Yes indeed….most people may well be aware of this news from the FINRG forums (among other places), but Twisted Freq is soon to be leaving the freeform scene to concentrate on his new breakcore/drum and bass/industrial style tracks (under the moniker Belial), while this will also be the final year for Electronica Exposed and Shanty himself.

Both have given an enormous amount to the scene, and I was mentioning to someone not so long ago that without EE and Kreatrix, the freeform genre would be virtually non-existent. Their own tracks have been a big inspiration for other artists/DJs – but as well as that, a quick check through the past releases on both labels brings home how forward-thinking they’ve both been. Innocence, Darkstar, Religion X, The Ghost of Jupiter….listing all the tracks that come to mind would take an eternity, but huge credit to the two of them for unearthing and supporting the new and more established artists in the scene. It might not strictly be the darker side of things, but huge shouts are definitely owed to EE for recently releasing the first (and second, eventually) Full Circle DJs album, a great example of how wide ranging Shanty’s releases have been.

Of course, in such a tiny musical subgenre, maintaining a label must be murder, and so it’s perfectly understandable that they’ve both decided that the time is right to call it a day – but let’s hope the scene can keep going without them. Here in Japan, freeform/Hard NRG artists have effectively been without a dedicated label for a few years now (Guld has got enough to be getting on with running NRGetic Romancer/producing tracks to be looking after releases for all the other artists too, at least for now), and so the scene is being kept alive through DJs/Live PAs at events – indeed, it’s pretty much the only way to hear newer tunes. Might something similar end up happening in Finland and the UK? FINRG’s releases have slowed right down these days, and Nu-Energy’s output is definitely a separate subgenre altogether.

There are still a few more releases to come from both Twisted Freq/Kreatrix and EE, and so let’s hope that the newer artists (and the new incarnation of Kreatrix, post-Twisted Freq) will be ready to step into the (twisted) breach after that. It’s largely thanks to those two that the scene is at its current level, and us humble DJs/listeners should definitely be thankful for that, eh?