Tuesday 12 June 2012

Night Night

Good News! I finally sorted my dire PC situation and now can post from places that aren't my phone! this means I'll actually be more active and actually have access to all my music in one place instead of carting around my SD card and hoping that the tracks are there. It's taken all day to sort this sitch out mind, and with it being dark outside I felt a little inspired. That's right, it's the return of my trademark suffle playlist posts, hold on to your hats!



As you may have guessed, today's theme is night time. For me night is special, I've always liked urban spaces, even more so at night when everything is deserted and there's nothing but the glow of street lights. So this here playlist I'm cooking up is made of tracks I associate with that image. First up is the E-Z Rollers with Walk This Land, most versions of this track are Drum & Bass, and it's probably the Roller's most famous song discounting Short Change (no pun intended) however for their album they remixed it. And not in the way you'd expect, this time it's a slow hip-hop esque number that creates a whole new deeper feel that just isn't there on the D&B versions



Continuing the theme we have Commix, now they're also mostly known for their D&B but again like the E-Z boys they chose to branch out on their album, usually in a more house style direction. This track stands out though, once again following a Hip Hop style beat, but with Commix's famous bass warbles never too far away. When I first heard this track through laptop speakers I was disappointed, I thought it was all too repetitive but nope I was wrong. This track absolutely demands a decent speaker setup or some headphones, trust me.



You all remember Omni Trio right? I've mentioned him a couple of times as one of my favourite D&B prducers. Well anyways I finally got around to picking up Even Angels Cast Shadows and it is a bloody stonking good album I tell you. As always I fell in love with the Trio's trademark dancing piano keys & beats combo, he was one of the first producers to do such a combo it, and I'll give him a pass for using it because he does it really, really well. Picture a Nightmares On Wax album opener. Now take that image and increase the BPM by a fair amount and you have an idea of the absolute quality of this track.





Massive Attack's third effort 100th Window gets a bit of a bad rap among fans, but that's to be expected after their absolutely stellar sophomore album Mezzanine. Personally I don't think it's that bad, the sounds are a lot sparser, colder and a bit more sterile than those on Mezzanine, but to me that just seemed like the natural progression from where that album left off. But enough about opinions, I chose this track because I was locked out of my house one night, and instead of waiting around decided to go for a little walk. Walking the streets at disk with this track in your ears makes for a pretty powerful experience.



Back when I was first getting into dubstep, the big EPs on the scene were Caspa's 'Ave It Vol. 1 & 2 and Rusko's Babylon Volume 1. Caspa has always explored some mellow territory on his releases, and I found this gem I had long since forgotten while backing up all my music. I kept coming back to this track when it was new, and listening to it again I rediscovered why. It scratches my chilled itch like Pangaea's Router does. If dubstep hadn't blown up so quickly maybe we'd have a few more tracks like this. Though on the other hand, maybe that's what makes the few I do have even more special.



And that about does it for this, my first of hopefully many more reliable posts as I have nothing else to really do and well, now I have a means to do it that doesn't take the piss so I have no excuse. Hold me to that.

I'll Leave The Light On For Ya,
- Claude Van Foxbat

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Big fan of 100th Window. In some ways I like it more than Mezzanine. Nice selection of tracks!

LEEEEEEE said...

Stellar picks, that Commix track is a personal favorite.