Berlin, DE · electroclash · bass

Bassvictim

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Snarling internet-era electroclash — bratty vocals over blown-out bass, reviving the genre's trashy Berlin glamour for a generation that missed it the first time.

Bassvictim was formed in London in 2022 by Maria Manow, a Polish-English singer and songwriter born in Bydgoszcz, Poland, and Ike Clateman, an American-English producer. The two met as students at Goldsmiths, University of London, during a trip to Berlin, and started the project later that year after running into each other outside the south London club Peckham Audio, where Clateman had stepped outside for a break from the noise, the source of the group's name.

Bassvictim works in a lineage that runs back to mid-2000s electroclash and blog-house. The project pairs shouted, deadpan and sometimes bratty vocals with hard, distorted electronic production, drawing on electropop and club music as much as on any rock reference point. The result is deliberately cheap-sounding and abrasive, with lyrics that lean on humour, nightlife and internet vernacular.

Their debut album, Forever, arrived in October 2025. Pitchfork gave it a 7.5 and placed it forty-ninth on the year's fifty best albums list, describing production built from clanging percussion, gnarled harp sounds and howling synths that sounded thickset yet simple. The magazine also featured the track "Mr. President" on its weekly playlist.

NME credited Bassvictim, alongside Snow Strippers and the Hellp, with reviving electroclash for a new audience, and Pitchfork writer Kieran Press-Reynolds cited them as a reference point for listeners following a similar internet-native lineage of acts including Snow Strippers and nate sib.

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