Clubs

Like the hyper-morphing, glutinous monstrosity in ‘Terminator 2’, drum ’n’ bass (D&B) doesn’t stay unified for long. When a neat, containable view of the scene emerges, whole sections of it regroup and spontaneously go berserk. Now is a good time to observe this as a clutch of essential and diverse albums are released, augmented by nights like Fourfront and Bassbin presents Breakage, which you’d be foolish to miss.

To kick off, Goldie’s Metalheadz imprint has once again delivered in the form of the forthcoming ‘D&B Head Hunterz’ compilation, which showcases D Bridge, Doc Scott, Concord Dawn and Bailey’s ‘African’ track. It’s a voyager of an album, a sprawling outlook shared by Artificial Intelligence on their ‘Big Picture’ mix for Bryan Gee’s Liquid V label. Purveyors of a form of D&B that manages to be slick, cinematic and bass-heinous all at once, Artificial Intelligence (aka Camden’s Glenn and Gambit) have snap-frozen their approach (in their words: ‘Hard Beats, B-lines for a dancefloor or at home’) with a mix that they told us contains ‘tracks we personally handpicked for Liquid V, many that we had a lot of involvement in. We tried to cover the broad spectrum of styles, from Calibre to Roni Size.’ Feature continues

Ah, Roni Size. Not content with unrelenting studio work –including production on MC Tali’s mould-breaking and eclectic ‘Do It For Yourself’ – and spraying the globe with the Covenant of Full Cycle – he appears as part of an exemplary line-up at the Ministry of Sound on Sunday. Entitled Fourfront, it also involves Zinc, Andy C and DJ Marky, whose recent nights at The End and his already legendary eight-hour DJ sets have been described as wild, messy, dangerous and bordering on scary.

See what I mean? Uncontainable, this stuff. Eight hours! Remember that this is not singular-tempo house, it’s D&B on a flat-out customised supercar scale which, if it was something to be test driven on ‘Top Gear’, would cause The Stig to run off screaming. But it’s not without subtlety, as Marky explains: ‘I can’t tell you how many times I have seen a big DJ clear the floor because he has slammed five heavy hitters into each other, thinking that that is all that a crowd wants to hear. The crowd can’t cope and they leave. You need to ebb and flow with a mix, however long the set is.’

Zinc adds that the Fourfront format partly evolved as ‘all of us DJs were complaining about having to do such short sets in the UK.’ It goes without saying that sheer breadth of what’s played on the Fourfront tour is testament to the state of the scene. And that’s without even taking into account the individual strategies of the DJs. It’s dizzying in scope and no quarter will be given – get there early.

Back to ‘heavy hitters’, überproducer Fresh’s new album, ‘Escape From Planet Monday’ certainly comes to mind, though by no means is it one-dimensional. Quite the reverse. Where do you start with this? You live with this music 24/7, you become aware of certain stunners from the man such as ‘Colossus’, ‘Signal’, ‘Tomb Raider’, the album drops and, even then, even when you think you know where you are, something, some little hook, some riff gently taps you on the shoulder and you glimpse what sort of deranged protocol is at work here, leering happily at you. Tracks like ‘The Immortal’, ‘Funk Academy’, ‘Nervous’… take cover, marvel at their audacity, the only other contender for a similar title being the new album from Drumsound and Bassline Smith, ‘Street Technique’. Their track, ‘Crossfire’, being worth the admission price alone.

Yet not all the new releases are quite so overt, so thumping. Slough’s finest, the cryptic and ever-evolving Breakage, has delivered his dual-edged debut on Dublin’s Bassbin imprint, ‘This Too Shall Pass’, a double album of D&B and skewed downbeat that voyages through streams of cracked, hypercoded crosstalk, deep-space probing through echelons of dub and touching on the roots of old jungle, holding it up in parts to examine how unknowable it still is. It will be launched at an unmissable night at Herbal on Wednesday 24.

Breakage is one of many of the new producers who realises that the scene has fragmented, will continue to do so, and actively embraces the fact – the only form of destructive evolution of which I’m aware. Taking a break from dazzling floors and airwaves with his metallic, acid-tinged future funk, much-adored DJ and producer Martyn, agrees with him. ‘I would love to see more artists taking creative risks and working in different tempos, to include house, techno, electro, jazz or funk vibes in their music. I think it’s the way forward.’

Gavin Influx, mastermind behind last year’s classic ‘2 Million And Rising’, regards this fragmentation and evolution of the scene as culminating in a broader set of priorities, which also echo AI’s sentiments: ‘It’s time for D&B to expand to all listeners, and not just be focused on dancefloor smashers. I see myself as no longer in the ‘record’ business, now it’s an any-format business.’ And DJ Marky? He shrugs. ‘For sure there will be a new style coming through a year down the line. It is just evolution and growth is good whatever way you look at it.’
Business as usual then. Hold tight.

Fourfront is at the Ministry of Sound on Sunday. Fresh’s ‘Escape From Planet Monday’ is released on Monday 29. Breakage ‘This Too Shall Pass’ (out now) is launched at Herbal on Wed 24. ‘The Big Picture’, mixed by Artificial Intelligence, is released on Monday 29.