News / drum and bass
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1 min read
Tomorrowland is in Belgium and the locals still run the place
Read more . . . →Reminder that Tomorrowland happens in Boom, a Belgian town of about 18,000 that swells to festival-sized every July and then goes quiet again. The polite thing is to respect the home team, and Belgium’s dance roster punches so far above the country’s weight it’s almost unfair. Four locals worth your time, running from radio-friendly to genuinely frightening. 1. Lost Frequencies - Are You With Me Felix De Laet was still a teenager when this became the first Belgian track to top the UK singles chart. It’s a country sample turned into a sunset anthem, and it should be corny, but...
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1 min read
BAGO - COMPOSURE
Read more . . . →How does a track called “COMPOSURE” end up being the least composed thing I’ve heard all week? BAGO builds the first ninety seconds like a proper liquid roller, all warm pads and a bassline that just purrs, and then torches the whole thing at the drop into something jagged and mechanical. The switch is genuinely disorienting the first time — I caught myself checking the tracklist to make sure it hadn’t skipped to a different song. That contrast is the entire hook: he lulls you into a comedown and then reminds you the club is still very much going. The...
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1 min read
Vicetone - Nevada (Drum & Bass Mix)
Read more . . . →Nevada soundtracked roughly ten thousand gaming montages back in 2016, so a drum and bass remix of it could easily have been a lazy nostalgia cash-in. This lands on the smart side instead. Speeding the vocal up and dropping it onto a rolling break gives that impossibly catchy chorus somewhere new to go, and it turns out the melody was always built for more tempo than the original ever gave it. The drop at 1:30 hits harder than the four-on-the-floor version did, because the breakbeat lends it a forward motion the older arrangement never had. It’s cheesy, obviously; Nevada was...
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1 min read
Justin Hawkes & scribe - Wayward
Read more . . . →This one made me miss shows I’ve never even been to. Justin Hawkes writes drum and bass like a songwriter first, and Wayward with scribe is all yearning, a vocal that sits somewhere between pop and prayer, riding a break that never gets in its way. The drop doesn’t detonate so much as bloom, which is the whole appeal; at 1:55 it opens up and you feel your chest do the thing rather than your feet. Hawkes has a knack for chords that stay just slightly sad even at full tempo, and scribe’s top line leans into that instead of...
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1 min read
GLXY - NO ID
Read more . . . →How does a duo make drum and bass this warm without it turning into wallpaper? GLXY keep quietly figuring it out. NO ID rides a rolling break with a bassline that’s more felt than heard, and the whole thing has this dusky, late-set quality that a lot of liquid DnB reaches for and misses by being too clean and too bright. Around 2:25 they strip it to almost nothing, a filtered pad and a ghost of the drums, and the rebuild after is the reason to stay. There’s a jazz-chord thing happening under the second half that I keep noticing...
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1 min read
D.O.D & Hayley May - Closure (Friction Remix)
Read more . . . →The bassline Friction drops at 1:38 here is so simple it’s almost rude: three notes, rolling, no ornamentation, doing more than most producers manage with a full rack of plugins. Closure started life as a housier D.O.D record with Hayley May floating over the top, and Friction’s remix drags it into drum and bass without losing the ache in her vocal. That’s the trick. DnB remixes of emotional vocal tracks usually flatten the feeling into pure energy, but this one keeps the sadness and just gives it a faster pulse. Hayley’s chorus hitting over that half-time-into-full breakbeat is genuinely lovely,...
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1 min read
Mitekiss - Forty Times
Read more . . . →This is the kind of liquid that makes me forgive the entire genre for its softer sins. Mitekiss has quietly become one of Hospital’s most reliable names for exactly this — dnb that’s pretty without being wallpaper, emotional without tipping into greeting-card territory. Forty Times moves on a rolling, unhurried break with a vocal chopped just enough that you catch phrases without ever getting the full sentence, which somehow makes it hit harder than a clean topline would. The bassline is warm and round and sits so far back in the mix it’s almost subliminal, doing the emotional work while...
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1 min read
Luude x 1991 - All We Do Is Dance
Read more . . . →The vocal on All We Do Is Dance is one of those loops that’s built to be inescapable — four words, pitched up, repeated until they stop meaning anything and start meaning everything. Luude made his name flipping pop into festival dnb and 1991 brings the actual jungle-adjacent chops, so this lands somewhere between a main-stage moment and something with genuine roll to it. The drop at 1:10 is enormous and slightly ridiculous, a reese bass that snarls under that helium hook, and I fully understand this is designed to make forty thousand people lose it at once. Normally that...
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1 min read
Voltage - Music Is The Answer
Read more . . . →That vocal sample is older than half the people who’ll rave to this, and Voltage knows exactly what he’s doing dragging it back out. Music Is The Answer flips a house anthem hook into jump-up territory, and the contrast between the euphoric vocal and the gurning bassline underneath is the whole joke and the whole appeal. The drop at 1:05 is pure serotonin, the kind of obvious arms-up moment you’re not supposed to admit you love and love anyway. Voltage builds these things for a specific room at a specific hour, sweaty and past the point of caring, and it...
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pyxis & Redemptive - Arctic Void
Read more . . . →Cold is the right word for this. Arctic Void earns its name with a wash of icy pads and a break that sounds like it was recorded in an empty cathedral. This is Liquicity in its element, the label that turned liquid drum and bass into a whole aesthetic, and pyxis and Redemptive fit the house style perfectly. The vocal is distant and reverb-drenched, more texture than message, floating over a rolling break that stays gentle even when the energy lifts. The drop around 1:40 isn’t really a drop at all, more a widening, the whole track opening up like...
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