Drum & Bass - Still waters run deep

[Tim Exile]

Well firstly say 'hello n00b'...

I've been a lurker for a while and decided to break my silence to rant about dnb. I make music which can be loosely categorised as drum & bass, and have released on Moving Shadow, Renegade Hardware, Frequency (RAM Offshoot), Beta etc etc... if you'd like to check some forthcoming releases, try these links...

http://dubplates.dogsonacid.com/ram.php?id=1690

http://dubplates.dogsonacid.com/ram.php?id=1689

Anyway it's come to my attention that drum & bass has been mostly written off as an important experimental music form for quite a while. And that's not really particularly unreasonable either... for a number of years now it's all been very formulaic and the main agenda has definitely been inward honing rather than outward development. However recently I've noticed that quite a few heads are beginning to crave the intrepid attitude of yore, and the few artists who have been pushing through with things the way they want for a while now are beginning to get some recognition, albeit not yet from the DJ oligarchy. Artists like Paradox and Breakage are getting a lot of respect right now, and from the conversations I've been having on AIM with various artists, and the sort of threads appearing at http://www.dogsonacid.com/ a lot of people are getting more excited about experimenting with things a bit more...

Anyway, just thought I throw that one into the ring. What do you reckon?

[stormfield]

that's interesting, because a lot of the more inventive drum'n'bass producers (that have themselves gotten bored of drum'n'bass) have taken to making rather interesting tracks outside their genre, sometimes electro / breaks, sometimes broken beat etc etc. Paradox as you mentioned is one of them, with stuff out on Archive (italy) and some West London labels (i think the 'scattered snares' compilation?) affiliated to Goya Music distribution. Total Science and Hidden Agenda are also pushing more along the electronic / brokenbeat side of things.

But returning to your original point, hyes, it would be great to get some of the edginess back into drum n bass like the feelings we got from hearing first Photek / Digital / Source Direct etc :)

just me 2 brixton pence worth

[pille'ocheoni]

ehh. i also have been hearing some decent "dnb" coming about, but honestly it hasnt caught that much attention. my buddy i write music with states " things are changing " and he still spins dnb. now i will be partial and say avant versions of dnb are good, but if i hear that damn amen beat again, i will kill!

anyways, on a differnt note what are your thoughts about glitch/ambient-hop producer john tejada doing dnb?

ive heard a couple tracks but nothing forefront.

now scratch all this cus im not the greatest judge of dnb, in the classic sense.

[philsmum]

get amen andrews 1-5 from vibert, nice dose of mashup. Remarc - thunderclap, R.I.P always good...