How did it all start?
It all started back in 2004...Two music heads Drunken Uncle Bungle (Jez) & DJ Random (Edd) met during a “charity festival” in Longworth. The festival was the now infamous Local Gathering, a collection of soundsystems who came to together under the banner of mental health charity MIND bringing 120k of sound and five arenas to the Oxfordshire countryside. Jez played alongside Planet man & The Internationals and instantly caught the attention of Edd with his mix of old skool hip hop and turntablist skills. It was at that point in a dirty Oxfordshire field that Bassmentality began to come into existence.
Before meeting Edd, Jez had been running nights down in Brighton under the Formula banner playing host to a variety of DnB and Hip Hop acts. As well as promoting he'd also been helping Genesis Elijah to storm the UK Hip Hop charts putting out “Jah Bless” on his imprint CountryBoy Records. The single remained at number one on the 1XTRA charts for 6 weeks.....nuff said!
For Edd it all started back in 1998 when he hooked up with long time MC partner MC Shuffla (yes believe it or not Edd used to be a DnB MC!!) together they started Kinetic a DnB night at the Coven, Oxford. After a few events here and there Edd met Jan Zarecky and in 2002 Kinetic stepped up a gear or two!
Kinetic quickly stamped it's mark all over the Oxford DnB scene with a string of sell out events. The mix of headline acts playing DnB and UK Hip Hop over two rooms meant Kinetic was here to stay and established itself as one of the leading Oxford DnB promotions. After 18 months of Kinetic events The Coven had a rufurb and suddenly two rooms were one, sighting the old classic “musical differences” Edd and Jan parted ways and Edd started to pursue Hip Hop acts bringing a string ok UK artists down to The Cellar under the solution banner. It was at this point that Ed and Jez hooked up at Local Gathering.....
After a brief stint back at the Coven with Solution Jez and Edd decided to move back to the Cellar favouring a more mature/eclectic music policy and Bassmentality was born!!!!!! We decided to focus on a mix of music genres ranging from Ska, Reggae and Soul to Hip Hop, Breaks and Old Skool dance. Every night featured a live band and over the years we've seen the likes of:
Captive State, Imperial Leisure, PlanetMan and The Internationals, Jaberwok, Cassette Boy, Tonic, Diversion Tactics, Random Mouths, Horizontal Life, Gentleman's Dub Club, BeatBullyz and many more....