Posted on 09/16/2005

 

Raw Fusion, a hip hop/electronica/drum & bass club in Stockholm, has gathered the songs that have become staples of the club's nightly playlist. The mix, usually reserved for the club's owners, DJs and patrons, is now available worldwide and hopes to introduce listeners to the eclectic club's style. For those of you who get antsy outside of your American hip-hop comfort zone, fear not; a lot of Swedish music comes from Detroit. Bass-Ment Classics features like-minded songs that all criss-cross genres, particularly hip hop and electronica. The party starts with Up Hygh's "Bass-Ment Theme", which perfectly sets the tone for the album. The song, a futuristic hodge-podge mix, sloppily welcomes you to the club and is typical of what you should expect with this album. Next up is the insane instrumental to Roots Manuva's "Witness", followed by Dabrye's "Game Over", which features Jay-Dee and Phat Kat trading rhymes. Fortunately, Dilla also helped produce the track, as his lackluster lyrical performance leaves quite a few things to be desired. Dilla lends another production to the compilation, "Take Dem Clothes Of", featuring Frank-n-Dank. This bass-heavy banger meanders toward redundancy by its end, but probably sounds pretty good through big ol' speakers.

The biggest problem with this album is that a lot of the energy that comes from playing music really loud through huge speakers with a few hundred people present is lost when you take away the huge speakers (and the few hundred people). I guess what I'm getting at is: on disc these songs just aren't really that captivating. A lot of the production sounds very sparse and a couple songs, such as Caural's "I Won't Race You" or the Sa-Ra remix of DJ Mitsu's "Negative Ion", aren't even likely crowd movers. These particular tracks, while comprised of good music, sound more like lullabies than club bangers—slow tempo, sleepy-time music where not a soul moves.

This compilation is like that story your friend told you: while the majority of these songs are pretty good, to really get the full effect of the infamous Raw Fusion energy, I'm pretty sure you have to be there.