"It's cause he met me and Rich," someone interrupts. The voice belongs to Casey "Merlyn" Stevens, the fast-talking breakbeat vet who is also one of the city's best-known exports, regularly netting DJ gigs in the Midwest and on the Pacific Coast. Merlyn is referring to Rich Stern, owner of Insomniac Records, which is a sister label of sorts to Merlyn's own Dreamscape Recordings (Merlyn having recorded twelve-inch cuts like "Taken" for Insomniac). Both labels are known for producing waves of smooth electro/breakbeat material that's heavily influenced by Miami bass. At the same time they want to help the music evolve beyond its low-quality productions without purging it of its old-school qualities -- mad reverb and break-it-down beats.
"What touches electro-bass DJs is the 808 kick drum sound that makes the 'girlies get down,'" Ash Rock says, forcing himself back into the conversation. He exemplifies the brazen Miami attitude: harsh, abrasive, and jam-packed with ghetto flavor. "I respect all types of music, but the straight 4/4 beat doesn't do it for me. I need a bass drop with a snappy snare, a crisp high hat, and a tik-tik followed by a low-end bump ... recognize or get circumcised!"
Strictly speaking, the roots of Miami bass lie in mid-Eighties to early-Nineties electro, an era driven by blippy Atari video game sounds and topped with cheesy chick vocals and robotic vocoder riffs, filling a void between disco's death and hip-hop's renaissance. It was music played in roller rinks and cruising low riders.
Pioneers like Luke Campbell's Ghetto Style DJs and, later, his 2 Live Crew manifested the black booty-down version of Miami bass, blowing up Saturday afternoons at Liberty City's African Park with the holler, "Throw the D." The Hialeah Hispanic set listened to DJs like Tony the Tiger and DJ Laz coke up their bass with longing freestyle tracks like Stevie B's "Spring Love" and Nice and Wild's "Diamond Girl." The common denominator between the two was a devotion to bouncy, Kraftwerkian synth-pop inspired by Cybotron's "Clear" and Afrika Bambaataa's "Planet Rock."
Today Miami bass kitschiness is celebrated every month at Poplife, where DJ Le Spam (no introduction needed) takes breaks from his night in, night out band gigs to send kids on a time warp, dosing them with Afro-Rican and Maggotron records. "I get a strong reaction whenever I play bass," explains Spam. "It's inherently funky." Other retro nights like PE at I/O even encourage hipsters to dress up for gym class, since most of them were in school when these songs were new.
Miami bass is still a much-loved part of the city, especially by anyone who grew up here during the last twenty years. Whether it's DJ Zog's 5:00 p.m. "Traffic Jam" on Power 96 (96.5 WPOW-FM), or a South Beach DJ treating the crowd to a "dirty" bass track like Freestyle's "Don't Stop the Rock," the effect is instantaneous: Boyfriends finally get off their asses and dance with their girls; chatterboxes stop talking shit for a sec to enjoy the music (before starting up again to reminisce about the time when the song came out); and groups of revelers raise their hands in the air, bellowing, "Whaaat!" at their friends. One thing's for sure: Miami bass will never die in its hometown. But it can't continue living in the past.
That's where Merlyn, Ash Rock, and colleague Salim Rafiq come in. Unlike their house, trance, and hip-hop counterparts, this confederation of DJs sticks together for the sake of their scene instead of squeezing each other out through competition. So they go out of their way to work together on tracks, teach one another the tricks of the trade, and recommend each other for gigs. They're united by a love for an art form considered less commercial than other forms of high-energy dance because of its edgy urban nature. "Miami should be built on art, but you need to remind people around here," says Rafiq. "It's us against the world."
What sets them apart is their ability to capture the spirit of old Miami bass while pushing the fresher, electro-oriented style by shaving off the silly booty ruse and blending in contemporary influences from hip-hop, techno, and European electro. They're all products of the mid-to-late-Nineties Florida rave scene, when Miami bass essentially became electro-bass: Its old-school beats were perfect for the b-boy theater and dance battles that took place there.
According to Rafiq and Merlyn the bridge between past and present is Dynamix II, the legendary Fort Lauderdale duo behind Eighties classics like "Just Give the DJ A Break" and "Techno Bass"; the former has sold 600,000 copies to date and the latter accurately describes the new-school marriage between techno and bass. "Dynamix II gave birth to instrumental electro, which made a huge impact on the Florida rave scene," Merlyn says about the duo. "After that DJs like Icey added the funky break elements [culled from Seventies funk records and samples of live drums]. But what started to ruin this music was the shitload of crappy productions that everyone and their mother put out in the late Nineties."
Merlyn says that years of sloppy bedroom breaks from producers who, he claims, "took five minutes to put a breakbeat on a sample from a DJ Rectangle record," gave Florida a bad name. The novelty factor of these amateurish late-Nineties sounds charmed the candy raver crowd, which was predominantly adolescent; concurrently, it left the impression on most partygoers and club owners that all rave music -- electro-bass included -- was for kids. He thinks that now is the time for bass to re-emerge as an alternative to mainstream dance trends. "What helps us be the alternative is the sales-driven dance on stations like Party 93.1 [WYPM-FM] and the fact that hip-hop is now pop music," he says. "That gives us room to maneuver."
