The first show in a new event series, BASSICK, presented by Everything’s Nice, took place at Mercy Lounge last night, as an addendum to STRICTLY DUBSTEP. After arriving at a sold out show to witness a number of drunk, show attendee hopefuls on the front porch, screaming over the blasting bass fury from inside, we followed the vibrations and teetered our way up the shuddering steps into a hotbox of sweat, glazed eyes, and bass ecstasy. (No pun intended).
We realized that we weren’t the only ones whose guilty pleasures include music of the bass variety, judging by the large assortment of individuals surrounding us. There were hippies, dance music nerds, hipsters, average Joe’s, glamour-pusses, and a lot of those underage girls who like to wear short skirts and get drunk and make out with each other in front of frat dudes. Dub don’t discriminate, which we appreciated, as well as the variety of styles we heard throughout the night. Apparently the purpose of BASSICK was to showcase all the sub genres of bass music, (i.e. dubstep, house, jungle, and a bunch of other mini genres) proudly represented by our local dj’s and producers, who were opening up for the national headliner, SKRILLEX. We determined that the actual purpose, however, was to give everyone an excuse to wear glow jewelry and pack us in like haphazardly-dancing sardines.
Local dj, Wick-It The Instigator, laid down the slow, nasty beats that we’d been craving, and it was clear the audience had been as well. You can’t really get any lower on the low end, or further into the ol’ half-time groove than Wick-It. In fact, we wonder why he doesn’t go by DJ Womp-It. HA! He played originals, as well as impressively mashed up countless old favorites from every imaginable artist, creating instant audience sing- alongs for him to instigate, and us to dance our pants off to. (Not really, but one girl did before she crowd-surfed and shrieked ‘It’s my birthday’)! We gotta admit that Wick-It was the local standout, which is rare in a genre that has so many bassickly required similarities and obvious characteristics. (You can hear what a STAND OUT he is by checking out his Soundcloud page).
Let’s just say that since our attendance was strictly business, we didn’t really share in the same sense of “eurphoria,” that the majority of the audience seemed to be experiencing, so we suspect that for someone who was drunk, hallucinating, or already a huge fan of Skrillex, the experience was fantastically stimulating. We waited around to hear that song he did in the Twilight movie, along with his remix of Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro,”–(again, this night was about guilty pleasures)–and while it was all bass-heavy, and we could certainly see why people were so consumed by his set, things just got a little too fast-paced and we decided that Wick-It was more of our style.
“This has turned into a rave,” my friend aptly pointed out, so we decided to head home, in awe at our foolishness for going to that type of show so narcotically unprepared. We’ll be sure to remember next time though, and hopefully by then, our heads will have stopped womp-womping.
—Erin Manning