.WE, THE ANTS It’s crawling with ants. Worldwide. In the ghettos of Kingston, in Berlin’s fuck-up joints, in the streets of Miami and Tampa, in London’s dubstep laboratories, in documenta city and in the bohemian bars of Paris, these busy little creatures are eating away tirelessly musical, cultural and political legacies – and every night, they can be found where people get their cultural updates while dancing for bliss: In the clubs.
The thundering echo of the global techno and hip hop revolutions is trembling in the speakers and millions of basss-infected slaves to the rhythm are screaming for more when the idea for this compilation comes about on one warm summer club night. Ralph Raabe, who runs the legendary underground club A.R.M., DJ and producer Michael Schmeisser, as well as Anne Khan and Robert Defcon from A.M.T. in Berlin formulate a mighty plan to expedite pop culture – a precedent case for the global music industry.
Creative know-how and a wealth of experience and contacts in the international music business are bundled into the new enterprise founded by Defcon and Khan: BRD BASSS. With a series of releases, interviews and events, they take this network of seemingly unrelated basss-atoms and make it publicly visible as what it is: A common ground for a hard-won irreverence. Everywhere, the basss-ants devour the foundations, which are tottering thanks to wars and crises, and process them into cash with which to layer a swirling structure made of banknotes around the multi-gendered queens upon the ruins that remain.
The ladies among the queens set the pace: Lexie Lee, Yo! Majesty, Rayzaflo with CLP, Sasha Perera (Jahcoozi), Anne Khan (A.M.T) and Terry Lynn, zapping back and forth between stilettos, battle, business management, family and big bellies abruptly revealed onstage as confidently as pimps between their playmates. These post-feminist gender-benders have reached a plateau beyond gender trouble. True, some things would be easier without a pussy, as the lesbians in YO! MAJESTY have determined – but it’s just more fun with one. Lexie Lee meets all questioning looks with a shout of »Peace, bitches«, while the ghetto-Jamaican Terry Lynn topples the system with a coy smile.
