Bass Coast Music Festival - Transforming The Festival Landscape

Bass Coast Music Festival: Transforming the Festival Landscape

Bass Coast Music Festival 2014
Photo Credit Magda Zofia

Entering the beautiful Meritt Valley early Friday afternoon we were greeted with smiles and a heartfelt welcome. Having been to Bass Coast twice at its old location at the Squamish Valley Campground we were struck by the difference in heat and dust. This was sure to be a challenge for the festival to overcome as the combination of heat and dust can put a damper on the festival spirit.

In typical Bass Coast fashion the organizers had expertly placed misting stations throughout the grounds. Water stations were never that far away and the beautiful river ran from one end of the festival camping grounds right to the Slay Bay stage, which so happens was a fan favourite.

Speaking of Slay Bay, if you wanted to catch the majority of the highly anticipated Canadian Live PA acts, that was the place to be. Graze absolutely slayed it (no pun intended) with their meandering techno infused with bass weight thanks to XI (Christian Anderson) firmly planted roots in bass music. Utilizing space between beats it was not always what you were hearing but the anticipation of where they were going to take you. What would be considered an unlikely pairing perhaps 10 years ago, in the current paradigm of electronic music almost anything goes. A techno figure for many years Adam Marshall was secretly a fan of Christian and vice a versa. To keep the story short a trip to berlin and there you have 2 musical magnates blending 2 perspectives and what is achieved is beautiful restrained techno music at its finest.

Bass Coast Music Festival 2014
Long Walk Short Dock doing his thing on the main stage.
Photo Credit Zipporah Lomax

We also had the pleasure of witnessing Monolithium who’s upfront techno approach definitely had a hip hop feel to it as heard through his grooves. Deep penetrating drums and percussion were pushed through his TR-8, the newest in a line of retro influenced gear from Roland. And hearing that drum machine pumped through a proper system sure is a treat. We see big things coming from the founder of Sub | Div which broke ground in the Victoria Dubstep scene.

As we can see there is a bit of a trend here. Bass music meets techno. Bass Coast organizer Andrea Graham has always tried to stay on top of trends to the point where her festival actually acts as an incubator for what is to come. In previous festivals the ear was caught in the Trap and low and behold that whole next year and even to this day Trap is a stalwart in current EDM culture. It seems predicting and influencing music culture is just as important as making music. These are the people behind the scenes making creative decisions for a large audience who then go back to their peer groups and communicate their discoveries.

Many people talk of the transformational festival. What are they speaking of? Is it spiritual revelations? Self-awareness, epiphanies regarding changes needed in society? These of course are the natural directions the conversation takes when speaking of transformation. But in the case of Bass Coast it looks more like its transforming the landscape of electronic music in Canada by informing the attendees, facilitating networking amongst artists and just plain booking new innovative artists that other festivals may overlook.

Please stay tuned to this blog as we will have some audio interviews coming up.

Feel free to email me at joel@dubplate.fm with any questions or comments. Or you can just spam my twitter feed @dubplatefm @coitax

Much love to the Bass Coast Team and all the amazing work they put in!

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