The Most Vital Tunes and News from the Worldwide Underground

Welcome to Notes from the Underground, THUMP's weekly premiere feature dedicated to shining a light on underground sonics from around the world. Every week, we'll start at the surface and dig deeper into the underground with each track and news story.

This week, we've got some of the finest bassline on the planet via My Nu Leng and Taiki & Nulight, a stateside bi-coastal collab between Whitney Fierce and Curses, that'll dirty up your poolside vibes, retro piano house vibes, and some internet footwork.

As the newfangled take on the bassline sound has gone worldwide, there are still two names that sit atop the pile in terms of authenticity and consistency: My Nu Leng and Taiki & Nulight. So when the three of 'em get together in the studio, the result is a bassline basher like "BS3," released on My Nu Leng's excellent new Horizons EP, via the ineffable MTA.

Three years ago Tiger Milk's record founder Martin Morales experienced music in a way that he could never forget. Hearing DJs mixing chicha (Peru's sped-up version of cumbia) with electronic basslines for the first time, he knew that "Kids would go nuts at both the tropical bass and the traditional sounds. This was like a modern rave Peruvian the like I'd never seen before."

Working with Tiger's Milk co-founder Duncan Ballantyne and tropical bass DJ Chakruna, Morales put together a roster of today's most vital underground producers, including Dengue Dengue Dengue, Animal Chuki, and Deltatron. This compilation is an overview of the last five years' development of the tropical bass scene in Peru.

Although the multi-faceted Whitney Fierce may be a fixture behind the decks at fancypants pool parties in Los Angeles in the Summer months, the tunes from her Broken Car Window release on Eric Sharp's RIS Labs were all about dark vibes. Safer at Night bossman Curses took the ominous tones and set them atop propulsive techno thematics, taking this one deep into dark places in the early morning.

Despite what the name would suggest, there's nothing subtle about "Pastel." The collaborative track between Norwegian producer Hasta and the UK's GLACCI is an exercise in epic trap maximalism, with glassy chimes tinkling over laser guns straight out a Nintendo playbook. You know it's game over when the track nosedives into the heavy, low growl of an industry-grade boiler. Somewhere, Hudson Mohawke and Rustie are high-fiving each other to this.

Ballroom music is intrinsically tied to New York's underground LGBT community, but that doesn't mean its international offshoots are any less kickass. On "This Is CVNT," the UK's Cvnt Traxxx (Niall Connolly) lives up to his name with a properly shady ballroom track featuring Philly rapper Sugur Shane, out now on Finnish label Top Billin'. Say it with me now: cuntiness is a feeeeeling.

Sébastian Tellier is one of French electronic music's most acclaimed acts. From his electronica work of the early 2000s touring alongside Air to producing his third album alongside Guy-Man of Daft Punk, Tellier reps his nation proud. His latest album, L'Aventura, includes a young French house star by the name of Darius, who has lent his lovable, slow-burning house to Tellier's track, linking the work of one of France's veteran to an emerging young star. The result is steamy makeout session: French-on-French house music bliss.

We're still reeling from the feels rendered by Vuurwerk's video for their essential low-key indie-garage tune "G.R.I.P." Berliner House of Black Lanterns has had enough of feelings, apparently, because his "Leather Jacket Love Story" is all about dark atmospheres, stripping back the melodic wash of the original and creeping us out in the best way possible.

Do you need a break from the hyphy, upbeat beachy-bass of the summertime? We do. This debut THUMP mix by FAKE music's Yoann Feynman is a dark reprieve. With its heavy take in between house, techno, and a bit of EDM, Feynman's mix comes out of the gates with a Stimming double-take and quickly dropping into a mid-section that weaves through Justin Martin & Ardalan to Feynman's own "Gaza" and Gesaffelstein before reaching it's peak with RL Grime and soothing out from there.

Dino Soccio, still smarting from his wildly successful remix of Jose Gonzales, returns with a piano-house tune bursting with soul and frisky energy. This one will take you back to the early 90s, shirtless and sweaty in some pansexual NYC nightclub with no air-conditioning, but lots and lots of love dripping from everywhere.

"Imagine that you're a 16-year-old raped by her father in front of all of your friends and put it on Instagram." That's how a guy at a Moscow party described Russian witch house to a local reporter. (Russians have a real cheery sense of humor.) If that makes you uncomfortable, that's the point. Dark jokes are central to witch house in Russia, as is a sense of nihilism. The term "witch house" makes sense, as it perfectly captures a ghostly, gothic strain of electronic music that was reaching peak popularity in the mid to late-2000s: slowed-down tracks that creeped along to trappy snares, heavy reverb, and vocals pitched down to demonic growls.

Titled "Ninja Tune," not released on Ninja Tune (we see what you did there), DJ Karaoke's internet-footwork vibes drop into some raunchy grime hornage before swirling you back into an aesthetic that is halfway between late 90s video game screen and Baltimore basement rave.