eleven8 – Hadal Zone/Across The Sky

The second great D&B release that landed in the inbox yesterday comes from Blu Mar Ten Music.

It's another two-tracker. Hadal Zone is a glitchy, steppy trip into the arena marked 'dark and minimal', but just edging it for me is AA-side Across The Sky, an ominous and moody cut with waves of bass n' FX flying at you from all angles.

Seriously mind-frying late-night grooves for the seriously blunted…

Out: This week

About: You can find Blu Mar Ten Music at their own website, on Facebook or on Soundcloud.

Quentin Hiatus – Cleo/Discomfort

Don't get sent as much D&B as I used to these days, or as much as I'd like… so when two quality slabs land in a single day, as they did yesterday, it seems churlish not to get 'em written up ASAP!

First up, this latest from the excellent Plush Recordings, which is actually a split affair. On the A, Quentin Hiatus and Ghast team up for Cleo, a downtempo, "minimal D&B" affair with a yearnsome female vocal that could have come straight off Alex Reese's So Far album. On the flip, Discomfort is credited to Dominic Ridgway & Quentin Hiatus, and is a more fierce n' firing number best described as the darkest 'liquid funk' you ever heard.

The polar opposite of that 180mph chav D&B shit that gets in the charts with the metal guitars, shit pop vocals and even shitter trance synth riffs … I wish more people made records like this.

Out: This week

About: You can find Plush Recordings at their own website or on Facebook.

Daat – Orange Line

I posted the video for this on the Facebook page earlier, but that was just the A-side. And it's really the AA-side that we need to discuss.

Cos the A-side's fine, in fact it's a rather pleasant slice of downtempo electronica that reminds me a little bit of Yellow Magic Orchestra and a little bit of Tangerine Dream. But it's the AA-side that's of most TIWWD interest, where you'll find lurking a refix from the D&B legend that is Deep Blue. In his hands, Orange Line becomes a sublimely deep, liquid-y, chilled-out affair that'll appeal to D&B fans and non-fans alike.

"A collage of smooth glacial textures with hypnotic driving beats," is how the hype sheet describes it, and yeah, I'll second that.

Out: This week

About: Now, this gets a bit complicated. This comes on UK label Organic Beats, but its catalogue number is OBSORG002 and it's actually a joint EP series conjured up by Organic and US D&B imprint Offshore Recordings.

Various – 2012 Atmospheric Summer Sampler

You could easily call this an album rather than an EP, but 'sampler EP' is how the label are touting it and who am I to disagree? As regular readers will know, Plush Recordings has long been one of TIWWD's favourite D&B labels, flying the flag for liquid funk regardless of the vagaries of fashion, and the eight tracks here certainly don't do anything to alter that.

I'm not gonna go into every track in detail – because there's eight of them and we'd be here all afternoon – but Blueprint's piano-sprinkled Lost Notes and Self-Definition's funk-fuelled roller Fusion stand out from a fine pack of liquid gems, while Venture and 360 joYnt supply a couple of deeper numbers to bring the EP to a suitably chilled-out close.

Suffice to say if you like your drum & bass jazzy, soulful and house-y then this EP is pretty much a must-buy for this week.

Out: This week

About: Plush Recordings are based in Denver, Colorado and can be found on Facebook or at their own website.

Blu Mar Ten – Love Is The Devil Remixes Pt 2

Here we have a second twelve of remixes of tracks taken from Blu Mar Ten's recent Love Is The Devil long-player*. And what a delightfully varied EP it turns out to be!

The Beginning, as remixed by Joe Syntax, is the one straight-up D&B cut here, a fine 90s-style stepper – hype sheet comparisons to Full Cycle are perfectly justified. Elsewhere though, Blu Mar Ten get taken into other territories entirely.

In the hands of newcomer Sincopate – who won a Kmag competition to get this opportunity – All Or Nothing, originally a fierce-ish D+B roller, becomes a sunny, proggy/Balearic house cut. But as uplifting and drifty as that is, it can't quite compete for me with Blue Skies… or rather the Unquote Remix thereof, which takes what was originally a glitchy, techy slice of minimal D+B and transforms it into a moody, ominous slab of the deepest dubstep that Burial or Youngsta themselves would be proud of.

So basically, three high-quality tracks that individually will appeal to a wide range of DJs, or that collectively should please anyone with a broad mind and a love of well-crafted electronic music. You can't ask for much more than that really – if only all remix EPs were as adventurous and inventive as this!

Out: This week

About: This is out on Blu Mar Ten's own self-titled label via ST Holdings… and it's a strictly limited 12" pressing so get yer skates on! Oh yeah, and you can also find BMT on Facebook and Soundcloud, naturally.

*Though, to be fair, you'd probably worked that out already.

This Chris – Framed EP

Something of a change of pace now! It's been a while since I had anything through from Junglepress, so much so that I was beginning to think I'd fallen off their list… so it was with great pleasure that, just the other day, I downloaded this brand-new slab of liquid funk action from Plush Recordings.

