Sydney, AU · bass · trap

What So Not

1 upcoming festival

Australian bass mainstay — a project that helped define future trap, still swinging between festival-sized drops and moodier, more experimental cuts.

What So Not is the project of Sydney producer Chris Emerson, who also records as Emoh Instead. It began in 2011 as a duo with Harley Streten, better known as Flume, who left the project in 2015; Emerson has continued it alone since. Early singles including "Jaguar" and "High You Are" helped shape the trap-leaning, heavily swung strain of Australian bass music that spread through festival sets in the mid-2010s.

Later work has moved between that big-room instinct and slower, more textural writing, drawing on live instrumentation and guest vocalists. Emerson has collaborated with Skrillex, among others, and released the album Not All the Beautiful Things in 2018.

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