The Haunted Ballroom

is all.

Melted Love

Masssive massive tune by Imami, squelchy bassline and euphoric vocals/piano work, its like all my favourite features in about 4 and a half minutes.

Umami - Melted Love by imami

Way U Make Me Feel

Criminally slept on Finnish producer Skure is making some really great synth driven Garage at the moment, the kind of stuff which gives you a new burst of energy at approximately 4 AM

wow wow wow wow wow wow wow woow


Way u make me feel by lassikolossi

It's A Jungle Out There

It really makes me wonder how I keep from going under. Ha ha ha. This new clip by Thefft is just brilliant, so squelchy and the bass positioning on the drop is inspired- poow poow.

 I reckon this will be Swamp Material- calling it early. Jungle Out There CLIP by Thefft

4U (MK Remix)

Must apologise to my 8 followers for not updating for ages due to the fact that i forgot my password. Anyway, I've been looking for this tune for ages after hearing it on a radio show somewhere, and finally manged to find it on soundcloud :D !!

Dat saxophone..

I Try...

New housey tune here which is in the kind of Slow House area, even though it seems a bit quicker than  a lot of the tunes coming out of that scene- (about 115?) but its got all the hallmarks of the kind of stuff coming out of there- disco inspired bassline and synths fluttering over the top in a way which just makes you want to groove on down!

http://soundcloud.com/ojsmooth/i-try

Smoked Out Loced out/ Snugs

First noticed this guy snugs when he was on Rinse 16 mixed by Ben ufo and i'm loving this tune ripped from a recent hessle show




http://soundcloud.com/tommysnugs/smokin-n-locin-ben-ufo-pangaea

Seriously this is bananas, the bass is kind of like recent era dnb at times, and at others reminds me of mark pritchard-elephant dub, all underneath a beautifully onstructed techy rhythm and cathcy as hell vocals. he'll be really big soon this guy, mark my words.

Don't Ask Don't Get

I never really rated Micky Pearce's stuff when he was known as shortstuff but this song is one of the best tunes ive heard recently.  I'm not into the flip either but the drop @ 1:53 ticks all my boxes http://soundcloud.com/mickeylepearce/dont-ask-dont-get

5 reasons why you should produce music.

1. Everyone has a spark of creativity and music is a great way to release it: Every single person on Earth has some musical talent waiting to jump out and create a unique piece of music. No two people have exactly the same taste in music and the only way to express this taste fully is to make your own- which links in with...

2. You can produce music which you've always wanted to hear: Often you will be listening to some music when you'll hear a detail in it and think "they should have played that bit on the piano rather than guitar" or something. When you are the one producing, it is you who is in control of where everything goes and can create music which you can sit back and relax to knowing everything is in its right and proper place.

3. It gives you an appreciation of other music: After struggling to learn even the basics of synthesis, your favourite producer's skill with making and arranging sounds can become even more awe inspiring to you. Admiration now comes from a "professional" standpoint instead of simply a personal one.

4. It never been easier: You can now pick up a decent DAW for around £100, or if you really want you can pirate one for free, gaining most of the tools that professional producers have at their finger tips. It's never been easier to learn either, with the internet providing a massive repository of tutorials in blog and video forms and forums dedicated to helping people produce and learn new things.

5. It's fun!

Rise 'Em

I also really really like this one


Rise 'Em (Rinse Rip) by bandshell

Darlene, Please

Tessela - Darlene, Please by Tessela

THIS IS MY JAM 

.

"My" dubstep in 5 songs

Dubstep was probably my first love in late 2009/ early 2010, it was so different to anything that I had ever heard before I jumped straight into it to a point that it had pretty much lost its allure by 2011. I think it is a once in a lifetime thing where you find a new genre of music which you embrace so wholeheartedly you listen to almost nothing else, before gradually moving on...

Anyway, here are 5 of my favourite dubstep songs!

Scuba- Tense [Hotflush]

I first heard this song in Dubstep Allstars 7 and to be honest it didn't really jump out on me in the first few listens. The intro and first drop are very well produced but nothing special, the dub techno stabs combined with the half step rhythm and pulsing sub bass create a nice enough head nodding feel but does nothing to prepare you for the breakdown. The filter on the chords begins to rise as the drums drop out, playing two notes insistently with the atmosphere behind filling the frequencies creating a huge feeling of tension before the release as the drums come back in, helping produce an overwhelming feeling of euphoria- for me anyway..

Plaid- Bar Kimura (Vex'd Remix) [Planet Mu]

This was the song which made me want to actually get into dubstep. The string samples and heavy kick drum create a sense of foreboding, and the vocal floats dreamily over the top. It follows a very traditional dubstep structure, elements building gradually until the sub bass is added, yet to me it's one of the heaviest drops there is. The space created by the dropping out of the atmospheric strings leaves only the drums and the shattering, growling sub under a soaring violin melody. The contrast of the upper frequencies and lower is what drew me into dubstep and this is one of the greatest examples. A lot of dubstep is inspired by sci-fi styled post apocalyptic and along with the art for this album, I can definitely imagine wandering through a shattered, desolate city when I close my eyes to this tune.

