Bakey Live From DJ Mag HQ

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Watch Bakey play a DJ set from DJ Mag HQ.

There is no one who captures the youthful face of UK bass music than Leeds’ Freddie Baker, AKA Bakey. A torchbearer for a new generation of sub-heavy DJs, he’s is still under 25, but has an old-school head's encyclopedic knowledge, alongside the insatiable excitement of someone who was reared on social media. His style is as populist as it is infectious. A bit of speed garage here, some 2-step there, a drop of bassline, a quick dip into jungle, a few nods to grime, a large dose of breaks. Heck, you can even catch a little hint of old-school dub badness in some of his recorded mixes. Holding it all together is a dark and sinister reimagining of the hardcore continuum — this is not your dad's champagne on a Sunday rave.

Bakey sees himself as part of a new movement. “It’s amazing to see the scene grow to such a crazy size and to see all the new talent emerging,” he explains. “In terms of a UKG resurgence, I feel it’s definitely happened in the past couple of years. An obvious sign for me was watching Interplanetary Criminal and Eliza Rose’s track shoot to number one in the charts. Clearly the sound [is] getting more popular again. There’s also been a new wave of bootleg/edits which have swept the scene at the moment too, and I don’t think it really happened to this extent when UKG was first around in the ’90s-’00s.’

This is vital to how Bakey approaches DJing. His sets are filled with bootlegs and edits that send the SoundCloud and YouTube commentators into full meltdown as they look for track IDs. And, as Bakey points out, it's also a way to foster a sense of community amongst this latest generation as they swap WeTransfer files like a previous generation used to trade white labels. This also means that his favourite moments DJing are when he goes back-to-back with fellow new-school DJs like IZCO and Breaka, and MCs like Capo Lee and Reek0.

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