Drum & Bass

Lunatic Sabbath Halloween Revolution, 27th October

Posted by PlasmaDancer on October 31, 2012
Posted in: Drum & Bass, Events, Japanese. Leave a Comment

Last weekend I made it to Lunatic Sabbath’s Halloween special, probably the biggest event so far from ac-key and the rest of the Sabbath crew. Headlining was Zardonic, Venezuela’s drum and bass/dubstep/industrial maestro, who put on a fantastic high bpm set that was quite heavy on hardcore/gabber sections too. Although most people these days dance to drum and bass at ‘half speed’, the structure of the set also worked really well for the more energetic folk, with the occasional dubstep section giving them a rest.

There was also dnb from ac-key and a superb dark psy set from Siki, definitely one of her best. As well as two great suspension perfomances, another highlight of the night was JURI’s short-but-intense drumming set. She seems to make the occasional appearance at Decadance and other alternative events, but this was first time for me to see her live and luckily I didn’t miss the chance for a video.

Dyzphazia – Freeformaniacs 6

Posted by PlasmaDancer on September 24, 2012
Posted in: Drum & Bass, Finnish, Japanese, Mixes, UK. Leave a Comment

Endless commutes and 6-day workweeks are back again, meaning lots of time to check out the latest cluster of freeform sets. My favourite so far has to be Dyzphazia’s newest effort for the evergreen Freeformaniacs show, a wonderful selection of melodic, twisty freeform. This time around my pick of the connections is the early Bass Dust – The Dome transition that does a superb job of switching up the atmosphere, but the whole set is top quality and easily one of Dyzphazia’s best this year. A must-listen, then.

1 ) Re-Form – Silver Cube (Extended Mix) [CDr] 
2 ) Noisia – Dustup [Vision Recordings] 
3 ) Blokhe4d & Receptor – Bass Dust [Bad Taste] 
4 ) Alchemiist – The Dome [CDr] 
5 ) Pain On Creation – Lush (Fatal Error Edit) [FiNRG] 
6 ) Nomic – Mekhanika Child [CDr] 
7 ) Carbon Based – Dark Side [FiNRG] 
8 ) Douglas & Lost Soul – False Sense Of Security [NuEnergy] 
9 ) Nightforce – Symphony For The Devil [Electronica Exposed] 
10 ) Wyrm & Surtr – Yggdrasil [Ruffbeatz/Freeformaniacs] 
11 ) Helical & Oli G – Days Of Thunder [Camel Records] 
12 ) Helikaon vs. Ephexis – Illiad [NuEnergy] 
13 ) Aryx – Aurora (Substanced Unfinished Forever Remix) [CDr] 
14 ) Le Dos-On – Sena [SPLASH! Energy Records] 

Jungle Corner 1

Posted by PlasmaDancer on August 2, 2012
Posted in: Drum & Bass. 2 comments

For the past week or so I’ve been back at the intelligent drum and bass, but also some classic jungle tracks from the early-mid 90s. It’s been a long while since the last drum and bass post, so here are a few of the heavier tunes that I’ve been giving a good old rinse.

The first is hardly an undiscovered gem, but Origin Unknown’s version of Johnny ’94 is easily my favourite. A fantastically dark track this, really doing justice to the original voice samples.

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Munted! Monthly! Episode 7

Posted by PlasmaDancer on July 22, 2012
Posted in: Drum & Bass, Events, Finnish, Japanese, Mixes, UK. 1 comment

For one reason or another this post was interrupted last week, so before I get completely left behind here’s a brief-ish roundup of Munted! Monthly! Episode 7.

Le Dos-on started things off with an excellent set of his own productions. As is common with one-artist-only mixes, the focus was on the selection rather than transitions, but this was the perfect showcase of Le Dos-on’s style for those who might not be too familiar with his newer tunes.

With influences ranging from Alek Szahala to Hybridize via UK and Japanese freeform, he’s successfully forging a very distinctive sound – starting this time with one of my tunes of the year, the fabulous Intro (epatoivo). The second half of the set leans towards the lighter side of things (the wonderful Le and Sena aside), but his melancholy/darker tracks are just about a match for anything you’ll hear these days.

  1. Intro(epatoivo)
  2. Stance-Another Story-
  3. Aurora
  4. yksisarvinen
  5. toivomus
  6. Mental Madness
  7. TRANSFORMER
  8. Silver Rain
  9. Sky
  10. Le
  11. Sena

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Proteus – Freedom

Posted by PlasmaDancer on June 12, 2012
Posted in: Drum & Bass, Finnish, Releases, UK. 1 comment

Proteus has just uploaded the opening track for his upcoming ErilaZ live spectacular with Adam Lab 4 on drums, and what a monster it is. Showing Proteus’ understanding of how to get a crowd going, this is another genre-crossing effort with industrial, hardcore and even some golden-era drum and bass breaks. Quality stuff, I’d love to see some more from the set as and when.

