minimal d'n'b

bennythehands

homme vert
long time (sporadic) reader here, first time writer. hello.

what would you class as being minimal drum and bass? can you recommend any?

i've lost touch with it of late.

thanks
 

joe.dfx

who knows...
check out spectrasoul as well

digital's got some stripped down stuff (and not to forget classic photek...but that's a given id assume)

that ramadanman remix on critical (i think) was pretty cool too.

oh and Scuba has a half time dnb tune on his forthcoming EP on Hotflush as well that sounds pretty good from the clips I've heard.
 

hint

party record with a siren
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alex

Do not read this.
didnt realise there was such a thing.

That Breakage bit "clarendon" is pretty minimal, no snares.
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
very obvious but i don't think it will hurt anyone

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when that first rhodes chord comes in, ouch.
 

tyranny

Well-known member
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Dan Habarnam - "Zoom Back Camera"

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Blocks and Escher - "All in good time"

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June Miller - "Poison the Well"

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Consequence - "Lost Attack" (free 320 downloadable on his soundcloud page)



Of the new crop, Blocks & Escher, Data, June Miller, Bop, Consequence, ASC, Instra:Mental, Dissident and Dan Habarnam are all exciting me... Spectrasoul are a bit hit and miss but when they hit i like it... It's a really positivve direction for DnB as a whole, and while an awful lot of the music mightn't be entirely original it's really nice to see the genre pulling itself up by the bootstraps and trying to innovate again.


You really need to check out Loxy's CX podcasts though, they're excellent, he's completely left behind all the steroidal heaviness and taken it deeper than i ever thought he would, but in a darker and somehow more jungle way than the Autonomic crowd have...
 
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tyranny

Well-known member
didnt realise there was such a thing.

That Breakage bit "clarendon" is pretty minimal, no snares.



The other side of that is even more minimal, it's what Basic Channel would have sounded like if they'd ever tried to make Jungle...
 

tyranny

Well-known member
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Oh, Commix - "Underwater Scene"
 

Alfons

Way of the future
Of the new crop, Blocks & Escher, Data, June Miller, Bop, Consequence, ASC, Instra:Mental, Dissident and Dan Habarnam are all exciting me... Spectrasoul are a bit hit and miss but when they hit i like it... It's a really positivve direction for DnB as a whole, and while an awful lot of the music mightn't be entirely original it's really nice to see the genre pulling itself up by the bootstraps and trying to innovate again.


You really need to check out Loxy's CX podcasts though, they're excellent, he's completely left behind all the steroidal heaviness and taken it deeper than i ever thought he would, but in a darker and somehow more jungle way than the Autonomic crowd have...

See I kind of agree but I also think that this part of the scene has collapsed into cliches and copycats amazingly fast. Instra:mental and d-bridge kind of lead the way, with the autonomic podcasts and stuff, but then all of a sudden you got an army of copyists all doing "super deep" dnb that's really just pads and a lack of snares, and what's worse is that they are so concentrated on being deep and the polar opposite to the pendulum/clipz/tc end of dnb that their tunes are afraid to appeal to the floor in any what whatsoever. Good stuff, but it needs an edge, some ruffness, a little bit of floor appeal and maybe a tiny bit of fun? (all imo off course)

That said, there's some great stuff in this area, dbridge, Instra:mental, Bop, Oak, Dissident, June Miller etc. The new Alix Perez album is pretty good too.
 

Alfons

Way of the future
The other side of that is even more minimal, it's what Basic Channel would have sounded like if they'd ever tried to make Jungle...

"the Shroud", its amazing!

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tyranny

Well-known member
See I kind of agree but I also think that this part of the scene has collapsed into cliches and copycats amazingly fast. Instra:mental and d-bridge kind of lead the way, with the autonomic podcasts and stuff, but then all of a sudden you got an army of copyists all doing "super deep" dnb that's really just pads and a lack of snares, and what's worse is that they are so concentrated on being deep and the polar opposite to the pendulum/clipz/tc end of dnb that their tunes are afraid to appeal to the floor in any what whatsoever. Good stuff, but it needs an edge, some ruffness, a little bit of floor appeal and maybe a tiny bit of fun? (all imo off course)

That said, there's some great stuff in this area, dbridge, Instra:mental, Bop, Oak, Dissident, June Miller etc. The new Alix Perez album is pretty good too.



