Pola & Bryson & DRIIA - Where Did You Go

I put this on to test some new headphones and forgot I was supposed to be listening critically about forty seconds in. Pola & Bryson make liquid drum and bass that actually earns the “liquid” tag — warm, rolling, the kind of thing that sounds like it was mixed underwater in the nicest possible way. “Where Did You Go” leans on DRIIA’s vocal, which sits somewhere between heartbreak and acceptance, and the pair build the whole track to hold that feeling without ever crushing it under a big drop. That restraint is rare in this scene. So much liquid dnb mistakes prettiness for depth and just floats there being pleasant. This one has an ache in the low end, a bassline that rolls where a lesser track would punch, and it gives the emotion somewhere to actually live. The back half brings in these little pitched-up vocal fragments that flicker around the main line like memory doing its thing. The drums stay soft the whole way through, brushed and low in the mix, which is the only correct choice for a track this heavy-hearted. I’ve listened to a lot of Pola & Bryson over the years and they’ve become one of the safest bets in the genre for this exact mood: the 2am, staring-at-the-ceiling, thinking-about-someone kind. It’s beautiful without being soft, sad without being mopey. The sort of drum and bass you can put on for people who swear they hate drum and bass and watch them change their minds.

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