RSSIntroducing Bok Bok
Alex Sushon (far left in the pic) is a 23-yr-old designer, DJ and music producer from South London. You may know him as Bok Bok.
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He presents the Night Slugs show on London’s Sub FM every other Monday, does some illustration for FACT Magazine and, along with his buddy Manara, is one of the driving forces behind the growing Niche scene in the UK.
After ditching the name Faggatronix fairly early on in their career, the world was introduced to Bok Bok and Manara through a Mad Decent podcast earlier this year. Reminiscent of the 4/4 Garage sound from a while back, Bok Bok and Manara’s music is a bass heavy, high energy mix, pushing the boundaries of basslines that hang around just below 40HZ and make your eyeballs shake. I shared a couple of words with the chap a couple of weeks back:
Can you introduce yourself to the uninitiated?
I'm DJ Bok Bok from South London. I love grime and everything bassheavy and club-bangin. Me and L-Vis 1990 run the Night Slugs club night down here in London and I also tag-team DJ with Manara. You can catch catch us wrecking your local dancefloor.
Where you get the name Bok Bok?
From when Dr Dre sampled this record, it's an old name, I liked it cos its onomotopoeic.
Manara is your partner in this music thing, how you hook up? Lifelong friends?
Really long story but yeah we're 'good friends' from before we were DJing together. We were just chilling one day, made a few grime/trance mashups and were like "yeah lets take this to the clubs!"
Your Mad Decent podcast was nuts... How did Diplo and co. hear your sound?
It was actually our idea. We wanted to do it cos after Heartbroken by T2 got big we kept hearing a lot of confusion about what bassline was. We'd been playing bassline for a while so we just wanted to show everyone what it was all about and where it came from, just showcase it.
This Niche thing has been bubbling under for a while, why you think now is the time for it to get big?
I'm not sure why now, but its part of a massive trans-Atlantic surge of urban dance music returning to dancefloors and generally blowing up again. We all know gutter tunes are the ones that bang hardest on the floor, but recently a lot of people got back into garage, and indie kids got into bmore through blogs etc. People all over the world are falling in love with gutter house. Bassline had been going on up in the North of England ever since the speed garage days but a few breakthrough singles have allowed it to get noticed world-wide.
You're pretty much in a league of your own when it comes to pioneering your musical style, where do you look for influences?
Thanks man that's very kind. I look far and wide with my selection, but my tastes are informed most of all by 8Bar and Grime circa 2002-2005. That was a crazy period in garage and proved how abstract and crazy 'rave' music can get and how sick that can be. Def my biggest influence.
How much of the sound has derived from the murky UKG styles?
Yeah tonnes of it. I feel like that's informed what we're doing totally. We still do rewinds if a tune is too big not to pull. US ghetto house is a massive influence too but I grew up around UKG.
Now that the media has copped on, do you think it's a good thing or a bad thing for Niche music?
I think it can only be good, I just hope it carries on. Any exposure is great, it's just really important that while the attention lasts the people in the bassline scene grab the spotlight and use it.
Murkz, Q and Dexplicit have been biggest over here this year (and yourself obviously) who you got tipped for '09?
Its hard to say who's gonna have the crossover hits in 2009, but watch out for producers like Illmana, TRC, Screama, Piddy Py. Not bassline so much but watch out for L-Vis 1990, Starkey, Zomby, Secret Agent Gel, 2009 better know. Also funky producers Lil Silva and Dubplate Malice are gonna destroy everything.
From the one and only Shortie.
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Sectionfive @ 28 Nov 2008 16:37His bloggariddims is excellent too
good interview - bok bok, manara, l-vis, everytime!
playing at Transmission in February
good booking, must check it!
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That Sub Fm show with him and L-Vis is savage