With our newly launched Young Curators’ Programme, we’ll be helping five Kirklees artists take the next step. The programme will develop talent and leadership amongst the music programmers, promoters and curators of the future: as well as receiving training and mentoring from the hcmf// team, our Young Curators will also have the chance to develop new works that can be tested within the region, and presented to audiences at a future festival. Ahead of their collaboration with hcmf//, we’ll be profiling each of our Young Curators and getting to know their work. First up is Jake Burdass – local musician, DJ and venue manager.
It’s happening in Huddersfield. That’s what Jake Burdass wants you to know about his hometown – there’s a place for music, and it’s here. Living in the shadows of Leeds and Manchester, the town suffers from all the usual character assassinations: it’s small, scene-less, and nothing ever happens. It couldn’t be further from the truth. Burdass started his own company, a club called BASSment, seven years ago. Located in central Huddersfield, it’s become living proof of a town full to the brim with artists. BASSment connects the people who make, DJ and produce tunes – as well as those who dance to them.
BASSment was founded in 2013. Bored of taking Transpennine trains to the cities surrounding their hometown, Burdass and his friends wanted something of their own. It was after DJing a night in Nimegann – a small Dutch town of the same size and scale of Huddersfield – that they realised they could play a part in the culture, too. And they had something else on their side: a history. ‘Huddersfield’s already got a really rich past with sound systems’, Burdass notes, nodding to the town’s stint as the capital of reggae music. ‘We wanted to be a part of that’.
Their club hasn’t come out of nothing – the sounds of garage and bassline may have evolved, but the roots have been here all along, lying dormant, just waiting for someone to awaken them. The music that goes down at a typical BASSment night is forward thinking, but the club is also in conversation with the heritage of Huddersfield, the sounds that alighted it in the first place. Sixty years of West Yorkshire is packed into BASSment’s mission.
As a curator, Burdass is as supportive as he is ambitious. He wants a community to go with his club, and it shows; for every big-time DJ coming from overseas, there’s a local artist filling up the bill. BASSment brings together a roster of Yorkshire producers and MCs while also inviting new voices into the fold – Burdass notes that people see BASSment as a hotspot, these days, a place up North that artists ‘aspire to’. Trading off their sounds with these out of towners, locals have a massive chance to get noticed; crucial career moves happen at BASSment nights, with musicians stealing conversations out from underneath the overwhelming churn of bass.
There’s more to BASSment than just nights. Burdass describes it as an ‘events space, recording studio, record label and clothing brand’, though he offers a second, more succinct description: ‘we do loads of stuff down here’. He’s tinkered with so many different formats, trying with each one to bring up a new wave of dance music pioneers. In daylight hours, BASSment becomes another place entirely, a community hub where people can mix, collaborate, and even get some mentoring; BASSment’s Unplugged programme aims to make getting educated on the decks affordable and accessible for all. And by the way, there are two record labels.
As one of our Young Curators, Burdass wants to bring BASSment to new audiences. He’s hoping he can blow away unsuspecting listeners with their first exposure to a sound system, changing their lives the way one changed his. He’s put together so many line-ups over the years that he’s lost count, but each one has brought with it more fine-tuning: ‘I don’t want to put something together that’s just a mash-up of stuff – when I’m doing a night, I want it to flow really nicely’. For hcmf//, he’s thinking up ways to put different music – whether club or contemporary – together, in the same moment. At the heart of it all is that loud, local sound that welcomes the world to Huddersfield.