Grafix - Reflection of U

This is what liquid drum and bass is supposed to feel like. Grafix has spent years on Hospital Records making rollers that put melody first without letting them turn into wallpaper, and “Reflection of U” might be the warmest thing he’s done. It opens on a piano figure and a vocal that could have tipped into full radio-ballad, and then the drums arrive and it becomes something you can genuinely lose yourself to on a floor at 2am. The bass is round and singing rather than aggressive, the kind that makes you close your eyes instead of screw up your face. What gets me is the restraint in the build: he holds the second drop back a good eight bars past where you expect it, and that little delay is the difference between nice and devastating. Liquid gets dismissed as the soft option, the DnB you play your mum, and tracks like this are the rebuttal. I’ve listened to it maybe five times writing this and the piano still catches me on the way into the second half. It’s warm without going soft, and that balance is the whole appeal.

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