No longer confined to the north, this infectious blend of bassline and house is becoming the UK's most exciting club scene
The sound of a fight starting in a rave is unmistakable, the hostile grumble in immediate discord with the bubbling bass. I turn my head and, sure enough, a circle has formed: people are shouting. I'm not the only one who has noticed: everyone around has turned their heads, too. But then something amazing happens, something I've never seen before at a party. Within moments, you can hear an almost audible sigh of "leave it out", the crowd swarming in around the fight like a blanket to a flame. It happens so fast I have to stand a while and piece together what has happened. People's good energies have pacified the fighters: they're hugging within seconds.
Welcome to 02:31 at Birmingham's Rainbow Warehouse, where the music policy is strictly jackin house and bass, and the vibes are peace, love and NRG. Over the past couple of years an amazing dance scene has formed, centred on Insomnia at Club Mission in Leeds and 02:31, but which reaches out across the north and midlands and has been totally neglected by the London-centric dance press.
The music, "jackin house" or "house & bass", is totally fresh. It warps (and wobbles) the house template; this is not smooth music for champagne bars. The scene itself – the clubs, producers, DJs – is bursting with energy, with packed-out nights all weekend, every weekend; seriously euphoric vibes; and massive anthems coming out thick and fast. Essentially, rave has been reborn north of Watford.
The story starts in the late 00s when T2's Heartbroken reached No 2 in the UK charts and put bassline – the hi-octane, garage-derived, northern dance genre – on the national map. Increased media interest also highlighted the violence and trouble that plagued several bassline clubs. The negative media attention and police harassment took its toll. It reached the stage where police wouldn't let an event go ahead if it had "bassline" on the flyer. That was the context in late 2009 when Chris Lorenzo – the "godfather" of jackin and its most prolific and prodigious talent – got together with Jayye Jackin and Dappa D to make Come With Me, a track that avoided censorship by mixing bassline's bass with a house rhythm. The trio followed up the trick by producing the other early jackin anthems, Let Me Clear My Throat and Love for Me. Come With Me and Let Me Clear My Throat show that all the major elements of UK jackin were there from the start: slinky, staggered house beats at around 126bpm, poptastic vocals, and Big-with-a-capital-B bouncy bassline – basslines that need to be heard on a sub-heavy sound-system, basslines that would be turned away from classy house nights. However, it's what sits on top of these core elements that provides the real fun, and differentiates jackin from house of the deep and tasteful varieties. Jackin is kitchen-sink rave music, and producers will pull any trick to crack a smile on your face while you brock out on the floor: whirling piano vamps, badman MCs, outrageously cheeky movie samples ("You play jazz flute?" "I dabble"), choruses lifted wholesale from other tracks, sections where the track slows to half-time, contemporary US hip-hop beats, soulful diva vocals, amen breaks, ragga chat, air horns and even Kate Bush will be deployed if necessary. Jackin's slow, almost sluggish tempo competes with this flurry of sonic debris to create a slow-fast manic wonkiness, a compacted energy that destroys the dancefloor. Jackin is the most interesting thing happening in UK dance music at the moment, but it can't be taken out of context from the scene that spawned it. You'd probably have to go back to the hardcore rave scene of the early 90s to find a time when a UK dance scene was so, well, ravey. How do they do it? Well, the drugs obviously help, and when you walk into the Rainbow Warehouse, you can't help but be struck by the constellations of starry eyes and beaming smiles that greet you. All the old rave rituals are out in force – people sharing water and gum, handshakes and shoulder pats as you navigate through the crowd, people standing and facing one another doing miraculously synchronised boxy hand dances. Present, too, is rave's comparative sexlessness. Too many London nights are tainted by the dank smell of desperate sex: the men all horny and predatory and the women, in understandable defence, standoffish and cold. Though the crowd is dressy and there are plenty of people getting off, overall the vibe at 02:31 is silly, not sleazy.
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But it's not just a lack of sleaze, aggro or, for that matter, too-cool-to-dance hipsters that make 02:31 so special – the peaceful vibes extend to a genuine warmth and openness – and, most refreshingly, a healthy sense of play. The first time I went, I was by myself. I was never without people to hang out with and found myself accepted into groups of friends pretty much instantly: hugs all around, spliffs shared and ubiquitous raving snaps taken on everyone's phones. In times since, people I might have spent five minutes chatting and dancing with have recognised me and we've all hung out again. This is not just rave as hollow ritual or retro revival, but rave with its utopian message that it's OK for people to be decent to each other. Now, jackin is beginning to make waves outside of its heartlands. The main ambassador here is the DJ Marcus Nasty, who after helping break UK funky in the late 00s, has done the deed again by catching jackin way before any other London DJ, back in early 2012. By consistently supporting the jackin scene on his show on Rinse FM, he can be thanked in part for the newfound national success of artists such as Hannah Wants, whose deep and sexy take on the sound has earned her regular bookings at house nights across the capital, and 02:31 top dog Tom Shorterz, who made his own debut show on Rinse back in April where he pushes his own bouncy, garage-inflected sound. What the scene hasn't had yet, however, is it's own Heartbroken, a track that crosses genre boundaries, invades the charts and makes everyone sit up and pay attention. Chris Lorenzo – half of scene heavyweights Cause & Affect alongside Kane, and engineer (read "producer") of a huge portion of the scene's biggest anthems – assures me that something is in the works: a jackin pop banger with original vocals (the vast majority of jackin tracks use bootlegged vocal hooks) and the power to cross over and blow up. Meanwhile, he worries about success: "I want to keep things underground. I've seen it with loads of other genres before: as soon as they go mainstream, they turn shit." For jackin, poised as it is between underground and overground in Birmingham and Leeds, the question is how much bigger can it get while still maintaining what makes it so vital and fun?
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I can't help but feel it's unjust that this sound and scene go without wider acknowledgment. Take last year's You Want Me – an impossibly slinky, almost sleazy number with Leeds' Nick Hannam and Tom Garnett on the buttons and local celebrity Tom Zanetti on the mic. This is the perfect British dance-pop song. The bassline is pure junglism though it bobs and bounces in a way unique to jackin. Spooky, swirling ghost noises evoke the Specials and the vital reggae influence that run through so much UK music. Meanwhile, Zanetti's good-times bars flit atop the beat with a lightness that has always run alongside the rude-bwoy menace of UK MC culture. In short, it should have been this generation's Sweet Like Chocolate, one of those underground dance anthems that storms the charts and explodes into popular consciousness. It should have been blasted out of cars, played at school discos, sodcasted from phones at the back of buses. It should have been a No 1. In recent months there have been several articles decrying the state of UK dance culture: the deterioration of vibes in London clubs and warehouses, the lack of big new ideas. But perhaps people are looking in the wrong place. I'm going to conclude with the words of a stranger I chatted to near the speaker stack at the Rainbow Warehouse. When I mentioned I was from London, he put his hands on my shoulders and turned me to look at the bouncing, buzzy crowd. "It makes London look like shit, dunnit?" •
Listen to key UK jackin tracks on this YouTube playlist.
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