Car Audio Bass as a Precursor to Dubstep

No one, honestly no-one except the mad Russian/Ukrainian guys at collector's blog Drop Da Bass, seems to like car audio bass. A genre of slowish, instrumental Miami Bass from the mid-nineties specifically geared towards car tuners and audiophiles, it's not dirty enough for the hipster crowd, not pretentious enough for progressives, too aloof for the inner city and too foreign for ravers. Even respected bass historian Pappa Wheelie, who loves the most ridiculous extremes of bass music, claism that "even the artists and fans of Car Audio Bass feel their branch of Bass sounds sterile".

But maybe the time for the genre has come? Because as I've been finding out after downloading too much content off the aforementioned blog, there's a strange resemblence between some of the tracks and that most current of electronic genres, dubstep. The common heritage in electro, breakbeat hip-hop and dub/techno really shows, and bar the drum sounds there's quite a bit that could almost pass at Forward.


Here's three tracks with an obvious bent towards the same sort of thing dubstep is trying to go for. And then I've even left out the track which actually has surprisingly authentic-sounding wobble bass in its dubsteppy middle-eight.

Def Bass Crew - Bass Bender

Drum Machine Overdrive - Thumpin' Bass Beat

Bass Boy - Blinded by Bass (Slowed Down by DJ Deep and Techmaster PEB)