We had the pleasure of interviewing Denis, Joe, and Theo of Bass Planet Collective, a Toronto based label with a focus on showcasing the best rising bass music producers.
How did Bass Planet Media start out and when was the Bass Planet Collective label introduced?
Denis: Bass Planet Media started as a place to catalog all of our best rave videos that were taking up too much space on our phones and a great plus was that we got to share them with other people. The page started to get some tracking and we started to take it semi-seriously for a while and we were posting a lot of videos. About two years ago a former team member mentioned that we should take things in a different direction and begin to take it more seriously. At the time it was a big step for us but it was the best decision we ever made.
We started hitting up local people in Toronto that do shows and we got a couple of opportunities to shoot and take some videos. From there things began to escalate including the collective which started last year in January. Started as a trial run and it wasn’t till October that we started taking it head-on. We started the transformation of a video posting platform to something that could potentially be a dream career.
As a label, your own taste of music plays a factor in the artist you sign and singles you release. Tell us a little bit about your musical background. What genres do you guys hope to cover?
Joe: We started with listening to more generic dubstep that everyone is accustomed to. Our taste has definitely evolved over the years. We first got into dubstep in 2015/16. We were strictly listening to dubstep at the time but our taste began to grow and started listing to drum and bass, half Time, and riddim. Riddim has been around for awhile but it started becoming very popular around 2017 and that really caught our attention and has become a focus the last couple of years. Subgenres of riddim such as future riddim are really catching our attention right now.
Theo (Bass Planet’s Graphic Designer) how do you go about creating a vibe around the EPs you work on?
Theo: The first step is usually brainstorming a big, swinging, weird idea with the team. After that we do our best with the resources we have to stay as true to that original concept as possible. My favorite part of working on these ideas is collaborating with the team and bridging our knowledge together.
As a Toronto based label, how does your home city have an effect on the artist you guys are working with and the music you want to release?
Theo: We are in an interesting spot because a lot of our connections are based online due to covid. We do always try to rep Toronto but on the SYZYGY EP we have artists from Asia, Europe, and South America.
Denis: We are always here to push and support local Toronto artists but we definitely extend into international territory.
As you guys are scouting artists from around the world what differences do you see in the bass music being produced in each region?
Denis: The riddim scene has been booming in South America. They have their own crews and sounds. If you listen to Motar – Jazzero on our EP, Who Is Brian mentioned in his YouTube
review that you can hear the Latin influence in his music, and with future riddim that is blowing up everywhere I feel like some of the leading people are from Asia. That region seems to be experimenting a lot with this new futuristic, melodic, I don’t know how better to describe it but neo-Tokyo sound.
What are some of your goals in the coming years?
Dennis: We have some amazing plans that we can’t really give too much away yet but we are working on building a strong network. Our main focus will be to expand our main audience worldwide and shift our content from only rave videos to a multitude of different things (music, merch).
Theo: Translating our community from online to live experiences and working on new techniques within our audiovisual projects.
Dennis: For me and Joe, EDM started with the mainstream sounds. Tiesto, Avicii. At the time we were hunting for great tracks. Around grade 12 Theo and I became best friends. When we first met Theo playfully poked fun at me for being a fan of the mainstream sounds, and he was right. Shortly after that Joe’s girlfriend introduced me to Joe at an event. That night Joe and I spent the whole night looking for a track we heard at the event. The track ended up being Deadmau5 – The Reward Is Cheese (Nom De Strip Remix). That kind of encapsulated what we are here at Bass Planet. We’ve been hunters of music forever and Bass Planet has been an excuse to showcase our passion to a bigger audience.