Sydney, AU · bass · trap

What So Not

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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, and the pair's debut EP, 7 Dollar Bill, appeared that year. A second EP, The Quack, followed in 2013 and included a guest verse from Action Bronson.

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, alongside "Tell Me", a 2014 collaboration with RL Grime.

Flume left the project in 2015, with the duo's final release, the Gemini EP featuring George Maple, marking the split; Emerson has continued alone since, releasing Divide & Conquer as his first solo EP in 2016.

Later work has moved between that big-room instinct and slower, more textural writing, drawing on live instrumentation and guest vocalists. Collaborations have included "Waiting" with RL Grime and Skrillex, "Better" with New York singer LPX, and "Be Ok Again" with Daniel Johns, alongside a widely circulated remix of Rüfüs Du Sol's "Innerbloom". Emerson released his debut album, Not All the Beautiful Things, in 2018.

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