Custom Built DJs – Freeformaniacs, 17th May

Posted by PlasmaDancer on May 25, 2012
Posted in: Canadian, Drum & Bass, Finnish, Japanese, Mixes, UK. 2 comments

I’ve got a lot of catching up to do when it comes to Freeformaniacs sets, but this new effort from Custom Built DJs caught my eye with its lively-looking tracklist. As expected, it’s a really nice hour of melodic freeform, with enough of a Finnish influence to ensure there’s a bit of an edge to things.

Nice to see the filter-tastic Gate Crasher in there, as well as less common choices like the tricky-to-mix Immaculate. It’s always great to hear Alek in a set, but this time the incredible atmosphere of Darkstar didn’t really match with the rest of the set, in my opinion – wonder if a more uplifting tune might have worked better to finish things off? Either way it’s a really enjoyable set, and definitely gets a recommend.

  1. Jon Doe – Warehouse (Cube::Hard remix)
  2. Epyx and Cyrez – Immaculate
  3. Grimsoul – Lightshaft
  4. Substanced – Wistful
  5. Furyan – Galaxias Glaciere
  6. Custom Built DJs – Get out of Here
  7. Eryk Orpheus – PVC (Lost Soul remix)
  8. Penguin Conspiracy – Mechanical Fables
  9. Ephexis – Sick Seduction
  10. Full Circle DJs – Gate Crasher
  11. Horzi – Infernal Psycho
  12. Alek Szahala – Darkstar

Download here 

Munted! Monthly!

Posted by PlasmaDancer on April 20, 2012
Posted in: Drum & Bass, Events, Mixes, UK. 2 comments

Something I’ve been meaning to check out for a while is the Munted! Monthly! blog/website, but I finally got around to it while catching part of last Saturday’s show. It looks like Dyzphazia/Chip’s doing a fine job on the updates so far, and there’ll soon be MM5 links for the non-facebook crew. The other sets are also archived there, including the very interesting MM4 (which is top of my ‘to listen’ list at the moment).

Past Blaster, a guided tour

Posted by PlasmaDancer on February 6, 2012
Posted in: Drum & Bass, Releases, UK. 1 comment

This one comes via our friends at Watchtower, something that producers in general (and Reason users in particular) should find really useful. Similar to Alek Szahala’s Ziggurat video, here Qygen gives us a tour of his excellent Watchtower release, Past Blaster. This is an amazing look into some of the complex melodies he comes up with, and even if Past Blaster is on slightly more of a conventional freeform tip that some of his previous goacore tracks, this is an absolute must-view for anyone producing in our genre.

Recent Mixes Roundup

Posted by PlasmaDancer on February 1, 2012
Posted in: Drum & Bass, Finnish, Japanese, Mixes, UK. Leave a Comment

I’ve been listening to a few sets recently, so here’s a compilation post with a few of the best. There are still one or two others to check out this week, so they might well have their own posts before too long.

First up we have the Munted! Monthly! sets from January. It was another top quality event with plenty of variety, and a couple of brilliant sets to start off. Sadly I couldn’t wake up in time to hear Aryx on the night (morning), but I checked it out as soon as it was available for download and it didn’t disappoint. With an excellent new work-in-progress track starting things off, it’s another Aryx showcase with some other freeform classics in the second half.

Substanced’s set was an excellent promo for his new album release, as well as some new stuff that still hasn’t been made public. The first half was especially good, but the whole set was a top quality listen. Midas and Dyzphazia finished things off with some UK freeform sounds, even if a lot of Dyzphazia’s tracks were Japanese. Neither set was what you’d call dark, though it made for a nice lively second half to the event (plus an utterly mad tune to finish).

Another set I’ve been enjoying is Substanced’s set for the Free of Form show (at the top of this post). This time the second half was the hardest-hitting, doing a great job of including new and old tracks.

Finally (for now), and away from freeform, I’ve been listen to the various sets that made up the 247drumandbass oldskool session. It’s hard to find a better oldskool DJ than Extreme, and while intelligent jungle is a bit thin on the ground (aside from some nice selections from Omen) the other sets are all excellently mixed, and a nice reminder of the days when drum and bass was a real dance music genre. Check out the massive mp3 here.