Nu:Logic - Ukiyo (ft. Thavy Ear)

Nobody in liquid drum and bass makes weightlessness sound this effortless. Nu:Logic have been doing it for years, and Ukiyo is another gorgeous entry in the file. The brothers behind the project build drum and bass that sounds hand-played, every hi-hat sitting a hair off the grid, warm Rhodes-style chords and a bassline that rolls so smoothly you forget how fast the drums under it are actually moving. Thavy Ear’s vocal sits in the mix like one more instrument, airy and unhurried, the words themselves less the point than the texture of the voice. The title is the Japanese idea of a floating world, and the track earns the reference, the whole arrangement suspended in a weightless hover while the breakbeat does all the real work below. There is a passage two thirds through where the drums drop out completely and leave just the chords and the voice hanging in open air, and when the break rolls back in it is one of those small jolts of relief that liquid lands better than any genre going. This is music for the drive home as the sky turns, for the comedown, for the first coffee of a day with nothing in it. Nu:Logic rarely miss, and they have not here. Easily the track I have reached for most these last few days.

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