BAOBINGA & CO.

Cross the Bear Pit, away from the corporate shopping hell of Cabot Circus, and keep walking, up past the Blue Mountain club, Mickelburgh’s Pianos, and the strange church that hides behind a layer of corrugated sheet metal. Once you get past Turbo Island, home to some of Bristol’s most dedicated professional drinkers, you’re pretty much in the heart of creative Bristol – Stokes Croft. And right in the centre of Stokes Croft, housed in the basement of an disused bank vault, sits the studio Baobinga shares with I.D., the studio in which the majority of Joint Ventures was created.Across the road is Idle Hands, the new record shop that sprang from the demise of Rooted and which recently saw 2562 turn up for a 3hr in-store session.

A few doors up the road is The Croft, home to Pinch’s monthly shindig Dubloaded. This is the UKs largest decriminalized graffiti zone, and new pieces from the cream of the Bristol graf scene are constantly emerging, tying the blank spaces together between chic new cafes and fried chicken joints. Right now, there’s a buzz about the place, as upmarket and no-market are forced to co-exist and build relationships.Joint Ventures, the first album-length project on Build Recordings, is fully a product of Bristol, and particularly Stokes Croft. Whether re-upping on the caffeine in the Algerian cafe across the road while uploading stems for Jack Sparrow over in Leeds, or waiting in the doorway, sheltering in the rain as Guido makes his way down from Gloucester Road, the sense of being at the centre of creative Bristol is palpable throughout.

The collaboration with Mancunian house-meister xxxy started across the road from the studio with a full english breakfast at the Bank; the percussive clanks and clunks of ‘Proper’ were built by recording Kowton walking over the metal grate at the bottom of the stairs to the studio.And just as Bristol has built a reputation for an open-minded, forward thinking approach to dance music, rooted in a solid soundsystem culture and evolving through jungle and dubstep to wherever we are now, so Baobinga has developed a reputation as one of the most exciting producers operating today. Take ‘Rockfall’, the collaboration with acclaimed Purple pioneer Gemmy. Without hearing the track, maybe you’d expect Gemmy’s distinctive basslines over Baobinga’s rowdy bashment-inflected drums; but the actual product is lithe, rolling halfstep D’n'B with exquisite sonic detail. Indeed, none of the collaborations sound forced or disjointed, and none of them can be easily picked apart – a testament to the quality of musicians involved, and the wide-ranging yet still focussed approach Baobinga has brought to bear on the project.As a label, Build has received strong support from some of the most respected names operating right across dance music, from Craig Richards to Sinden, Modeselektor to Jackmaster, Mark Pritchard to Mary Anne Hobbs. On this album, Baobinga has built music with some of the most innovative producers working in dance music: Ginz, Guido, Jack Sparrow, Kowton, Geiom and more. Just as he is physically situated at the beating heart of creative Bristol, so this album confirms his position at the pulsating centre of UK bass music – thoroughly unconcerned with genre, tempo or anything other than pushing the boundaries of kinetic, percussive, colour-soaked dance music.