+1beats me wrote:sidechain compression
i think it sounding like it's 'around you' is just the fact that in house etc it is one of the main elements in a mix - and usually everything else (or at least the main things) are sidechained so they duck out of the way when the kick plays
kicks should be mono - especially if by some freak of amazingness your track is going to end up on vinyl
that's not to say however that there might not be another layer as others have mentioned that has stereo elements, but it will certainly not be on anything below maybe 150Hz as someone else said... I'd probably make it even higher if I wanted especially to do that. Same can be done with a bit of reverb where the signal is hi-pass filtered before the reverb so you don't get any weird phasing issues down low
generally speaking anything in the bass or sub bass region should be mono - the sounds are unidirectional and you won't hear any stereo effect down there, but you could get phasing problems and will probably sound horrible
but anyway, I think as I said (and Beatsme) earlier, I think what you are describing is more to do with things like sidechaining.