Ironically Merlyn is the one local bass DJ who could really cross over if he wanted to. The most established among his set, he has released two acclaimed mix albums, Nu Horizons and Spellbound, on the reputable Streetbeat label. In 1996 he produced an underground hit, "Bring Your Love," which earned numerous spins by DJ Icey and Baby Anne. He's working on releases for his own Dreamscape Recordings as well as joint projects with Ash Rock, Insomniac Records' JASP 182, and the devil himself, Rafiq.
Merlyn, whose exotic ethnic features -- half-English, half-black Portuguese -- are reminiscent of Tricky, has a style less dependent on in-your-face bass bombs and more on smooth, streamlined breakbeats. He often incorporates dark trance aesthetics full of mood swings, an element he picked up while opening up for world-renowned trance producer Sasha's tours through Florida in 1997 and 1998. But he says he'll never sell out; he'd rather stay underground because "I grew up in Miami and you can never take the underground bass out of me."
Merlyn's protégé, Ash Rock, has been spinning for more than five years but is now focusing on producing his own material. He teamed up with another local DJ, Jimmy the Genius, to form Hydraulix. The duo is working with Merlyn to produce tracks that take after Dynamix II member Scott Weiser's side project, Jackal and Hyde, which means they will probably sound like an electro-bass machine gun. Ash Rock simply promises, "It'll be rowdy!"
Then there's the half-Cuban, half-Lebanese Rafiq (formerly known as DJ Wreck), who grew up in Little Havana listening to his older brothers' freestyle records. He remembers cheering on the Jam Pony Express as a bratty ten-year-old jit when they rocked the Miami High School gymnasium. He's also completely open about his intentions. "I want to be the electro god of Miami," he says, exuding an intriguing balance of street smarts and bravado. For now, though, he settles on being the bad boy of bass. He claims he doesn't like talking bad about other artists, but doesn't mind doing it, either. "I won't name names, but some of the new jacks need to take the cheesy vocals off of their tracks," he grumbles.
Rafiq's "take no prisoners" approach is unapologetically hardcore. As a DJ he spotlights grainy reverb effects and big, hammering beats, but also likes to patiently mix in minimal electro, which gives his sets a mean, menacing tone. The British imprint Fuel Records signed him to a recording contract last year after getting a load of his brash, futuristic Hoe Magnet EP (which, of course, refers to himself). Since then the label has released his remix of Cold Fusion Mafia's "Darkscore" as well as his Sound Off 2 mix CD. He and tech-house DJ Ivee Feraco currently throw Sidejack Thursdays, a weekly party at Jade.
Talking about his tour of the U.K. last year, he notes how the reception he received there was "off the chain. People couldn't get enough and the clubs were all about it." But when asked what will get Miami audiences, especially the bottle-buying crowds all clubs covet, out to a local bass night, he says, "If I knew that I'd be so paid."
Culture Productions is a promotion company that has thrown electro-bass parties (including its annual Candyland event) for eight years. It's run by the first couple of South Florida's electro/breaks scene, Robert Perez and Arlene Roiz. Perez is a mellow New Jersey transplant whose first exposure to the PLUR (Peace Love Unity Respect) rave ethos in 1995 was a revelation that stood in stark contrast to his previous experiences as a hip-hop fan. After hooking up with Roiz -- a tough circuit chick -- the two began throwing rave events in late 1996 that originally showcased all kinds of music but focused on electro-bass, giving the sound a major platform. "I know this sounds corny, but when the bass drops I feel it in my soul. It's the closest thing to old-school hip-hop without the bad attitude," says Perez. "I can't break dance, but I love the circles, the popping and locking. I could never see myself at Space partying with glow sticks."
"The high and low sounds, the buildups, it makes you move, not like trance which is so monotonous and boooring," adds Roiz.
During its heyday in the late Nineties, Culture regularly pulled in 2000 heads to weekly events at various clubs in Miami and Fort Lauderdale. But when the rave scene cooled off club owners looked to the sexier, sultrier sounds of house to draw older patrons. After anti-rave legislation swept the country a couple of years ago, Roiz notes, Culture parties, which used to start at 3:00 in the morning, had to be over and done by 5:00 a.m. So fewer heads came out.
"People think because we used to pull off such huge events that we still got flow," Roiz says, "but what they should know is we've both declared bankruptcy. The last couple of years, the events took a toll on us."
But thanks to what they see as a recent surge in enthusiasm, the Culture couple and Rafiq are planning a monthly night at I/O appropriately titled Electro Bass. They say they want to "save the scene," but they "don't want to change anything to cater to anyone. Older or not, if you're hardcore and love the music, you'll come out," Perez says.
