Breakbeat in its truest form with tone and tempo ranging from nu skool breaks to trip hop.
Pearson Sound – Alien Mode
Ten Walls – Lights For The Dreams
At the beginning it totally starts like some Brandt Brauer Frick record, having all those acoustic instruments, drums, guitars, strings, brass instruments, making all those little noises mixed up with the electronics. Then from the third track it goes fully electronic and creates this wonderful, cinematic journey with pulsing techno, ambient soundscapes, and broken beats. It all creates this great flow even though stylistically it’s not the most coherent album. I’m not afraid to say that it could well deserve a spot on my year-end toplist, even if it doesn’t make the Top 10 it could easily sit within the twenty.
JASSS – Whities 027
Two very distinct tracks on this record. The liner notes are pretty accurate for Turbo Olé: “fucking rocket fuel” with “giddy jibber-jaw trance lead”, “electro breaks” and “a ‘90s cyber-trance riff”. Correct, it’s a rave scene in a sci-fi movie. The B side starts off as an IDM rhythmic noise piece but also ends up in with some broken beat trance vibe. Wow. My current favorite music for reading the setting book for the new Cyberpunk Red RPG.
Yansima – Tweede Cans
Laidback, melodic lounge vibe and UK garage breakbeat rhythm. Great for relaxing and chilling, also for work.
Stenny – Upsurge
Starts off as an IDM thing, then at some point turns into a drum and bass thing.
Throwing Snow – The Death Of Pragmatism
Mid-uptempo broken beat electronics. It’s a smash, extremely good sound.
On a another note: it comes with liner notes along the exact same lines as The Balck Dog‘s Black Daisy Wheel. The motivation behind every artistic output that’s angry and frustrated these days is the current state of politics and global idiotism. Fun times.
Vaal – Nosferatu
I have the same feeling like when I listened to the latest record by FJAAK: these guys are rummaging in the bottom of their pockets and pull out stuff from the past, dust them off, and create something that I find fascinating. Vaal has these breakbeats that are like echoing the Matrix all over it, so much ’90s, blast from the past, but she still builds something atop that feels current. I love it.
FJAAK – Havel
Lot of stuff from the past few decades mashed together and it is a blast. In a way it’s like watching Stranger Things: it draws pretty direct inspiration from certain sources but still creates something for the now that I can interpret as the product of today. This music is many things from leftfield through techno to breakbeat, but it couldn’t have been written in those past eras because we needed to take that journey and get to the now with all these stuff in our heads to have this mash-up today. I am probably over-explaining this for the RA review that I’ve just read which lacks originality. Anyway, I don’t. I think FJAAK is unique in the blend it creates. It sounds like the soundtrack of me growing up. And I would absolutely love to listen to their selection in a party setting.
Skee Mask – Compro
From ambient to rhythmic noise to breakbeat.
Basic Rhythm – Raw Trax
A mesh of tunes and beats sketching up a tag cloud of 2-step, jungle, garage, hardcore, rave, dubstep. Well deserves a listen or two.