BRIEF 07: 'Join the Future: Britain's Bleep and Bass Revolution ' Book

Bleep and Bass is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in Yorkshire. The sound took influences from Jamaican bass and sound system culture and the industrial sound of Detroit techno. Industrial devastation and political divide of the country influenced the youths in the north of England to incorporate these social and political issues into the music they were making.

Despite the UK's strong involvement in electronic music prior to Bleep, it was arguably the first form of electronic music that sounded unique to the UK with acts such as LFO, Nightmares On Wax, Unique 3, Sweet Exorcist and Forgemasters pioneering the genre with the now iconic Sheffield born Warp Records releasing the majority of the records.

The genre was short lived lasting from around 1988-91 and was quickly replaced by the faster more energetic sound of acid, hardcore and eventually jungle.

Bleeps time-defying excellence and strong visual aesthetic has been poorly served in terms of archive material, compilations, journalism and so on.

http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature.aspx?2349

http://www.factmag.com/2013/07/22/the-20-best-bleep-records-ever-made/

The Brief 


BLEEP N BASS


An exploration into the electronic music and rave culture of ‘Bleep’ culture between 1988 and 1991 in the North Of England.


Book:


Introduction

Context – Social, Political

Articles (Selection Of… )

Photographic Exploration

Interviews

Visual Language

Conclusion


Etheral:

-Flags

-Print

-Mixtapes

-Blog

Deliverables:

-Produce a publication and promotional material around the exploration of electronic music and rave culture in Yorkshire from 1988 – 91.  

-A launch event for the publication. 

Visual Research 

Methodology 

Our first stage in gathering research was to outline exactly what sort of content we wanted for the publication below is a working list of the different sections we will be covering:

Email Contacts

We identified key individuals and studios that had originally been involved in the Bleep n Bass scene and aimed to contact them explaining what our project was about and why we were doing it. 

Matt (Resident Advisor, published the Bleep article linked above) 

Matt was incredibly enthusiastic about the project and already had a large body of writing and quotes that he had collected after researching for the original article. Over the following few weeks we managed to put together a full contents and worked with interim deadlines so the project ran smoothly. 

The type takes influence from the original Bleep and Bass records and artwork, the majority design by Sheffield based design studio The Designers Republic. The use of bold block typefaces reflect the loud, powerful, bass heavy drive of the music and is the perfect choice to represent how the music sounded. 

Between me, Harry and Kieran we set ourselves the task of finding our own typeface to use throughout the publication that related to these record covers, yet had its own unique characteristics and voice. 

Considerations:

        

Book Format and Page Layouts

-B5
- ATC Duel (Headlines/Display)
- ATC Harris (Body Copy)

Above are the decided character styles for the publication. Based on the structure of the content Matt had provided we split the information into type hierarchy's which were:

- Chapter Font
- Subtitles
- Body Copy
- Quotes

Below are some page layout experiments.
 

Chapter divider:

Subtitle/Text spread:

Images spread:

Quote/Image page: 

Final Layouts

After going back over our initial spreads we took elements from each other that were the most effective to then finalise the designs. 

We decided to use pink as the recurring colour throughout as we wanted the book to have its own visual language and show that Bleep and Bass wasn't grouped with the acid yellows and green of the rave era that followed. It also had to differ from Warp Records already strong visual aesthetic and have its own voice. 

Gathering Images 

Bleep and Bass music had a very distinctive aesthetic due to the Warp records (who released the majority of the bleep records) branding by The Designers Republic. 

We wanted to show off this design in the book in the 'Bleepography' section of the book that would list the 10 seminal bleep records that came out of the era with Matt writing a description on them to coincide. 

The book starts of with a brief history to contextualise where the bleep sound came from, where the dire social and economical conditions of the north at the time drove the youth to begin creating their own twist on the American music of Detroit techno. For the images to break up the text heavy pages we used this setting to contact anyone who may have images of Leeds, Bradford and Sheffield during the 80s. 

The response:    

We researched into the locations of the events where Bleep and Bass was played to capture the fashion, energy and visual content of the rave flyers and posters. On of the places that stood out the most was a Club night called Jive Turkey that played a wide range of music from the US that inspired the young people who attended. 

We got into contact with one of the resident DJs Winston Hazel who provided us with some pictures and flyers from the events in the late 80s to include in the book. 

First Draft 18/05/16

As the writing and gathering of the content has taken longer then we anticipated we have decided to settle with a draft version of the book for submission at its current stage. Due to the limitations of the printers we didn't have much choice on the print finishes which will be more considered in the final published edition. 

Launch Event

We plan to contact music magazines and websites that may be interested in doing a short feature on the book and promote the launch event where we will have live DJ sets playing Bleep and Bass oriented music alongside, prints, flags and any other media. The writer Matt Anniss is in contact with some of the original producers and DJs which we are looking to get involved.