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ARKADE writes bass music where the melody and the weight are the same thing. Growls carry chords. Drops answer the verse that came before them. It's heavy the way a riddim set is heavy, and melodic the way a color bass record is melodic — not two competing ideas, one sound doing both at once.

Behind the project is Indiana native Austin Kesler, chasing the kind of drop that makes a room stop and ask what just happened. The influence runs through the heavier, more melodic end of dubstep and riddim: chord-stacked, snarling growls, and tonal bass style that fuses melody directly into the low end, and the genre-agnostic, funk-inflected energy that treats a set like a mixtape instead of a box. ARKADE isn't interested in picking a lane between them — the goal is a sound that hits like riddim and lingers like a melody.

New music is coming steadily, with more on the way.