NEUROFUNK D&B BASS DESIGN
Manufacture your own brainmelting bass with our guide
Neurofunk is a dark-edged subgenre of drum ‘n’ bass that became popular in the late 1990s as tastes changed from the more optimistic, ragga-flavoured mid-90s jungle flavours to the darker, more stripped-back sounds of techstep anthems such as Ed Rush, Optical & Fierce’s Alien Girl and Nasty Habits’ Shadow Boxing. Old-school neurofunk pioneered a more refined sound than that of jungle, with the focus on clangorous two-step breaks, twisted, funk-inspired basslines and dystopian influences from techno, jazz and industrial music. One particularly seminal example is Ed Rush & Optical’s 1998 album Wormhole, now considered one of the genre’s defining records; while other prominent artists during this period included Konflict, Matrix, Ram Trilogy and Skynet.
Following on from this, tracks such as Messiah by Konflict, and Technical Itch’s The Calling moved the genre forward by placing more and more emphasis on experimental sound design, clinical mixdowns and highly complex, gnarly basslines that made faces screw up in equal parts disgust and delight. Fast-forward to today, and this technicality has been pushed further and further into even more complex territories, with epic productions from the likes of Noisia, Phace, Mefjus, State Of Mind, Current Value and Black Sun Empire thundering out at raves and festivals across the world.
Neurofunk bombards your ears with insanely intricate growls, mangles your mind with moving Reeses, and hits you with chest-battering subs and swirling synths that marry intense darkness and brain-melting complexity with raw groove and funk. But how exactly do you craft those mindbending basses from scratch? They might sound like they’ve been synthesised on another planet, but fear not – over the next few pages, we’ll break down techniques behind neurofunk DnB basses and show that you needn’t be a brain scientist to make those tearing sounds. And if that wasn’t enough, we’ve even spoken to DnB legends Calyx & Teebee to get the inside track on neuro bass creation. Get ready: it’s time to delve deep into a dark and twisted world…