Freaks & Geeks - Free Your Mind

How did a duo best known for a decade of grimy trap end up making one of the more weightless drum and bass tracks I have heard all month? Free Your Mind is Freaks & Geeks stepping sideways out of the lane that built their name and into something that runs at full dnb tempo yet feels strangely serene. The drums rattle along at the genre’s usual breakneck pace while everything stacked above them stays oddly calm, a looped vocal about freeing your mind, pads that just hang in the air, a bassline that rolls along rather than snarling. That is the trick the better end of liquid pulls off, motion and stillness happening at once, your feet going twice as fast as your heartbeat. The vocal is both the hook and the weak spot, a touch too literal with the title, but the production around it is lovely enough that I stopped minding halfway through. There is a stretch where the drums cut out entirely and leave only the pad and the voice drifting for a few bars, and the way the break crashes back in afterward is the part I keep rewinding for. For two guys I associate with making dancefloors ugly in the best possible way, this is a genuinely pretty record. Did not see it coming.

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