State of bass

Diplo and his Hollertronix partner, Low Budget, are often credited with “deregionalizing” Baltimore club music. But the Philly duo, who made the sound a hallmark of their postgenre parties and mixtapes a half-decade back, were hardly the first DJs to push the frenetic hip-hop/house hybrid beyond Maryland. “Bmore” club—which is typified by 130 to 140 BPM drum breaks, call-and-response chants and finely chopped staccato samples of things like Lil’ Jon’s “Yeah-yah!” or popular TV themes—has long been ensconced in Newark, where it’s a necessary ingredient at most any club night, teen dance or BBQ. On Saturday, Gothamites who aren’t averse to crossing the Hudson will have to chance to hear two members of Brick Bandits, a massive, intergenerational group of DJs and producers who trade in the Garden State variation of the sound.

“In this area, you gotta have that club music,” says the collective’s DJ Tameil, who first brought the sound to Newark in the late 1990s. “A lot of New York DJs come over here and find the crowd is a lot different, even though it’s just over the bridge. You can’t play hip-hop and R&B all night, and nobody’s gonna ask you to play 'Watch Out for the Big Girl’ [by Baltimore’s Jimmy Jones] or [DJ Technics’ remix of the Marvelettes classic] 'Mr. Postman.’”

Brick Bandits have developed their own take on the style called Brick City (or Jersey) club music. The tracks on December’s The Brick Bandits EP, which features one song each from six different producers including Tameil (“Shotgun Buck”) and the crew’s Mike V. (“Feelings”), have a polished sheen rarely found in Bmore club, which prides itself on its raw, gutter sensibility.

“The Jersey producers sort of changed the game, production-wise, from the basic Baltimore template,” says Joey “Dirty South Joe” Massarueh, a Philadelphia DJ who joined the ever-expanding crew in 2007 and runs the Ol’ Head label. “It’s subtle, but they were a lot tighter with the way they chopped records up.”

Tameil learned of Bmore club via Chicago’s ghetto-house music, a close stylistic cousin. After forging connections with Baltimore’s DJ Technics and Dukieman, he began compiling club tracks onto mixtapes for the Newark market and making his own beats. Newark, like Baltimore, has a rich tradition of house music, and the new sound fit the city like a glove. “When Bmore club came it was like, 'Wow, this is house music on crack,’” says Mike V., who cofounded the crew in 2000 with DJ Tim Dolla and DJ Black Mic. “It was an easy transition.”

Meanwhile, teens in Philadelphia—which is roughly halfway between Baltimore and Newark, both geographically and culturally—were also embracing the sound. “Radio DJs in Philly have been playing this five-song rotation of club music for at least ten years,” says Dirty South Joe. “But here in Philly they call it 'party music.’?” After contacting Tameil through MySpace, burgeoning Philly producer DJ Sega joined Brick Bandits in 2007 and has since emerged as the crew’s most visible ambassador, thanks to his prolific Web presence and flair for the absurd (Ol’ Head/Mad Decent’s next release will be a comedy CD from Sega). Sega’s connection with the collective, meanwhile, led to the formation of a Philly Brick Bandits chapter, which, besides Dirty South Joe, also includes DJ Dee Square (whose 17-and-under Friday night weekly at West Philly’s Jamz roller rink is party music’s ground zero) and DJ R.L., a 17-year-old prodigy whose exhilarating remix of the NFL on Fox theme (“NFL Hornz”) is a new club standard.

Mike V., a 36-year-old single parent, says Brick Bandits is as much a mentoring program as it is a music-making unit. He hosts weekly Brick Bandits meetings at his house and requires would-be members to fill out a lengthy application, then wait a three-month probationary period before they can claim official status.

“I get an average of six people a day hitting me up on MySpace asking about [joining] Brick Bandits,” says Mike, who numbers the current membership at about 20 core producers and DJs, and 45 members in total. “The first thing I tell ’em is, 'Write me four paragraphs about who you are, why you want to be in Brick Bandits, what you bring to the table and where you see yourself in five years. You can’t be selling drugs, you can’t be in gangs, you can’t be a school dropout. I want to see your report card. The adults on the team are calling parents, checking up on these kids. It’s really a family unit.”

Brick Bandits’ DJ Tameil and Tim Dolla spin at WISOMMM Cultural Center in Newark on Sat 7. The Brick Bandits EP (Ol’ Head/Mad Decent) is out now.

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