We’re kicking off January 2023 with an updated format for the monthly bass music charts: 15 x 15. In this new format, we’re bringing you 15 questions for an artist, and they provide you with their 15 favorite bass songs of the month. In this format, we aim to showcase more talent through their own stories and their own taste.
First up is SUAHN, the latest signee to RL Grime’s Sable Valley label. If you’re not familiar with SUAHN, he’s had releases on Bassrush, Jadu Dala, and WAKAAN, with support from the likes of Boombox Cartel, Four Tet, Liquid Stranger, NGHTMRE, and RL Grime. He and the label bring us his debut Sable Valley track, ‘Red Light’, a track that personifies a lot of what SUAHN stands for – focused experimentation, simplicity, distortion, and of course, dance.
“I am a huge fan of saturation and distortion. It’s a large part of my songwriting process. I am always inspired to see how much I could use saturation and distortion to make wild sonics. The main section of ‘Red Light’ was a groove I made and a bunch of layers of the same bassline, all distorted differently – and just had a certain attitude that I loved. Once I feel like I got the groove for the main section of the song, I felt like it just clicked in well. I try to not overthink it – I try to focus on capturing the energy that initially made me excited about whatever I am writing.”
The song has a vibrant head bopping groove, carried by full force bass riff reminiscent of heavy metal guitars. The song cohesively delivers a sound that straddles the line between crisp electronics commonly found in dance music as well as a more organic and warm palette found in two of SUAHN’s core inspirations, punk rock and early 90’s dance music.
“I’ve loved music for as long as I can remember. I can remember sitting in my parent’s basement and listening to their Van Halen and Pink Floyd records as a kid and just being in complete awe about how these sounds were coming out of the speakers. As I got a bit older, I would hang out with my uncle who was really into artists like The Cure, Skinny Puppy, and Aphex Twin and he would just give me albums that he figured I would like.”
JANUARY’S 15 BEST BASS MUSIC TRACKS, WITH SUAHN
When putting together his playlist of the best bass music releases of January 2023, SUAHN added “This was a fun list to make because it made me really see all the great music that has come out in the first month of 2023. It has me feeling really excited about the current state of bass music. I wanted to try and span all of my listening into these tracks so there’s a little bit of everything in here from TYNAN to Lorn.”
In addition to TYNAN and Lorn, we also have new releases from Space Laces, Tsuruda, Holly, G Jones, and plenty more expressions in bass music design.
15 x 15 WITH SUAHN
Diving into his Q/A, we cover everything from the Red Light production process, aspects of his story he wish were more broadly known, his production struggles, dream collaborations, his past of touring the world with a band, what makes music ‘click’ for him, and much more.
1) What went through your mind when you realized you were getting a release on the renowned Sable Valley?
I’ve been a massive fan of RL Grime for a long time so the opportunity to release something on his label was quite exciting. I feel like when anyone starts any project they have goals in mind or just bucket-list stuff they want to achieve and being able to work with him in any facet was definitely one of those things for me.
2) How did you approach the arrangement for Red Light? Overall, it is a very cohesive track with a focused idea but also incorporates flares throughout that keep it fresh and interesting.
Honestly, it came together pretty quickly for me. I have an Akai MPD226 that I use when I want to make drum patterns or something and I actually want to play the part, so I was just jamming on it making some beats and had a bassline I liked. Once the main drop section was put together, I processed the hell out of the bassline to give it the attitude I was looking for and the rest of the track came together after that. Since it’s at 87 BPM I wanted to incorporate some breaks in that gave it a double-time jungle feeling in the break section too to change the energy for a moment.
3) You’ve spoken regularly about your affinity for saturation and distortion, are there other areas of production you’re in love with? what sound design techniques are you currently exploring?
Something I have been really into recently is using minimal tracks and more outboard gear. Most of my songs don’t get above 30 tracks or so. I’ll typically set up a drum loop in Ableton, write some basic MIDI idea (a bassline, a lead, etc.) and send it to some random gear I have around the studio and see what interesting thing comes out. I really like incorporating imperfect elements into my music (synth glitches, dropouts, etc.) because it tends to feel more alive to me. I love it when you can hear someone manually twisting knobs and the expression of a piece of music can be felt. I come from the punk/hardcore band world so I am used to playing with other people and the push and pull you get when working with people is really something that I think adds to the feeling of the music that is being made, so whenever I can incorporate that kind of thing into a digital realm it really makes me excited about what I am working on.
4) What sounds and styles within electronic music are you most excited about right now?
I am so excited that it seems like a lot of early to mid 90’s jungle, drum and bass, and breaks are making their way back into modern bass music. I feel like music made around that time still feels very timeless to me.
5) If you could change one thing about making electronic music, what would it be?
I think if I would have been asked this years ago I would have said making the entry point accessible to everyone. Music software and hardware were (and a lot still are) so expensive that not everyone could do it. But now, you can make something pretty pro-sounding on phones these days. I mean, I was playing around with the Ableton app not too long ago and was blown away by it. You can write something in that, import it to your computer, and have a song that is playable, sounds great, and comes with a great sample selection and the app was $5 or something. I think we are in a really cool place with that so everyone who wants to get into electronic music-making has a much lower threshold when it comes to barriers to entry which is really cool.
6) Why does SUAHN love making music? What makes music ‘click’ for you?
