“Ike piano”, a standout instrumental moment from ForeverIt is of good taste, pretty and elegant. This is not where you would expect to find Bassvictim. Henry ‘Ike’ Clateman is most at home behind the decks, blasting 808s and cheap synth dubstep in London’s underground clubs. Here, you’re dipping a piano into delay and letting little clusters of melody do their thing. Vocalist Maria Manow should be on stage, infusing vape-flavored fervor into the hearts of sweaty moshpits. Now let amorphous doe-eyed cello melodies float like abandoned balloons at a birthday party.
All this from a group that once wrote a hit about a thongthe leading figures of London’s lively experimental scene who reportedly They are not allowed to return in Berghain never again. The duo met in 2022 and almost immediately established themselves within the UK’s clique of strange musicians and artistic kids (see Charlie Osborne, world peace dmtand Ship sketch). Their music is strikingly maximalist, their spirit hedonistic and their movement proudly reactionary, inspired by the UK’s increasingly unaffordable nightlife and an obsession with the 2010s. With their fried Eurodance synths and salvos of clueless drum machines, the group is best known for their variety of “punk bass”; the self-coined sound of a generation raised on dubstep, shit and hyperpop.
His latest album, ForeverIt’s 33 minutes of glow-in-the-dark bass joy, and much of it still owes itself to the basspunk credo. The lyrics and song titles sound like stream-of-consciousness IG stories, and the production is delightfully put together thanks to the addition of Norwegian co-producer FAKETHIAS. The opener, “It’s me Maria,” falls into place; Bitcrushed synths oscillate between two notes until a barrage of low-quality 808s destroys the mix. It sounds like a corrupted MP3 file. Manow orchestrates the chaos of disk rot in parseltongue; her voice is jaunty, mangled and bent to the point of ruin, as if sung through a Fisher Price microphone.
