In the future, all reissues will look like this—Bass Head is an mp3 box set consisting primarily of DJ Magic Mike’s first five albums. Three of these are gold, and one is platinum, but that doesn’t make the Orlando native and Miami bass innovator any less of a cult figure.
Mike is an auteur of brute force—one of the first producers to manipulate bass frequencies for extreme sonic effect. It’s best displayed on 1991’s Back To Haunt You!—“You Want Bass” is fast and furious, and “Vicious Groove” is robustly textured, bass tones slithering beside each other, leaving reverb stains in their wake. Some of his later songs, like “Feel the Beat” and “Do You Like Bass II,” are masterworks of slow, colon-cleansing bass—they’re almost perversely deliberate.
But taken as a whole—Mike’s albums were eclectic mixes of trad rap, scratch fiddling, and early forays into bass music—this is an imperfect set. Where is 1994’s underrated Bass Bowl? Furthermore, his questionable excursions into R&B are best left unrevisited, and his rapping cohorts (mainly MC Madness) are mere window dressing. There’s a profound legacy hiding in here, but it’s tough to see the trees for the forest.
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