El-B, London
If you were to draw a family tree of modern UK bass, El-B would be at its roots, a signet-ringed godfather with everyone from new-school drum’n’bassers to garage dons and the dubstep faithful coming to pay respect on the day of his daughter’s wedding. As one half of Groove Chronicles in the late 90s, he took the hallmarks of UKG – swinging snares, R&B songcraft – and pooled jazz and monstrous bass underneath it. In the end, this low end started sucking in light, with productions from he and his Ghost Camp crew becoming increasingly thick and reverberant. It’s a little too pat to say El-B singlehandedly gave birth to dubstep, but he certainly helped tip the scales towards bass. A truly cosmopolitan selector as a result of 2o years amid London’s polyglot music, you might also hear road rap, deep house, cumbia and grime alongside all the aforementioned styles at this tiny record-store party.
Rye Wax, SE15, Thu
BB
Loops With Numbers, Glasgow
Red Bull Music Academy continues to bring underground music to the masses this month on a UK tour, with this collaboration with Numbers taking over the impressive Gallery of Modern Art. Loops With Numbers is a sensory experiment that will pull electronic music and digital art out of the club and into the public space. The centrepiece of it all is a giant sphere, suspended from the gallery atrium, and illuminated by projections inspired by specially commissioned soundtracks by Numbers artists and some of their closest musical friends. Just wait until you’re deep in the audiovisual Loop; you’ll be totally absorbed.
Gallery Of Modern Art, Fri
LM
Dimensions Festival Launch, Sheffield
While excitable festival-goers will need to wait until late August for the Croatian festival itself, Dimensions is drumming up plenty of support in the meantime with an impressive series of launch parties. Tonight’s instalment is hosted in conjunction with genre-spanning promoters Banana Hill and looks to combine classic disco glitz and authentic Afrocentric rhythms. Horse Meat Disco will be schooling in the former with their usual panache, while Clap Clap brings his evocative, sample-heavy live set. They’re joined by bumping DJ sets from Noema, Afriquoi and Banana Hill’s freewheeling resident pair, JVC and Cervo, whose selections naturally set the tone for the jubilant, anything-goes nature of their parties.
Hope Works, Sat
JT
The Trilogy Tapes & Black Atlantic, London
Amid the amber lighting and baked goods, Cafe Oto’s surface gentility is frequently ruptured by blasts of free jazz and power electronics. Now, techno label The Trilogy Tapes is rocking up with a strobe, a smoke machine and a subwoofer to further despoil the place. Topping the bill are London-based duo Rezzett, now three EPs deep on the label, playing – like many on The Trilogy Tapes – muffled techno with crisp-packet snares and sublime machine funk; while Beatrice Dillon offers her subtly polyrhythmic techno études. Label boss Will Bankhead brings his wax.
Cafe Oto, E8, Thu
BB
James Ruskin, Bristol
Kubrick-inspired promoters Room 237 continue their run of modern techno bookings with Croydon’s main man, whose Blueprint label – founded in 1996 with the late Richard Polson – dispersed a thrilling new energy into the UK scene. In the studio, the pair created hard, crackling party records, while the malicious and muscular sound of Ruskin’s solo productions has been resonating with techno heads worldwide for the past 15 years.
Bridewell Island, Fri
GT
This piece was modified on 24 Mar to make it clear that Numbers artists would be supplying music for the installation Loop With Numbers but would not be appearing live.
