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Music

Marcus Visionary Brings the Bass

The godfather of Toronto’s bass scene talks about keeping the genre thriving.

Marcus Visionary is arguably one of the most influential names in the North American bass scene, working tirelessly to keep the music on point and the parties fresh. He has been running North America's oldest jungle, drum and bass radio show, the Prophecy on 89.5 FM. Known for his fantastically smooth mixing and his ability to read and play to the crowd, Marcus has been a key player in developing Toronto's underground bass culture. Just before he set off for his US tour, we sat down to get a little lesson on the difference between jungle and garage, and what it's like to be godfather of an entire city's bass scene.

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THUMP: Give us a little introduction as to who you are and what you do…
Marcus: My name is Marcus Visionary, I'm a DJ, a producer, and I've been a promoter in the city since the early '90s, throwing events all around the city. I got caught up mostly in the jungle and drum and bass scene first, and I started producing the music in the early 2000s—jungle is still big in Britain though, so I go over there and I tour often. Basically, for the first 18 years I've been really pushing jungle, drum and bass, although at one point, around 1997, when jungle turned into drum and bass, a lot of people got into UK garage, and we started pushing that through our company BUMP. It's basically a love affair with British bass culture and music.

For those of us that don't know, what are some of the key differences between jungle and garage?
UK garage is a house tempo, a little bit faster than house, usually around 130 to138 BPM, and takes influences from house, techno, R&B— its kind of a mash up, very British. They have a big West Indian culture in Britain, and they tend to take a lot of R&B, soul and reggae and pair it with electronic music. That's what they did with jungle originally—in the early days it was like 165 to 180 BPM, it was really quite fast. I guess the biggest difference is that jungle is a little more reggae and dub oriented, and drum and bass is a little less so.

What got you into this sound? An experience in the UK or hearing it throw other people?
My family is West Indian, so I'm kind of addicted to anything with heavy bass lines—I grew up on soul music. But I really got exposed to it through a radio show—Radio London—I used to listen to when I worked at Play de Record in the early '90s. The host had such a great way of presenting the music, and played a lot of rare groove and acid jazz. But his family would send him these test presses, which were moving more into techno even. We started hearing all these clips and really heavy sub-bass, and from there I kept exploring more and more. There was a natural progression—we never chose it, the sounds were just moving that way on its own.

Who would you suggest listening to for someone looking to get exposed to jungle and drum and bass?
I mean for me, Bailey, Brain G, Fabio, Goldie, there's just so many—it's unfair to name just a few. Ministry of Sound has been pushing a lot of drum and bass at the moment, so that's a great place to start. I've been running a radio show, the Prophecy on 89.5 FM, for 19 years. It'll be our 20th anniversary in September, so we'll definitely be having a big party for that one!

You've been credited with bringing the sound to Toronto—how did that happen?
We started a company called Flirt, in 1997 that provided us with a network of people who were really passionate about garage, a lot of people who had just come out of the jungle scene, and wanted a change. We started a weekly, then moved on to do more one off events here and there. Eventually though the garage scene became really MC oriented, and that didn't really translate as well over here in Toronto, because we didn't really have any MC's like you did in England. That's when the jungle sound started to come back again. Just recently, this past January, we decided to re-launch a garage company, because there are quite a few people here who are still very involved with that sound. Our host is MC Plain English now, but we're not playing just garage any more, we're trying to diversify a bit. But essentially we're all about British based culture and music.

What's it like promoting underground bass shows now?
It's tricky, because the scene has changed across the board. It's very dominated by agencies, which can be both good and bad. The bigger agencies benefit the most—you know they say, "Oh if you want to book Rusko, you have to book these three other people." Before you would have promoters who brought in music that they liked. Now you have promoters who are more like business people, who are being told by agencies who they have to book and bring in. So it's sometimes difficult competing with that, because they're just part of a far larger machine. But at the end of the day, the people who want to be at our shows are there.

Has the bass scene been badly affected by the EDM craze?
Right now, EDM looks like a corporation more than a movement—it's very agenda driven. So I like to think that what we do, with our events and sounds like ours, that it is underground, that it is fresh. Basically, the bass scene has been marginalized. The whole EDM craze has dwarfed everything. If you were into minimal techno before the sudden rise of all this, or you know, anything obscure, its made it even smaller now. They've taken pop packaging, and packaged everything electronic in it. They can take a jungle act tomorrow, package them in a certain way with the right light show and the right logo, and say this is EDM, without any awareness going to the scene or musical background that that act came from. That takes away from music culture in a big way.