December: 7 bass & club music releases you need to hear this month

DJ Lag 'DJ Lag EP' (Goon Club Allstars)

London-based label Goon Club Allstars first put itself on the map with the release of melancholic grime producer MssingNo’s debut EP in 2013. Since then, it’s been able to spotlight some of the best offshoots of well-known electronic sounds, most recently gqom, the genre of house music local to Durban, South Africa. Last year, the Rudeboyz EP helped to spark the international conversation around gqom, and now GCA are back with a massive record from one of the genre’s pioneers, DJ Lag. After a particularly fierce Boiler Room set in September of last year, the 20-year-old producer has finally given us an EP. It’s four colossal tracks of stripped-down, suspenseful house music, punctuated by throbbing kicks (the eponymous ‘gqom’ sound), relentless drum patterns and cavernous soundscapes. Taxi drivers in Durban have been known to play gqom while driving partiers around the city at night, and it’s easy to see how the music transcends low-quality recordings and soundsystems – all you need to get you going is the vicious momentum of the kick.

9/10