Dance Basslines

The pulse — and by definition the heart — of any great club track is its bassline: that sternum-shaking air vibration that, together with rhythm and beat, makes up the three fundamental elements of dance. Here we've assembled tracks that owe their very identity to the bass-line, whether its Peter Hook's belligerent heavy-duty twang on "Blue Monday" or the meaty, serpentine, rubberised synth laid down by Groove Armada on "Superstylin'." Bass mutates through the many dancefloor textures of our Next Steps.

The bass is an adaptable, shape-shifting beast — in the hands of Deep Blue (a.k.a. Sean O'Keeffe) it prowls through our headspace with bristling with seismic danger, lending drum 'n' bass anthem "The Helicopter Tune" the footfall of a ravenous T-Rex. Depeche Mode, by contrast, generates a pulpit-smacking immediacy for "Personal Jesus (Holier Than Thou Approach)" while Future Sound of London sets "Papua New Guinea" adrift on a dark, ominous river. Twisted, pole-axing, frenetic . . . the bass-line shows more of its colours in Deep Cuts.

Dubstep superstar Benga rings the changes on "26 Basslines" to show his mastery of the art of tweak, Primal Scream instills a sense of menacing funk with the bass on their cover of the 13th Floor Elevators' "Slip Inside This House", and Ils (Illian Walker) embeds a futuristic didgeridoo into the the bass clouds of "Next Level." And if you've never been nuked into submission a bass-line, feel the radioactive glow of CJ Bolland's Geiger-counted classic, "Horsepower."

Without their basslines, most dance tracks would be a little more than nebulous assemblage of rhythms and beats, unable to deliver the satisfying payoff that arises only from the deepest realms of recorded sound. We're talking about a feeling of full-body immersion in the moment; a sonic harpoon of profound noise shot from the bass-bins towards your soul. Every one of these tracks will leave you ecstatically helpless and gasping for air, whether its the amphibious replicant squelching of Mr. Ozio ("Flat Beat") or the junglist-reggae-rave fusions of SL2 ("On a Ragga Tip '97").