Sustance - North Star

The pad that opens North Star sounds like it’s drifting through a wall from the flat next door, and then the drums arrive and the wall comes down. This is liquid drum and bass done properly: warm, roomy, built for the drive home rather than the peak-time rewind. Sustance has a real gift for making 174 BPM feel unhurried, like the track has all night and knows it. The bassline is a round, soft-edged hum that slots under the breaks so cleanly you stop being able to tell where one ends and the other starts. About two-thirds of the way through, a vocal snippet surfaces once and then vanishes, and I’ve gone back three times trying to catch what it actually says. Liquid drifts into wallpaper when producers mistake pretty for interesting, and this never does, because the drum programming stays busy even while the mood stays calm. It reminds me why I fell for this genre in the first place, back when it was the thing you put on at 4am after everyone had gone home. Deep house gets all the credit for late-night warmth, and liquid dnb has been doing it faster and better for years.

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