Well yes, that's true to a certain extent; but that's just the whole post-internet monkeys-with-cracked-sequencers effect though; sort the wheat from the chaff and you'll still find a bigger yield today than you might have a few years ago, IMO

And a lot of this stuff really does work on a floor; the bassline on that Blocks and Escher tune for example takes no prisoners, even though you mightn't admittedly get much of a sense of it through a crappy youtube clip! The same with that Dan Habarnam tune, I get great reactions whenever I play that out...


Have you heard any Rockwell? I have really high hopes for him, even though I'm not entirely sure if "minimal" is the right word to describe him...

The story goes that until he started writing tunes about two years ago he had a record collection that consisted entirely of ringtone jumpup, and that as soon as he started to write tunes and found how boring it was to make music like that had a damascene conversion; to this day he feels somewhat embarrassed any time anyone asks him about photek or futurebound or anything pre-2000 because he's literally never heard 99% of it...

Not much of his stuff on Youtube yet though -

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"Tribes"

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"Underpass"
 

tyranny

Well-known member
See I kind of agree but I also think that this part of the scene has collapsed into cliches and copycats amazingly fast. Instra:mental and d-bridge kind of lead the way, with the autonomic podcasts and stuff, but then all of a sudden you got an army of copyists all doing "super deep" dnb that's really just pads and a lack of snares, and what's worse is that they are so concentrated on being deep and the polar opposite to the pendulum/clipz/tc end of dnb that their tunes are afraid to appeal to the floor in any what whatsoever. Good stuff, but it needs an edge, some ruffness, a little bit of floor appeal and maybe a tiny bit of fun? (all imo off course)

That said, there's some great stuff in this area, dbridge, Instra:mental, Bop, Oak, Dissident, June Miller etc. The new Alix Perez album is pretty good too.



Thought that Alix Perez album was a little bland and underproduced actually - the wee 10" that preceded it was quite nice, and "State 808" is a nice bubbly roller, but there's precious little else on there to really keep me interested...

As for an "edge" the secret is just to select carefully and to consider the paucity of the released tunes as a mandate to dig in the crates; the wonderful thing about the stripped down stuff is that you can play older tunes with actual dynamics in them without them sounding out of place at all - i've been having great fun digging out old krust and photek records and the likes
 

Alfons

Way of the future
Yeah Rockwell sounds good

As for an "edge" the secret is just to select carefully and to consider the paucity of the released tunes as a mandate to dig in the crates; the wonderful thing about the stripped down stuff is that you can play older tunes with actual dynamics in them without them sounding out of place at all - i've been having great fun digging out old krust and photek records and the likes

that's all true off course, and off course I like a lot of this stuff, some of its great. Its just all a bit one sided, imo. What I used to love about dnb (and what I love about dubstep these days) was the diversity, different sounds, styles and subgenres mixed together way more than in techno and the like.

Also I think some of it's trying to be too deep, need some fun there too. Would like to see new material from guys like Marcus Intalex and Commix, who seem to come at stuff from that angle a bit more.

But for sure, an interesting development.
 

tyranny

Well-known member
Yeah Rockwell sounds good



that's all true off course, and off course I like a lot of this stuff, some of its great. Its just all a bit one sided, imo. What I used to love about dnb (and what I love about dubstep these days) was the diversity, different sounds, styles and subgenres mixed together way more than in techno and the like.

Also I think some of it's trying to be too deep, need some fun there too. Would like to see new material from guys like Marcus Intalex and Commix, who seem to come at stuff from that angle a bit more.

But for sure, an interesting development.



I actually don't really rate Marcus' productions that highly at all of late - ST Files has been doing some cracking solo stuff though, and Commix are always worth a listen; have you heard "Justified"? Beats are weak-sauce but it's a pretty heavenly slice of a roller...

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dave

the day today tonight
The other side of that is even more minimal, it's what Basic Channel would have sounded like if they'd ever tried to make Jungle...
Ha, I usually say that about B.L.I.M. - Glaciers. Can't find a clip of it, but it's not minimal, so no worries.
 
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