NRG fans should probably mark October 23rd in their diaries, as that’s when BRK’s first full-length album will finally be touching down. Thanks to the man himself I’ve got hold of it a little early – it’s a really quality collection of tracks that definitely confirms the progress he’s made over the past year.
The album starts off with the title track Genesis, an utterly fantastic 3 minutes of dark atmosphere. It might be odd to choose an intro as my favourite track, but it’s a brilliant piece of work and a very worthy start to the album. The meat of the tracklist is of course Lab 4-influenced NRG, given some really nice extra touches with the collabs later on. Standouts for me might be the FINRG-released Rome Will Burn Down, the pounding intro to Pitch Black and the lovely filters of Saint Evil, but there’s also some welcome variety with the piano sequence in Something I Can’t Do and the vocals of Love’s a Bitch.
Great to see Heathen involved in trademark style on Everything Dies, before the album closes with a couple of minutes of downtempo, melancholy piano. Minimal but atmospheric, it’s a nice way to end things and actually clocks around 80bpm, raising the possibility of some interesting mixes in an NRG set.
This is essential stuff for any NRG fan, then, and a big achievement by BRK after all his hard work. Be sure to support a real trooper of our scene by checking this out in a couple of weeks time.
What I’d give to be at this event – following up Munted’s superb support for the freeform scene is the latest Sinstry, a three-room spectacular that ticks all the right boxes as far as I’m concerned. The main room can hardly fail to bring in a big crowd, but has a very strong underground feel that will go to the next level with the addition of BRK. As the winner of the recent mix submission contest, he’ll take the main stage into even darker territory with his now top-quality productions and selection. Massive congrats to him.
The freeform room is where we see the real event headliner though – Nomic will be returning to London for the first time in years, with some superb new material that’s surely the perfect fit for Sinistry (check out his amazing preview of Turbulence if you haven’t already).
The cyber theme and Slimelight floor are finishing touches to what looks a fantastic night, surely a must-attend if you’re anywhere near London/the UK. As usual, the Facebook event page has plenty of extra info to check out.
Here’s a recent track from BRK that’s an essential for the NRG heads, and might even be one of his best so far. The melodies and synths are firmly in Lab 4 territory, which is about the highest compliment you can give a Hard NRG tune.
No Mercy was also included in Cyberdyne Seba’s newest set, Hoovers at the Edge of the Universe. The middle section is far too hard-housey for me, but there are some great acid picks here and there with the harder and nastier NRG saved for the second half. Really worth checking out, this one.
It’s finally time for a look back at 10 Years of FINRG and my escapades in Finland and the UK – part of the reason for this write-up’s massive delay is the difficulty of doing justice to what was an utterly stupendous trip from start to finish. This might well be a long one (and in fact is version 3 of the post), but feel free to skip through to the event section where you’ll find my tracklist and a few other bits and pieces of behind the scenes-related stuff.
Important edit: Apologies to Raver71 for not crediting his photo of the Senssi decor. Check here for his awesome album from the night, and click here for the equally great Sessions2 photos, where you’ll find me looking especially psychopathic.
Next year’s FINRG & FUTURISTICS event has just been announced, and my oft-delayed look back at 10 Years of FINRG will be coming over the weekend. Before that then, here’s a brief roundup of the FINRG releases from the past month.
The biggest news was of course the recruitment of Alchemiist – great to see FINRG accepting one of the most consistent producers of the past year into its ranks, especially if it means we see more tunes of Permission to Die’s quality. Fate is at least as good, and another excellent dark track to add to this year’s collection. Substanced has also added the new version of Crank Cleopatra for fans of his Facebook page, while Radical Vibe is a lovely new tech-ish trance tune from Solar Emotion.
Finally comes the BRK remix of Hatral, a great balance of the original’s atmosphere and BRK’s brutal hard dance style.
BRK’s newest FINRG release is my favourite so far, and really one to check out if you haven’t yet done so. Plenty of Lab 4 influence as always, this one shows how much progress BRK has made with the quality of his sound, with a nice bassline and some lovely synths in the intro/outro.
This will be the last post before I head off to Helsinki tomorrow – sorry I haven’t been able to post as much as I would have liked this past week, but predictably I underestimated how much time it would take to plan a set as well as my month-long trip. I’ll be posting again from Finland/the UK, but until then, big thanks to everyone for their Hybridize track suggestions, and I hope to bump into a few Horsers this weekend!
Some more posts coming tomorrow, but for now here’s a reminder of a little something that’s happening next month. Now back to set practicing, I’m going to find some inspiration from somewhere even if it kills me…
I might be wrong, but I don’t remember posting about the FINRG Anniversary minisite before. Most will have see it already, but if not there’s plenty of useful info on there for those heading to Lahti next month.
I’ve also got a Hybridize-related question for everyone – thinking back to when Hybridize releases were pretty regular, what were some of your favourite tracks? Of course this is in no way related to the fact that I’m playing a ‘Hybridize set’ in a few weeks’ time…