Colour bass combines brostep's impact with melodic dubstep's rich tonality in vibrant mid-range sound design

Colour bass is a subgenre coined by British producer Chime around 2016 and promoted through his Rushdown label. It fuses the aggression and impact of brostep with the harmonic richness and musicality of melodic dubstep, emphasizing ‘vibrant, bright and colourful’ mid-range sound design. Unlike classic dubstep (sub-focused, dark) or brostep (aggressive, maximal), colour bass emphasizes tonal complexity and melodic development built from synthesized bass textures. Despite overall declining dubstep popularity, colour bass found a niche audience through labels like Monstercat in the early 2020s.

Examples

Artists: Chime, Skybreak, Ace Aura. Production: design complex wavetable/FM bass with rich formant movement, layer harmonic overtones for tonal ‘colour’, build melodic sequences from tonal bass patches. The aesthetic is brightness and musicality vs. aggression or darkness.

Assessment

Describe what distinguishes colour bass from both classic dubstep and brostep. Explain what ‘colour’ refers to in the context of sound design and why the name was chosen to signal a departure from both darker and more aggressive approaches.