Bomb the Bass
| Bomb the Bass | |
|---|---|
Tim Simenon, Zürich '08
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| Background information | |
| Origin | London, England |
| Genres | Electronica, hip hop, downtempo, trip hop |
| Years active | 1987–present |
| Labels | !K7, Rhythm King, Electric Tones, Stoned Heights |
| Associated acts | Neneh Cherry, Depeche Mode, Justin Warfield, Paul Conboy, Jah Wobble, Sinéad O'Connor, Atticus Ross, Consolidated, A.P.E., Lali Puna, Jack Dangers |
| Website | Official website |
Bomb the Bass is an electronic dance music one-man band consisting of English musician and producer Tim Simenon.
As a name, Bomb the Bass came from Simenon's approach to collaging and mixing sounds whilst DJing in the mid- to late 1980s; he says "samples were either scratched in live or sampled and looped on top of the rhythm section. So the concept was one of bombing the bass line with different ideas, with a collage of sounds. Bombing was a graffiti term for writing, like people would 'bomb' trains or whatever."
Whilst the bass line and drum tracks of Beat Dis were written by Simenon, the rest of the track was compiled from samples. Having already taken a part-time sound course at The School of Audio Engineering in Holloway, Simenon was able to build "Beat Dis" himself - assisted in the process by producer Pascal Gabriel, who would go on to experience his own success as co producer of S'Express and a wide variety of other artists.
According to the BBC, which featured "Beat Dis" on their clip-based TOTP2 show, the track contains an alleged 72 samples, including lifts from hip hop like Public Enemy, funk (including The Jimmy Castor Bunch), and Ennio Morricone. Also featured were dialogue clips from the television shows Dragnet, and Thunderbirds. Talking to Sound On Sound magazine many years later, Simenon said of the tracks construction: "I suppose I was tuned in to what was current at the time and was able to pick and choose what I wanted with some knowledge of how it should be applied."
Jolted into action by the success of "Beat Dis", Bomb the Bass moved from singles success to album act, with debut LP, Into the Dragon - the name of which aligned with hip-hop culture's growing fondness for 1970s kung-fu movies. Made up of ten tracks, the collection expanded further the band's fascination with hip-hop breakbeats, rap, and that musical sub-culture's creative mashing of multi-media pop culture references.
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Wikipedia