A red-hot day at the start of May. A local taxi driver picks up a fare to Attercliffe. On paper, it’s an ordinary job – until he sees who’s getting in. It looks much like iconic bassline vocalist Siobhan Gallagher. He keeps checking to make sure. He grew up listening to her music and now his kids are fans too. As they head towards town, he has plenty of questions to ask…
A few hours later and a couple of miles down the road, four young men queue outside Electric Studio. It’s bank holiday Friday. It’s Boiler Room. And it’s their first ever “lads’ night”, so let’s just say they’re excited. As they approach the entrance, they spot someone standing in the doorway.
“Oh my god, that’s Big Ang!” one shouts, running over for a photo.
This is Sheffield – two whole decades after bassline was forged, the city still rumbling to its sound. Big Ang and Siobhan were there at the beginning, delivering the genre’s first major hit, ‘It’s Over Now’, and forming a friendship in the process.
Siobhan grew up in a musical family. “Everyone in my family could sing,” she tells me. “Except one sister.”
One of her earliest successes came when she won a singing competition at Orchard Square. From there, she began attending community music centres such as SADACCA and Darnall Music Factory, collaborating with different artists and experimenting with different styles.
Big Ang’s route into music was equally organic.
“I went from working behind bars in clubs to going to raves, to buying decks and vinyl. It was a natural thing for me. I was always into music, specifically dance music. The more underground, the better.”
The pair first met while collaborating on ‘It’s Over Now’. Siobhan explains how the track came together.
“Ang had the idea of reproducing the Deborah Cox version. A label was interested, but they wanted somebody else to sing it.”
Big Ang picks up the story: “Siobhan was a good friend of a producer called Patrick James, who recommended her to re-vocal the track.”
The pair came together in the studio, and the track quickly became a flagship anthem of the emerging bassline scene.
“If there were four different stages at an event, sometimes you could hear the track being played from one room to the next,” recalls Siobhan.
Though DJs were spinning it nightly, the song took years to chart. It also took years before Big Ang and Siobhan began performing together, as they were signed to different labels. Both were gigging constantly as bassline exploded across the country.
“You wouldn’t believe the number of people lined up outside,” says Siobhan. “There were thousands waiting to get in. You’d be passing and thinking, they’re coming to see us!”
After years as a club staple, ‘It’s Over Now’ finally charted in 2005. Around the same time, Big Ang and Siobhan began performing together regularly. A year later came another huge hit, ‘Wifey’.
“I remember taking Ang up to the record label and saying, ‘I’ve got something for you.’ It just got signed there and then.”
Like ‘It’s Over Now’, ‘Wifey’ became embedded in club culture. In 2021, Tom Zanetti released a rework of the track with Siobhan, which reached the UK top 100 – one example of how the pair continue to find new audiences through the decades.
Siobhan is still releasing music, working with producers including Patrick James on a rework of Aretha Franklin’s ‘Deeper Love’ and house legend Todd Terry. Big Ang continues to travel the world, finding a new generation of bassline fans along the way.
At Boiler Room over the bank holiday weekend, she DJed alongside rising Sheffield producer Warpfit. Asked what she enjoyed most about the set, she gives a simple but perfect answer:
“Everything!”
The pair still perform together regularly. During the same bank holiday weekend, they appeared at Leeds Arena as part of the Clubland tour. Sharing the stage remains something they both love.
“The crowd reaction is brilliant,” says Siobhan. “It’s lovely to see how people react and that they still remember the songs.”
Their enduring popularity is proof of bassline’s continuing longevity.
“It hasn’t gone away. It won’t go away. It’s still fresh. You know it’s never going,” says Siobhan.
“Bassline makes dance music more exciting, edgy and still with an underground feel,” adds Big Ang.
Big Ang and Siobhan will headline the Open Arms stage at Tramlines on the Saturday – a slot Big Ang already knows well after drawing a huge crowd at last year’s festival, with dancers stretching as far as the eye could see.
“It was particularly challenging playing to a younger audience,” she says. “But the support from the crowd was amazing.”
This year’s set promises more of the same. Asked what festivalgoers can expect, Ang smiles before delivering a very cool response:
“Just wait and see.”
Full lineup news and stage splits can be found at www.tramlines.org.uk