There are three tracks on offer, and while all three certainly fit under the liquid funk banner, let's be clear: we're talking the firing, energetic High Contrast/Hospital Records end of the liquid spectrum, as opposed to the mellow, ambient/intelligent side of things.

There's no great reinventing of wheels going on, admittedly. And I'm not sure how popular this sound actually is on the D&B scene 'proper' right now, which as far as I can see seems to be all about either 190mph tear-outs with big stoopid trance/electro synths,  or dark, moody, dubstep-informed minimalism. The former, I think is shit… the latter I do like, but it's a very boys-y music.

Whereas liquid, well… that was always the sort of D&B that girls and househeads and jazzers can dig too. And there's not a huge amount of it about, so these three soul-infused, yet uptempo and floor-friendly grooves are very welcome indeed – the atmospheric title track particularly.

Out: This week


About: This Chris is, we're informed, a "local producer"… except being told that by a label based jointly in Denver and South London doesn't actually help a great deal! Never mind though, I can at least tell you that his full name is Chris Jameson… and I can also tell you once more that Plush Recordings are an excellent label that can be found at their website and on Facebook.

This Chris – Just Another/Touch Of Ice

Bit of a change of pace now as move into D&B territory… but it's not actually THAT much of a switch really, when you think about it, because we're just going from sumptuous deep house to sumptuous deep liquid funk.

In fact, I wouldn't have any qualms about dropping Just Another into a deep house set at all… the actual mixing might be interesting but the same things I said about the Tony S release below – the beautiful warm sounds, the sparing sound palette, the roomy, echo-y mixdown, the minimally-applied touches of vocal – all apply just as well to this.

On the B, Touch Of Ice is a little more firing in the percussion department and does a little bit more in the way of building and dropping… but we're still in decidedly chilled-out, late night kinda territory.

Just nice mellow vibes all round, really.

Out: This week

About: This comes on Plush Recordings, who've featured on here before but – just to jog your memory – are a label exploring the deeper side of D&B who are based jointly in Denver, USA and Lowestoft, UK.

David Boomah & Serum – Why They Wanna

Continuing with tonight's more eclectic theme, here we have a FIRING slab of D&B and dubstep courtesy of Mr Boomah, whose dulcet reggaefied vocals have graced several by Shy FX and others over the years.

Here though he teams up with rising D&B star Serum, for a pleasingly old skool sounding jungle roller of an A-side that brings some seriously heavy sub-bass pressure. It's not the most groundbreaking tune perhaps but it's quality for sure.

But that's by no means the end of the story, because on the B we also have Mission Impossible, remixed by French producer Von D into a very different-sounding but equally heavy dubstep headnodder. It's about as rough and sawtoothed in the bassline department as TIWWD cares to go, TBH, but Boomah's sweet vocals counterpoint the gnarly bottom end nicely, moving the track beyond the limitations of mere 'brostep', as I believe the kiddies call it, with the two parts adding up to a far more satisfactory whole. Just be sure to have your bass-face at the ready.

Out: This week

About: This comes on the legendary V Recordings, and I'm sure you don't really need me to tell you anything about them so we'll leave it there!

Various – VR010

Sticking with the D&B vibes a minute, and here's the latest from a label I certainly have come across before: the excellent Vibration Records, the Essex boys (I think) who are doing a sterling job of keeping proper musical D&B alive in the face of so much post-Pendulum/Chase & Status noisy kiddy electro trance rawk stadium bollocks. There, I said it ;-)

The EP is made up of four tracks from four artists: Dave Owen & Sconeboy, Undersound, Blue Motion, and ATP & Calculon. All four tracks follow a deep, musical, liquid-y kinda vibe, and all four are strong, but if pushed I think it's Owen & Sconeboy's jazz-tinged Coming Apart, with its echoes of classic DJ Krust material, that's working the best for me. It's a close call, though, cos as I said: this is a very strong EP all round.

Out: This week

About: Find Vibration Records online here.

Survival & Silent Witness – Graham's Tunnel/Bullet

After all that deep tech house, if this was a DJ set or Mixcloud show I might want to be flipping the script a little here… so let's look at a couple of this week's D&B releases, starting with this moody little two-tracker.

Mostly if you say 'techy' in a drum & bass context, it makes you think of horrible in-your-face Ed Rush/Optical/Bad Company boys' noise fodder. This, though, is techy for sure, but not horrible or in-your-face In the least.

Y'know how liquid funk could sort of be described as 'housey drum & bass'? And you know how house has gotten a lot techier in the past couple of years? Well then. Think a techier, slightly darker take on liquid and you get something like these two cuts. Graham's Tunnel is the noisier of the two and perhaps owes a slight debt to dubstep in terms of its structure; I'm liking Graham's Tunnel but I'm loving Bullet.

Out: This week. And apparently already big with the likes of Marcus Intalex, Doc Scott and dBridge, if thatt's any help.

About: This is on a label called Audio Tactics, which I'll confess I don't think I've come across before. Their website is 'coming soon' but here they are on MySpace.