Drum'n'Bass 2013 (???)

https://soundcloud.com/critical-music/sets/sam-binga-ayo-freezy-module016

I thought the Sam Binga EP was wicked

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Om Unit's Sleepwalkers EP somewhat reminiscent of 95-96 Metalheadz, the Samuari Horo compilation Scope has some interesting tracks also.

the new special request album might be more junglist than d'n b but it's got a great vibe.

Had very high hopes for Rockwell until he signed that exclusivity deal with Shogun Audio but his recent stuff is just dreadful by and large, can't get my head around the stuff he's making nowadays at all, massive shame because at one stage he was promising to be one of the most interesting DnB producers of his generation. A lot of people really liked "Detroit" but I thought it was overproduced messy rubbish that failed to live up to its conceptual promise, still, horses for courses and all that.

Recent stuff I'm really enjoying:

The "Scope" LP on Samurai Horo - some excellent tunes blurring the lines between deep minimal DnB and dark droney type stuff.

Narratives have been putting out some corking records too, that latest Rhyming in Fives 12" has been described as Gary Numan doing the soundtrack to Bladerunner, and that's not too far off the mark IMO, it also continues the fine tradition they're establishing as a label by sounding quite unlike any of the previous releases in any sense apart from its quality.

Om Unit and Machinedrum's new albums are both well worth a look, lots of interesting experiments in footworky, jungle-ish stuff, although in terms of the Footwork influence Fracture and Stray and to a lesser extent Sam Binga and Danny Scrilla are the ones to check. There's an excellent Om Unit remix of Machinedrum's "Gunshotta" that be downloaded free in return for handing over your email address etc, well worth the extra burden on your spam folder tbh, it's wicked.

Foreign Concept & Stray - Bang It on Critical is one of the best attempts to bring the footwork vibe into DnB to date I think www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aKAlXtSRoI and there's another solid tune on the flipside too : www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIwcTOPAXzU‎


Have a lot of time for the whole Manchester sound at the moment too, lots of sparse wonky MC-led halftime numbers going around, Dub Phizix is the name to look for, this Fabric promo mix he did with Chimpo is ace, lots of proper party tunes that blur the lines between Dancehall and modern DnB really well, with a few nods to Jungle and Footwork along the way. I would love to see a lot more of this kind of thing...


Sam Binga & Redders - Ayo! www.youtube.com/watch?v=k30VQqfwuSs

On a more subdued tip dBridge and Kid Drama have started a new series of podcasts called "Heart Drive" - there's going to be six of them in all, and based on the first one I can't wait to see what's in store with the next ones, the Autonomic podcasts were pretty seminal so it's nice to see them pulling the finger out and getting stuck into a new project. Podcast can be found here - http://heartdrive.co.uk/


ASC is doing some quite interesting soundscapey stuff on his Auxiliary label, I'm still loving this tune he had out on Samurai recently enough - www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w-9-0_U8co‎


On a more Drumfunky tip all the recent Subtle Audio releases have been great, the Nic TVG album is really exuberant stuff, and as off the wall as a lot of it is there's a few perfectly playable pieces on it as well.

I quiet liked this - http://runtime-records.com/album/exile-ep

A lot of what I've heard of this new wave of dnb, even in this thread, doesn't really sound like dnb to me. A fair amount of it seems to exist in the kinda realm of dubstep / downtempo.
It's an interesting hybrid of styles tho. Some of the juke influenced stuff is really good, although there's a lot of trax that fall into two traps; either they're just a dnb tune with some 808 clave or something chucked in. Or they're a bit of a mashup pastiche juke-remix kinda thing, which are fun but a little cheesy.

rockwell's latest output's been horrible imho. he's one of the producers whose style's sadly been corrupted by this whole footwork jungle mumbo jumbo.

in other news, green bay wax famalam has a new EP out:

http://greenbaywax.bandcamp.com/

On a slightly different note, it's really interesting to see drum n bass fulfilling it's pop potential over the last couple of years. I was watching the MOBOs the other night and this was on

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Obviously it's got little to do with the other tunes in this thread, and I prefer Feel the Love anyway. Both of those got to number 1 in the UK - which was what DnB was supposed to do in 1998 with Roni Size and Peshay etc. That never happened - those guys were more interested in making double jazz concept albums, and the vocalled cross over tracks were always hopeless - they weren't much cop at songwriting, really. But 15 years later, here we are.

