Bassvictim Is London's Rising Underground Act

Ike Clateman is a producer and one half of the electronic music duo Bassvictim, with singer and songwriting partner Maria Manow. Ike and Maria met in Berlin in the summer of 2022 and immediately disliked each other. Four months later, they met again outside a party in London and decided to start a band. At that time, there were no parties that they wanted to play, so they invented one. They called it I was a victim of the bass (VOTB for short). It was the birth of a whole scene that I witnessed from afar, mostly through their tantalizing flyers and promo videos, all designed by Ike and Maria themselves. They’ve come a long way since then. Bassvictim now plays secret shows with Two Shell, have an EP out called Basspunk, and just did a European tour. Ike has a solo project called RIP wowaka, and he’s working on collaborations with Evanora Unlimited and The Hellp.

Ike is also my identical twin brother. We used to make music together and even live in the same city, but now we live across the ocean from one another and make different kinds of art. He lives in London, I live in New York. I write fiction, he writes pop songs. Yet, we’ve never really been apart. An uninterrupted dialogue has flowed through our entire lives. To interview your identical twin is like dipping a bottle into a river. We have a very strong WhatsApp rapport, so we decided to do the interview the same. I spent a day lounging in the sun on Brighton Beach, eating salmon blinis, and later strolling through Prospect Park, messaging my brother all the while.