One of the largest massacres in the history of Mumbai occurred Sunday evening. Before you start panicking and flipping through your local news networks, I’m referring to the Escalate gig at Sitara Studios with Algorhythym, Nucleya and Sound Avtar and headlined by bassmeisters:  Skream and Benga.

I can’t begin to describe the extent of sheer destruction that happened on that fateful day. It makes me feel like a ‘Nam vet recovering from post traumatic stress disorder. The pure, unadulterated overload of bass that ripped my ears apart was much more than I expected.  There were some parts so filthy that I’m sure it would have had members of my local municipal ward organize clean-up drives.

Image Courtesy : http://www.nh7.in

But it’s not like Team Bangin didn’t expect to have our faces blown away. What we didn’t expect was how it would’ve been done. Sure, most of us had heard of Sitara Studios from local publications every now and then. But in reality, we couldn’t have expected a more fitting venue for the event.  It’s so hidden from public view, it took us a good 20 minutes to find the venue, despite the narration from our smart phones telling us that we had reached our destination. After locating the entrance, which was in a dinghy side alley, we walked into a closed compound of sorts, with run down brick walls. And after walking past a series of large wooden doors, we reached ground zero; An abandoned warehouse which was transmogrified into what would later become a site of mass bass fueled havoc. So underground and so run down, it kept true to the roots of how the bass heavy genres of Drum and Bass and DubStep first started taking hold of the youth of South London, and later, the world.

We entered to find the extremely gifted mixer duo, Varun Patra and Paloma Monnappa, also known as Algorhythym, taking the reigns for the night. They’re one of India’s fastest rising electronic acts, and by their performance, it was easy to see why. What stood out was their style infused with bass heavy sounds. What I particularly liked was the energy pouring out of the console after they took to the stage. As Paloma grooved and Varun bounced, you immediately knew they were in their element. They weren’t there to please people, they were there to play good music.  They took turns alternating between glitch and drum & bass very effortlessly. While Varun thrilled with some killer glitch, like Griz’ Getting Live and ClosedEyeVisuals’ Lux obscura, Paloma pumped the crowd with thundering DnB, like  High Contrast’s Kiss kiss bang bang

 Algorhythym gave way to MyFav Award winning  Drum & Bass/Dubstep Dj/Producer Piyush Bhatnagar, or Sound Avtar to most. Dropping a set spanning over all bass heavy genres, from the lighter side of DnB to really really filthy and grimy Dubstep with a little trap and glitch in the middle, amping up the intensity with finesse as he went along.  Starting with super chilled Dextel’s Don’t Look Back and pushing it all the way up to Noisia’s Diplodocus  and ending with Major Lazer’s Jah No Partial. Here’s the entire set, uploaded to Soundcloud. Listen to it for a feel of the absurdity and hysteria that went down that night.

Image Courtesy: http://www.nh7.in

After that delicious set, we had Udyaan Sagar, otherwise better known as Nucleya. Nucleya is no stranger to the Indian electronic scene, having formed part of one of India’s first electronic acts, Bandish Projekt, in the early 90′s. He’s performed in music festivals around the world, and probably that is the reason why his sound is so global yet Indian to the core.  He redefines the basic foundation of desi music with his signature bass heavy electro style. Never had we heard such a fresh perspective to Indian music. His set list included his collaboration from the music/travel show The Dewarists, aptly called Bangla Bass, his collaboration with Sound Avtar,  In My Heart and adding Moombahton beats to the classic hindi childhood rhyme, Akkad Bakkad. He really brought the house down, literally. Midway through his set, the bass was too heavy for the sound system to handle. The speakers started vibrating so furiously, there were 2 men assigned to each speaker to hold them in place.

Algorhythym’s, Sound Avtar’s and Nucleya’s  sets were a perfect precursor to the moment we were all waiting for. That moment of voluntary face pounding that we were all willing to submit ourselves to.  It was time for Skream & Benga to take centre stage.  Skream was up first and right from the start he blew us all away with, what I thought, were mortar rounds from his bass-heavy artillery. The first hour of Skream and Benga’s set was a fantastic mix of UK funky, electro, moombahton and other recent manifestations of dubstep at different tempos. Amongst the tracks they had in their arsenal of Bass Heavy WMD’s were Eptic’s Gutter and Rusko’s Moombahton hit, Sound Guy Is My Target. 

Even though the sound went off due to technical issues during their set, that didn’t stop them one bit. They kept plummeting us with bomb after bomb of orgasmic bass.  Dillon Francis‘ electro hit Bootleg Fireworks were amongst the electro sounds that were dropped. Chase & Status’ Flashing Lights and Skream’s own Anticipate were dropped indicating just how versatile they are, as the songs are  more on the mellower side than the rest of the set, yet they still fit beautifully. Benga even treated us to previews from his newest album Chapter 2, most noticeable of which was I Will Never Change. 

Towards the end though, they really pushed the roof. I’m surprised the construction of the venue held up after so much of auditory abuse. They went on to play Noisia’s remix of Prodigy’s Smack My Bitch Up, which, I’d say, was probably the little cherry grenade on top of a huge bass heavy pie. The end, however, was what took everyone by surprise. They had summed up a night of bass debauchery with something so far away from their parent genres, yet so very welcome. They had played Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit. Though I’m sure everyone there, like me, was expecting a nasty drop somewhere in the song, we couldn’t find one. And that was the beauty of it. It was the original, unblemished version of the iconic 90′s grunge hit. It was so ingenious, I’m sure no one could have thought of a better way to end a night with a song that symbolizes the basic essence of dubstep, dnb and all such underground electronic genres. Rebellious, fast paced and filled with energy, Smells Like Teen Spirit was the foremost example of grunge;  A genre which, back then, was purely denotative of the high intensity and high energy that was characteristic to every rebellious youth, much like what dubstep and dnb are today.

That was the end to a night so insane, we’d be telling our grand kids about it. About how we went to the first-of-it’s-kind warehouse gig in the city. Big Ups to Oji for a well organized, super fun event. The last time anyone dropped anything that big, World War 2 ended and boy, we  really can’t wait for more. The next time you guys are blowing faces off with sound, sign us in!