A friend of mine had a theory back in the day that it was Roni Size's chart attack dinner table jazz efforts that were final the nail in the coffin for drum and bass.

Personally shit like Rudimental and that other 'live dnb' rock crossover act that got popular a few years ago, what ever they were called, all sound fucking horrible. As does a lot of the contemporary scene were it seems popular to layer up 100 drum breaks to get that super thick sounding drum sound, that apparently sounds good on a festival sound system, were it can be most appreciated by the people waiting to see Bruno Mars and Keane.

Matt Ingram once told me it was all over by the beginning of 1995.

craner said:

Matt Ingram once told me it was all over by the beginning of 1995.

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Nah. Lodsa great tunes made in 95. Id say the end of 96, when techstep supplanted jump up...

new forms is/was great. they wrote some great songs - watching windows for one. no reason they shouldnt have been in the charts. maybe not number one, maybe not all out pop, but it was drum n bass thinking about R&B/soul/jazz-funk. thats allowed too.

im pleased for rudimental, they know how to write commercial hits, but i dont really want to hear what theyre doing all that much.

I'm with you Droid, but I still enjoy the memory of Matt's swingeing, iconoclastic discrimination. I remember feeling physically shocked when he said that.

craner said:

I'm with you Droid, but I still enjoy the memory of Matt's swingeing, iconoclastic discrimination. I remember feeling physically shocked when he said that.

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He's not that far off the mark TBF, but I think he might have reconsidered - he had some nice things to say about 'artcore' there a few years back and that was a 94/95 thing.

Maybe if you were more into the original Jungle scene and that side of things, otherwise 95 was a seminal year IMHO. Although it could also be looked at as a pinnacle from which everything slowly went down hill. Goldie's Inner City Life/Timeless, Ltj Bukem - Horizens, Alex Reese - Pulp Fiction, Dj Zinc - Super Sharp Shooter, Dillinja - The Angels Fell, SS - Lighter, Photek - the rain, to name just few, all came out that year.
The next few years you'd still have classics by; Adam F, Nasty Habits, Origin Unknown, Jonny L, Photek, Ed Rush, Optical, Grooverider and plenty of others to look forward to.

The was definitely a change around 96/97 as the music moved further into the mainstream and you had people like Lamb and Everything but the Girl making crossover records. Then the eventual Mercury Prize nomination of Roni Size for taking dnb live, and legitimising the genre with the rockist attitude types. By 98/98 it was all but done.

I think DnB could probably have survived the double LP / Jools Holland / Courtney Pine collaborating tendency - that lot could all have floated off into their own live-band jazz-funk crossover sphere and the club scene could have carried on regardless. What really buggered it up IMO was the club scene becoming increasingly big and basically ironing out all the weirdness and unpredictability that made it so exciting.

Yeah, it wasn't crossover ambitions that killed it, more the consolidation within the scene. Metalheadz/Photek, though both amazing at the time, were the thin end of the wedge that emphasised production values and killed the ruffness.

There is a good case to be made for 94/95 (and maybe a bit of 96) as a period where all the synthesis of the previous years created something completely new and unique.

I think it was a combination various factors. When one side of the scene is becoming increasingly mainstream and commercial, the more underground elements will try and distance themselves from that sound, so you get a mutation into techy harder sounds. Were it was once about experimentation, exploration and simply making good music to get the club hype, it becomes more about fitting into some splintered genre niche, which has a stifling effect of sorts.
There was also the bad image of the raves, and the new Uk Garage scene that took away a lot of the old crowd who didn't want to be all dark, moody and deal with bad attitudes.

Personally I think it all just got a bit boring and predictable. The sound had explored many forms but it seemed to just be repeating variations on a pretty narrow theme by 99/00.

I am an old jungle head and went to many bluenote sessions - as you say Droid that was the thin (very exciting for me) end of the wedge.
For me it started to get boring in 98/99 - Bad company was a good example of the sound that later became dominant. The sound that took over was '100 mph, in fifth gear, ALL of the time'.
The sound was too fast and too full, there was no space anymore. The best things all have contrast - and the music no longer had contrast. bass, drums and mid range sounds all at full levels
I remember reading about some mythical meeting that Dillinja & Lemon D called for a few of the producers at the time asking them all to slow down (the BPM's). I wish they had