While bass powerfully resonates among the cultural discourses, lexicology and\udmarketing of a range of electronic dance music (EDM) styles, little popular music\udscholarship has paid attention to the subjective, phenomenological and psychophysiological\udsignificance of bass in its modulation of intense feelings of pleasure.\udThis article examines the linking in jungle/drum ‘n’ bass culture of bass as a sonic space\udthat produces a powerful sense of jouissance where identity can seem to unravel on the\uddance floor and an articulation of contemporary urban space as a place of subjective\udloss and regression. Overlaying Freud’s notion of the uncanny and Kristeva’s signifying\udspace of the chora, I discuss how this fetishisation of bass can be linked to the music’s\udcultural formation from deindustrialised regions in London and the South-East of\udEngland during the early-1990s; its accelerated break-beats and “dark” bass-lines can\udbe seen to inscribe recent rapid social, cultural and environmental transformations in\udthe urban metropolis.
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