Every bass festival
worth your weekend.

Bass music is an umbrella term for genres built primarily around low-frequency sub-bass as the melodic and rhythmic lead element. The term itself came into use in the UK around 2010 as a way to describe the post-dubstep scene without committing to a single subgenre — artists like James Blake, Mount Kimbie and SBTRKT were all making electronic music that used bass the way other genres use vocals or chords, but the productions did not fit cleanly into dubstep, UK garage or drum and bass.

The deeper roots go back to Jamaican sound system culture in the 1950s and 1960s, where massive custom-built rigs focused on sub-bass reproduction became the template for UK rave. Reggae, dub and dancehall lineages shaped UK garage, grime, dubstep, future garage and bassline — all of which are now sometimes grouped under "bass music." Labels like Hyperdub, founded by Kode9 in 2004, and Swamp 81, founded by Loefah in 2009, defined the intellectual wing of the scene. Outlook Festival in Croatia, which ran from 2008 to 2019, provided the physical home.

Modern bass sits between 130 and 150 BPM depending on subgenre, with sub-bass as the main instrument and a heavy emphasis on sound system playback — the music is made to be felt, not just heard. The genre has splintered into dubstep (covered separately), bassline, UK funky, future bass, trap-influenced bass, riddim and a dozen other dialects, but the unifying feature is the primacy of the low end.

A bass festival is defined by its sound system. The best bass events invest more in rigs than in stage visuals — Outlook's reputation was built on the fact that every stage ran a bespoke sound system tuned for sub-bass reproduction. You feel the music in your chest, your legs and your ribs before you consciously hear it. The physicality is the entire point.

Crowds are UK-heavy, London-heavy in particular, and skew toward the streetwear and sound system culture end of UK youth fashion. Expect trackies, tech fleeces, bucket hats, vintage rave T-shirts and a strong contingent of sound system veterans in their thirties and forties. Dancing is closer to the floor than at EDM festivals — bass music rewards a rooted, hips-driven dance style rather than jumping.

Programming runs across the full bass spectrum. A single night at a bass festival might include dubstep, drum and bass, jungle, garage, bassline and grime. MCs are essential — every proper bass set has one, and the interaction between DJ and MC is a central feature of the performance. First-timers should know that bass festivals often run all night and that the sunrise and post-dawn slots are considered some of the best in the scene.

The modern bass music scene is impossibly wide. At the dubstep end, Skream, Benga, Mala, Digital Mystikz, Coki and the DMZ crew defined the original sound. At the drum and bass end, the full Hospital and Metalheadz rosters qualify. In between, artists like Kode9, Joy Orbison, Pearson Sound, Pangaea, Toddla T, Shy FX and Chase and Status cover garage, future garage, bassline and the post-dubstep territory.

Newer bass artists include Interplanetary Criminal, Sammy Virji, TSHA, overmono, Bklava and Nia Archives. Nia Archives in particular has brought jungle back into mainstream UK attention. Fred again.. crosses from the pop-electronic world into proper UK bass contexts at festivals like Parklife and Glastonbury.

Subgenre knowledge matters. UK funky is distinct from UK garage is distinct from bassline is distinct from dubstep. The crowd at an Interplanetary Criminal set will be different from the crowd at a Coki set even though both would be called "bass music" by an outsider. The unifying feature is the UK rave and sound system lineage and the primacy of the sub.