South West Sounds on Record Collector Magazine

Think Bristol, think bass. The city has a beat-heavy lineage that stretches back to the 50s, with crumbling St Pauls terraces shaking to the sound of calypso and ska played at ribcage-crushing volumes. Bristol has continued its love affair with all things bass and shows no signs of stopping. Is it vibrating on otherworldly frequencies? Or something weirder? Harry Sword tunes in to find out



The past 30-odd years have seen consistently brilliant music emanating from Bristol’s hilly grey streets, tree-lined avenues and inner city estates alike. From the languid, paranoid stylings of Massive Attack; idiosyncratic drum’n’bass from Full Cycle Records; free party-starting block-rocking beats courtesy of Smith & Mighty; Tricky’s unhinged night visions; the vital dubstep emanating from Tectonic and Punch Drunk Records; Livity Sound and Idle Hands’ bass-driven techno mutations and the crackling dubwise power of the Young Echo collective, the vibes that from the city have been wildly varied but centered by a warm and enveloping wave of sub bass.



If we look back to the 50s, the city had one of the largest and most well established Caribbean immigrant populations in the country. Largely centred around the St Pauls and Bishopston areas, Bristol was an early adopter of ska, calypso, bluebeat and (later) reggae and dub.



In 1966 The Bamboo Club was granted a live music license, becoming the first club in Bristol to specifically cater for the city’s burgeoning West Indian community, holding regular ska and calypso nights, and this appreciation of Caribbean nightlife would continue well into the 70s and 80s, with venues such as The Blue Lagoon, The Dockland Settlement and Malcolm X Centre regularly playing host to both touring roots bands and system clashes. …(続きは誌面にて)