Bass Tone Trap has been played on NTS shows including Supporter Radio: Your Specialist Subject, with Magnetic North first played on 30 December 2024.

Martin Archer - saxes

Derek Saw - saxes

John Jasnoch - guitars

Neil Carver - guitars

Paul Shaft - double bass, vocal

Pete Infanti - drums

Bass Tone Trap was formed in 1981 when Paul Shaft and Martin Archer's previous group, the ethno-Stockhausen inspired "de tian", possibly Sheffield's unlikliest ever group, co-opted additional recruits Carver, Jasnoch and Infanti from the Sheffield Free Music Group. After an initial period with synthesizer player Ian Clarricoates, the group was completed by the addition of vituoso free jazz / RnB sax man Derek Saw, surely one of the most underrated and unsung stylists ever to remain hidden from general public view.

Given their respective backgrounds one might have been expecting the new group to be more interested in amplified egg slicers than in the riotous jazz-punk pell-mell which quickly became the group's trademark sound. But as listeners as well as players all the group were equally interested in pop as well as experimental musics, and saw a role model / middle ground in, especially, the electric band music of Ornette Coleman.