Rinse:05 - Paleface

PALEFACE PLAYS BASSLINE. Though it’s the chart sound of now, he’s been in the game for time. He’s weathered it all. It wasn’t so much Niche, or anywhere in Sheffield, for him, that epitomised the bubbling bassline scene of the mid-noughties, but a cowshed in a village near Leeds. “They’ve got this big arsed… it’s like an industrial estate and this big arsed, massive long… cowshed!! And you go in there, and it’s covered in shit. It’s like the Imperial Gardens in Camberwell, but ten times worse. You go down past the bar, and then down the corridor, and they’ve got this MASSIVE room. NO lights, it’s all dark. That was the venue for bassline, that’s where it kicked off properly, everyone’s talking about Niche, but it was there for 10-12 years, and nothing happened. For me it all started kicking off in Dewsbury, 2006 November times.”

He grew up in South London addicted to drum and bass and tape packs, and was DJing at 14, but as a new little yout he couldn’t get into that scene, it was already dominated. But he met J Da Flex and started making 4/4 garage tunes. “I taught myself. I learned on S3000, Cubase 3, on a Mac OS8.6 I think it was. I had a sampler, samples are easy… but it took me about 7 years to learn to get a mixdown properly!!” Now he’s like the producers he used to look up to, dealing with a next level of cocky little youts armed with the latest sequencing technology. “Back in the day you used to have a massive desk, if you wanted to go out you’d have to leave a big note saying ‘DO NOT TOUCH DESK!!!’ Kids nowadays have it easy, it’s kind of a bit annoying!!”

When he got older he moved up North to get involved with the scene that was to become known as “bassline”, started a record label and threw himself into the raving scene, but eventually the cowsheds tired him and he came back home. In 2007 he came back from Malia where his label Northernline had done a night versus Niche at the Castle Club and broadcast it live, and found that bassline had exploded. “’Everyone was like - ‘bassline’s big!’’’

And in 2008 he got snapped up by Rinse HQ. Though Rinse houses London’s grass roots artists, it’s a long way off from the cowshed. “It wasn’t really a cowshed!! It was called Unit 50 Sheridan, and to be real, Rinse is a completely different experience, but they do both bring something fresh.

What does he have that most London bassline aficionados don’t? The knowledge. Since bassline exploded with tracks artists like H20 & Platinum and T2 getting signed and charting, everyone wants in. It’s just that inauthenticity shows. “They don’t understand why tunes do what they do because they don’t know what the raves are like, it’s a culture innit. So unless you’re living it, it’s not gonna work. It’s like hip hop. You can emulate it but if you don’t have an American accent it’s not the same.”

So Paleface is here to show you that “Bassline is a bigger genre than just “woop woop woop”, organ house and shit”. He says he’s just a regular run-of-the-mill guy but we’re not so sure. After all if the Bassline scene is as is big and important as he tells us it is, that means we’ve asked him to do something big and important.

And we think he’s taken his task very seriously. “I wanted to try and get at least one track that represented each segment of Bassline. Not many people know what this music is, and I wanted to blend together different bits and pieces so the audience gets to know a broad range of what is current at the moment in the bassline scene.”

This is Paleface’s introduction to right-now, grass-roots bassline.

Melissa Bradshaw

TRACKLISTING

1. Shut Ya Mouth - Ill Mana
2. Begging - Paleface feat. Joy & $tush
3. Intent 2 Feel - Wittyboy
4. Dejavu - Mr Figz feat Charlean Dance
5. Bullet (VIP) - Dub Melitia
6. Brighter Day - Rekless
7. Shank Yaself - Jalla
8. On My Way - Burgaboy feat. BM & Screama
9. Think About You (Keynos Refix) - Wittboy & Pyper feat. Kyla
10. Bongo Jam - Paleface
11. Lost Right Here - Paleface feat. Sofia
12. Future - Dub Melitia
13. Karma - Dexplicit
14. Junior Riddem - T.R.C
15. Stomp - Ill Mana feat. P-Money
16. Dutty Bwoy - Mr Hatter
17. Hypnotik - Mr V
18. Selecta - Paleface feat. Viper
19. I’m In Love - Sticky feat. Young London
20. Chocolate - Fingaz
21. Dollar Sign (Dubplate) - Ill Mana feat. $tush
22. Cape Fear - Jalla
23. Wobbler Part 3 - T.R.C feat Trilla & Asher
24. Speakerbox (Remix) - Dub Melitia
25. Are You Ready - Sticky feat. Sym Symi & Creed
26. Headache - DS1
27. Face It - Caliber feat. Teresa
28. Who You Fucking Laughing At - Ben Joel
29. Be Without You - TS7 feat. Nana
30. 25 17 - Keynos
31. Make Up Your Mind - Paleface feat. Shavana
32. Get Ya Tits Out - Wittyboy
33. Free - Ben Joel feat. KT
34. Punishment - GS & Krissi B
35. Magical - DJ Stylez feat Yee-Ling
36. Voicemail - Paleface feat. Gemma Fox
37. I Wanna Dance - Mr Blackfinga feat. QD
38. Oh No - Krissi B feat. Marvin Brown
39. Joy - Paleface feat Kat Blu