Not much has happened for the past few days, so here are a couple of classy drum and bass tunes I’ve been listening to recently. Released on vinyl with So Long, Sonic Winds is pure quality from Seba. Not everyone’s cup of tea, I imagine, but I’ve got to listen to something else in between practicing for the 29th! Absolutely beautiful stuff.
Click for another 100% classic, PFM’s Danny’s Song.
Slightly late with this news, but EE have recently announced another mammoth batch of releases to keep us all busy well into summer. First up is Lost Soul’s debut album, Human Being – I’m really a fan of Dark Angel and Bad Influence, but wasn’t too keen on Nightmare or his London Helsinki Underground remix, so I was wondering which Lost Soul would make an appearance here. The answer, as it turns out, is neither. At least from the samples I’ve heard, there’s a bigger trancecore/hard trance influence than was apparent in the older tracks, and it really sounds promising. Three cheers also for the nutty amens on What The…(Intro), which brought back some fond memories…good old jungle, eh? Finally, I’m sure you’ll agree that the cover artwork is fantastic, as it is on Firefly’s new release. Which leads us nicely on to….
I should have mentioned this by now, really – but here’s a ferocious new track from Belial (aka. dark freeform supremo Twisted Freq). Currently only listenable on the new MySpace page, Naughty by Hypnodisc is semi-drum & bassy hardcore/breakcore that marks a huge, but very promising change of direction. It’s a fine line between the perfect fusion track, and hardcore-style breaks that lose the pace of 4/4 tunes/lack the bass and sheer muscle of the hardest d&b tracks, but Belial certainly seems to be heading along the right lines here. After a few listens, the vocal has grown on me too, adding a pleasantly old-skool element to things.
Anyway, this tune would be terrifying in amongst a mix of more recent Kreatrix releases, and it’ll be really interesting to see how this new sound develops.
I’m sure most people will have noticed this already, but I thought it’s worth drawing attention to what I think is one of the most exciting mix compilation-type things to have been released for an age.
Actually, shame on me – I should have mentioned volume 2 of Crush on Hardcore some time ago, but completely forgot, to be honest. Volume 2 is particularly notable for anyone who actually reads TYFTH regularly (well, that’s me, at least), as it includes two tracks by Buzzmasta, Lenny (quite a favourite of mine) and Shoreline – albeit the Orbit1 remix. Excitingly, I’m downloading the first of the four CDs as we speak, so I’ll give them all a listen before too long.
On to the actual topic in hand, volume 3 – and, well…the focus has obviously shifted towards freeform this time around, with four CDs mixed by Shanty, Invader, Addictive DJs and a timely mix from that man Entity. All four sets look great, but Shanty’s in particular has me salivating embarrassingly every time I look at the tracklist – not only for the remix of Cyrez & Annti S’s Never, but also the use of some old classics among the brand new tunes. It’s something I think DJs should do much more often (I know, I know, I didn’t last time, but it was my intention, honestly), and here Shanty uses perennial set-opener Tigris somewhere in the middle, as well as Cyclone at the end.
The mixes won’t be released until the 24th March, but all four will be free to download. As you’ve probably noticed from the photo up there, a physical version also exists, in very limited numbers. The design has quite a no-frills appeal, I reckon, and although the postage might be fairly hefty from the UK to Japan, I’m more than happy to be supporting this kind of ambitious project. I’ll do a bit of lazy copy/pasting of tracklists next, but click the ‘Read the rest of this entry’ down below, will you? This post is going to swamp the whole site otherwise.
Has it really been 6 months since the last one? I’ve spent far too much time sorting out the tracklist for this, but the upside is that I’ve already got a mountain of tunes in the ‘possible’ pile for number 3. The original idea this time was to base the mix around Betwixt & Between’s Surendrajit, but given the variety of other tunes that I was coming across, it wasn’t really possible. Famous last words, but I might attempt that next time.
As for this mix, I eventually decided on a trancy-melodic opening, then a spot of evil in the middle, and a melodic hardcore/drum & bassy finish. Er, and shoehorning Surendrajit in at the end. I’ve been listening to these tunes for so long, I’m not really sure if the progression works or not any more….any opinions, do let me know, eh? It’ll be interesting to see what people think of the inclusion of DJ Entity’s Stargazer, a drum & bass tune with a hint of UK hardcore – it suddenly struck me as something that might sound nice mixed into the hugely unpronounceable Zusammengehorigkeit, and is followed by the breakbeaty Sadness and Sorrow remix. There are plenty of Betwixt tunes again, but this time I was hoping to draw attention to Hase and Zio too, both of whom might be coming out with some new stuff before long.
(Huge thanks for their help to: Cyrez, Betwixt & Between, Substanced, Zio, Guld, Cogi, and The Goat)
Here’s another bit of classic ambient drum and bass, this time from DJ Crystl. Meditation was released way back in 1993, and was the inspiration for Crystl’s own Mind Games (1996). This tune, along with Warpdrive, is perhaps the perfect example of an ambient amen track.
I’m currently going insane as a result of working out the final tracklist for NRG Monogatari 2, and decided to chill out with some intelligent d&b from back in the day. Sadly, my CDs/tapes are gathering dust in the UK, but YouTube came riding to the rescue with a few of my favourite tunes.
So, in a slight departure from the usual dark synths and four to the floorness, I’ll be sporadically posting up some highlights from what is possibly the most criminally ignored of all electronic genres. First we have Seba & Lotek’s So Long (1996), which may well be my all time favourite track.