Global Bass

We know what you're thinking: what's with the low-end lashings in our Global Bass Essentials playlist — songs that could easily reduce most speakers to rubble? Well, that's easy: we like to feel our electronic music collection, whether it's serving up sputtering synths and heat-seeking horns ("Bucky Done Gun"), percussion patterns that stutter and stop like a room of irregular heartbeats ("Den of Drumz"), or a dizzying posse cut that sounds like it was beamed in from the year 3000 ("Diplo Rhythm").

You've got a simple choice now: either run for cover or embrace the bass-bombing extremities of our Next Steps.

While the raucous rhythms and frenzied bass frequencies of dub reggae are the starting points of our Next Steps set, our Global Bass overview tears through several subgenres in its search for the perfect bassline. That includes the heady hip-hop of "Dancing Box" and "Black Stacey," the laser-guided dubstep of "Jahman" and "Jah Red Gold and Green," the rabid ragga of "Brooklyn Anthem" and "Ganja," the X-rated breakcore of "Roll With It," and the wobbly World Music of "War In the Poppy Fields."

Our Deep Cuts tier is just as diverse, with enough crate-changing remixes tossed in to keep you on your toes.

Don't believe Kid606's delirious compilation cut "Another Slammin' Ragga Bootleg Track (Ok, Last One, I Promise!)" — we're far from done with our DJ-ready rundown of woofer-wreckin' street bass singles. That goes for both sides of the turntable, from the insane instrumentals of Sub Dub, Bassnectar, DJ Olive, and the Twilight Circus Dub Soundsystem (a.k.a. former Legendary Pink Dots bassist Ryan Moore) to the mic-slayin' club material of Wiley, Modeselektor, Team Shadetek, and Heaps Decent, a group of underprivileged Australian kids who are determined to spark their own game-changing scene in Sydney.

From Jimi Hendrix to Jimmy Page, guitars get all the credit. Yet if there's one other sound that cuts across most countries and continents — leaving a trail of blown speakers in its wake — it's the chest-caving brilliance of global bass music. One of today's most vibrant and vital dance/electronic scenes, it can be taken in endless directions: the queasy rhythms and brittle post-jungle breaks of dubstep (Burial, Kode9, Disrupt), the apocalypse-now beats and street-seasoned rhymes of grime (Wiley, Team Shadetek), the unclassifiable club music of Modeselektor and Ghislain Poirier, and the sample-splicing post-everything pop of such avant-garde artists as M.I.A. and Bonde Do Rolê. Not to mention Kevin Martin's laundry list of dubstep/ragga aliases, including Pressure, the Bug, and King Midas Sound. That guy's the very essence of what makes this music so . . . Essential.