmusic
