Bass meets Space

Cultural critics have claimed that western pop music has lost its powers of self-renewal and is now reliant on recycling familiar elements from the glory days of long ago.  Anyone who encounters contemporary club music will rapidly be convinced that the opposite is true.  Particularly in London, a city whose musical activity has traditionally been enriched by migrant subcultures, a whole series of new forms of expression have developed and combined in quick succession over last five years.  For some time now they have been referred to collectively as ‘dubstep’.  Although stylistically it is extremely heterogeneous and is engaged in a gritty transformative process, this new style is characterized by minimalist compositional structures, syncopated rhythms and low frequency bass lines.  Thus it shares an affinity with more established forms of electronic club music such as dub or drum ‘n’ bass.

In collaboration with the music magazine SPEX the Ruhrtriennale presents a club night with some of the leading figures of the dubstep scene.  Performances by Appleblim, Ramadanman, Scuba and Shackleton make Bass Meets Space a night with a top-quality line-up of boundary-breaking music in a form that can usually only be found in London’s hottest venues.

“My main inspirations,” says Shackleton, “are Erkan Ogur, an incredible saz maestro from Turkey, Ziad Rahbani, a Lebanese accordionist and band leader, and West African percussion.  You’ll always be able to hear these sounds in what I play.”

The series Century of Song has been produced by the Ruhrtriennale.