Bassvictim performs at Holocene in Portland, Ore., Nov. 3, 2025.
EDM couple and duo Bassvictim performed at the Holocene in Portland earlier last month on November 3rd. The duo ran songs from their latest album “Forever” – released just barely a month before their performance – along with other famous hits like “Forever Salty,” “Canary Wharf Drift,” and “Gajówka.” One of their more well known songs, “Air on a G String” had fans uncontrollably moshing and reaching for the Polish-American vocalist Maria Manow to join them in the crowd. She did, moving through the crowd to serenade them in her glitchy music.
Manow and her partner Ike Clateman, American-English music producer, contributed their 2010 dubstep beats to London's underground music scene. They are the self-proclaimed creators of “basspunk,” a niche genre of music they say they’ve created for themselves. “Basspunk” is more than just a genre for the duo, it's a metaphorical attitude – as they stated in an interview with Focus Knack. The term stemmed from the aggressive bass lines consistent in all of their songs that make walls, car doors, and eardrums vibrate.
Manow and Clateman met outside of a Berlin club, and while they didn't initially hit it off, they later reconnected in London and formed Bassvictim. The name came from something Clateman had said to Manow outside of Peckman Audio in London, how they were “victims of the bass” due to its intensity. From this statement came the name Bassvictim, and their slogan “i am a victim of the bass.”
Clatman’s nearly overpowering bass, paired with Manow’s girly and high pitched screamo vocals, creates the perfect alternative hyper-pop sound.
The duo dated throughout their music career, frequently posting on Instagram about their extreme highs and lows. According to Reddit, Bassvictim performed at Berghain – an impossible to breach German techno club – and due to verbal and physical altercations between one another, were asked to leave.
Just before their show in Portland, Manow posted on an Instagram story that she and Clateman had called it quits, staying together for their music career but cutting off romantic ties. The audience caught onto this, as some songs in the set list made Manow cry on stage as she peered over to her ex-partner who was crouched behind his mixing board and masked by a pashmina.
Their music is worth checking out if you want to be transported to this scene right here:
Circa 2011-2014 (around the peak of Tumblr) and you are looking to listen to hyper-pop club music in some boots, long socks, itty bitty shorts, and an off-the-shoulder cheugy T-shirt, jumping and dancing in the smell of Four Lokos and mango Juul pods.