- Stepping through the doors into the first floor of Nottingham's Stealth, you're met with an inimitable feeling; the stirring, familiar sensation that this may just be another satellite residence of UK bass music. The venue offers little in the way of distractions, is charmingly intimate and decked entirely in black, save a giant print of the venue's name on the back wall. Dazzling strobes cut through the room's suitably dingy "L-shape," perfectly suited for a crowd, who, split roughly 50/50 between American Apparel adorned hipsters and sportswear-flecked badmen, seem genuinely at home with the venue's undeniable, rough-edged charm.
As Julio Bashmore took to the decks, however, the crowd were at considerably less than full strength, offering an initially muted reception for one of electronic music's most recently celebrated acts. As the set built steam, and the dance floor slowly packed with contorting bodies, Bashmore noticeably moved into a stride, storming through a set of mutated house offshoots, which are littered with semi-familiar vocal cuts, playful, jibing synth lines and juddering basslines. Though Bashmore offered a thoroughly enjoyable set of infectious house and funky hybrids, it was only when he dropped his recent "Battle for Middle You" cut that he received an appropriately rapturous reaction. From the moment the crowd heard the track's instantly recognisable synth hits, there was a palpable upturn in mood—a deserved response, but, considering the strong, danceable set of electronic music that only received mild aplomb, perhaps a little unfair.
The faint smell of weed wafting across the still-loosely packed dance floor seemed an appropriate way to herald the arrival of Loefah, who appeared intent to stun anyone not yet familiar with his Swamp 81 label, producing a set that saw the DMZ cohort trading his smoky half-step atmospherics for irresistible freneticism. It's not entirely unreasonable to expect a set of cavernous minimalism from a man undeniably more at home with a sine wave than most, and certain elements of the crowd seem to echo that sentiment, as one hooded punter muttered, "What the fuck is this?" and exited swiftly for a cigarette.
In this case, though, resistance to change is ultimately self-defeating as Loefah proceeded to tear through a dizzying set of some of the most exciting cuts to come out of the UK bass music melting pot. "Sicko Cell" received a typically enthusiastic response, its refrain of "I'm the information/Cocaine powder" echoing appropriately round a room with perhaps one or two dusty white nostrils in residence. When one girl pushed to the front to request his remix of The Bug's "Jah War" and the producer responded with a curt shake of the head, it seemed as if Loefah, at least for now, intends to follow the tangent of UK bass music—irrepressible, ever-changing and laden with surprises.