I’ve loved music for as long as I can remember. I can remember sitting in my parent’s basement and listening to their Van Halen and Pink Floyd records as a kid and just being in complete awe about how these sounds were coming out of the speakers. As I got a bit older, I would hang out with my uncle who was really into artists like The Cure, Skinny Puppy, and Aphex Twin and he would just give me albums that he figured I would like. And at that age, you’re like a sponge. I was just excited to get ANYTHING new, and this was before the file-sharing internet age. So I would just listen to these albums NONSTOP. I would dissect them and just wear them out. The older I got, the music became a staple of expressionism for me. It’s such a cliche but music really is my entire life. That feeling where you write a passage of music that gives you chills – THAT is what makes it click for me. I am lucky that after 20+ years of creating I still get that feeling.
7) What is something about SUAHN you want the world to know?
Well, I am also a guitar player and I have been in a band called Pianos Become the Teeth for over 15 years. I have been lucky enough to tour the world with that. I think there is usually a pipeline of people my age that started in bands and gradually moved into making electronic music, and I am definitely cut from that cloth. Also, it may be surprising to some that SUAHN started in 2014 so I have been making music for a while at this point.
8) Your ‘in the dark‘ A/V showcase is quite creative, can we expect more projects like this from you?
Thank you! Yea, definitely. I started getting into video a few years ago and really wanted to try to find ways to incorporate that into my music but really did not know where to begin. When I went on tour with Boombox Cartel in 2021, I really wanted to make my entire set for the tour a full A/V set and so I started chipping away at it and realized how much I had to learn. I reached out to EPROM during that time and he was beyond kind to help me out with a lot of the software and hardware questions – he helped me troubleshoot everything. I can’t thank him enough for that because when you’re learning something new, you don’t quite have the language to even know how to search for the question online, so having someone you can ask questions about it really helped. But after that tour, I just really felt like the visual element was so important in my music at this point that I really wanted to continue to push myself into new boundaries and learn new things with it.
9) Who are your three dream artists to collaborate with on an album? This way, you can achieve more than a single song.
Hm. I feel like at any given time, this answer would totally change. But at the moment, and in a dream world, I would love to collaborate with Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Lorn, and Boys Noize. Even though sonically these artists are totally different from each other, they really embody the ethos I love about music. Their music feels extremely personal, feels vulnerable at times, and pushes the envelope sonically. I am fascinated by artists like that.
10) What do you struggle with the most during the production process?
I struggle with a lot, honestly. I tend to overthink things. When I reference other songs, I get down on my mixes. That kind of stuff. But over the last few years, I really have been trying to check myself when I get in that mindset. As an artist, I tend to chase the “feeling” of a song vs. if it’s mixed “right”. Not that a professional-sounding mix isn’t important, because it definitely is. But I try to not bash my head against a wall trying to make it sound exactly like a reference track. When Boys Noize started that “Strictly Raw” series a few years ago, I really resonated with that. I loved the idea of minimal tracks, live playing, just trying to capture the lighting in a bottle that happens in the studio, and just trusting that people will resonate with that feeling. So I am trying to take that mindset and really always put that in the forefront of my brain while I am writing.
11) If you could tell your fans one thing about you as an artist, or a person, what would it be?
I genuinely am beyond thankful for anyone who listens to anything I create. We live in a world that is constantly demanding our attention via social media, phones, and just life – so when anyone spends any time with my music I genuinely appreciate it.
12) Which parts of SUAHN’s sound do you wish were more well-known? Is there something that you think about regularly but doesn’t seem to be noticed?
I think I am holding out hope that breakcore and jungle get a big push coming up because I love incorporating those elements into my music – sometimes those nuanced influences get overlooked and, honestly, I can see why. Those genres are somewhat niche, but I think with artists like G Jones playing Venetian Snares and things like that to such large crowds, new people are being exposed to music they may not have sought out before.
13) What do you think about AI in music production? Is it helpful, harmful, a crutch?
I was actually just talking to someone about this today. I think it’s so early in the days of AI, it’s really hard to tell. I could definitely see it being a tool, just like anything else, that can be manipulated and create something great. An analog example I can think of is when people make self-generating ambient music via Eurorack or something like that. There is something really beautiful about that – But it still takes human input and expression to get to the point of self-generating ideas. I think as long as it’s human-driven and expressed it can be something really interesting. But if it gets to a point where people are just opening a program and typing in “make a song at 128bpm” and it spits something out, that feels odd to me. There is an interesting element in the technology that gets us there, but that lack of expression feels cold. Music (at least for me) is such a personal expression of myself that I can’t imagine being attached to anything that I didn’t have a hand in creating. It will be interesting to see where it goes.
14) What’s your outside-of-music story?
I really spend so much time doing music that it’s almost hard to separate ha! I build guitar amps for a really small builder in Baltimore but that is still not necessarily “outside” of music I suppose. Outside of music I cook a lot, and I like gardening. My wife and I purchased a house a few years back that has a big terraced back yard and it’s been such a nice meditative practice in the warmer months to just spend time in the garden. It actually does help my studio work too because it gives me time to pause. I try to do that a lot more these days.
15) Tell me something you want to talk about in this interview that I didn’t ask! What’s on your mind?
Well, one thing I would love to touch on is that I really hope we are nearing a time when full albums and projects are ready to be introduced again. I think artists being able to tell an entire story through a full-length album is something that has seemingly waned over the last few years and I think that is a really important aspect of being an artist. Not saying artists aren’t doing it – there’s still a lot of people making full length albums, but typically they are more established. Trying to create a full, cohesive body of work is a large undertaking and you learn a lot by doing that so I am hoping that becomes a regular practice again. I think the appetite for that kind of thing is starting to grow so I just really hope it happens more often!