Peverelist- Roll With The Punches [Punch Drunk]

More of a traditional pick with this one, I imagine that most dubstep fans have this in their top five. The tune starts with a simple melody before bringing in drums, a smooth saw wave bassline before a speaker destroying sub line comes in. The way these elements interplay is enough already for the tune to be a brilliant song, on a system and at home but what makes it a great song is the amazing switch in the melody at 3:16. These melodies are not as they first seem simply loops of the same pattern over and over either, the changes in incidentals added varies throughout the song, always in keeping with what the other elements are doing and really helping this to be a totally complete song. There also used to be a really great video with this song on youtube but it has since been taken down.

Toasty Boy- Skinny [Destructive]

Toasty was one of the best producers dubstep has seen, his tune "The Knowledge" is rated as one of the best the scene has produced. For me, however, Skinny is his best effort, mainly down to the fact that it was the first one I heard. Oneman played it in his xlr8r mix and I was hooked. The pad which comes in at the start is so warm, wide and full it pulls you into the song as lazy looping breaks flick over and through it, creating a dancable yet still very relaxed tone to the song, further increased by the clips of a Steve Martin stand up performance coming through. This song puts me at peace with the world, everything fits perfectly in its place, yet I would still be able to dance hard to it if I heard it out.

Pangaea- Memories [White Label/Hessle]

 


The one tune of the five which I do not actually own seeing as it was a white label and it came out before I was interested in dubstep, the song is dominated by the frankly beautiful vocal sample, which has poignancy with me for other reasons, but it is not the be all and end all of the tune. The bassline is very similar to some old skool garage songs, such as the ones which influenced the creation of dubstep and on a system the bass really is fantastic. Too much dubstep nowadays in my opinion has one note sub bass lines with little to no movement, all the interest created by the growls above it, and its nice to feel the frequencies change on your chest as the notes change.

Mix!

So to celebrate the launch of this amazing blog I uploaded a mix i did the other day onto mixcloud

2 hours long and only one trainwreck- enjoy!

2 hours of pure fun by Hutyluty on Mixcloud

My other hero

and a good tune

Smoking Miaow

She's smoking miaow, smoking miiiiaow

My fave labels! part one

In no particular order:

Hessle Audio

Founded in the beautiful city of Leeds back in 2007, Hessle were the first to bring back some swing and brightness into dubstep which had become increasingly rigid- halfstep darkness leading the way- as is shown by the garagey inflections of the first release by Cosmin TRG

Focusing on rhythm and percussive elements all within a 140 framework, the label began to expand releasing established artists such as Untold and blooding new artists such as Blawan and Joe aswell as music by two of the founders of the label- Ramdanman/Pearson Sound and Pangaea seen as two of the biggest names in the "scene".

I first heard of Hessle when they filled in for Skream when he didn't turn up for one of his Rinse shows and not being too impressed at the lack of wobbles and halfstep. What I did like however was this song- ---

With its huge emphasis on rhythm and percussion it was enough for me to try listening to the hessle audio show (1st and 3rd thursdays of the month 11-1) and I was hooked. It was these hessle shows which introduced me to other music of a similar vein- as well as introducing me to house and techno as the bass continuum spiralled down the bpms.

Hotflush

Although I'm really not a fan of his new music and he is a bit of a dick, Scuba runs one of the best labels there is and has been in bass music for the last few years. In terms of diversity the label is pretty much unparalleled in the scene, it has been through breakstep, dubstep, house and now seems to release mainly techno.

Starting in the very early days of dubstep, during the phase in which breakstep was just as prominent as the dark garage and half step strains- Hotflush was its main proponent releasing tunes by Toasty like the one above (still upset that he's stopped producing), though still releasing what we would call dubstep now, most notably with the releases by Distance on the label.

As the years progressed the dubstep output varied even further- releasing artists such as Vaccine, Jazzsteppa and Mount Kimbie before no doubt inspired by his move to Berlin Scuba began releasing tunes by people such as Sigha, Sepalcure, George Fitzgerald as well as Scuba's SCB moniker. This move correlated with the drop on tempos but rather than having one foot in dubstep anymore the label nowadays is becoming much more like a straight techno one, as best exemplified by the most recent Adrenaline EP and the release of a Paul Woolford track on hotflush back in October 2011, a techno legend releasing on a traditional dubstep label showing just how much Hotflush and the contemporary dance music scene has changed recently.

Swamp 81

 Swamp 81 was orginally started as a label in which traditional dubstep songs would be released. In  Blackdown's interview with Loefah and Kryptic Minds, after the release of their "One of Us" album, Loefah seemed to be stating the desire to protect the original halfstep rhythm which he had pioneered, yet as 2009 progressed the Swamp releases began to become less and less based upon the deep minimal dubstep sound and more upon Detroit techno and Chicago Juke.

Starting with Addison Groove's Footcrab and Ramadanman's Work Them, Swamp 81 was at the head of the invasion of Juke into UK dance music, with the 808 bass drum, cowbells and repeating vocal phrases the order of the day in many of 2010's biggest anthems. This influence retains a strong hold on most Swamp releases but has probably been overtaken by the Detroit techno influence on many of the producers in the Swamp stable, the acidic synthlines reflecting the work of Drexciya- as seen most famously on Boddika and Joy Orbison's "Swims" 

 

Swamp retains a strong devotion to vinyl refusing to release digitally, which actually forced me into buying my first ever vinyl when Pinch- Get out of Here came out and its good to see Loefah sticking to the principles he believes in, even if it does make it less profitable for him and more expensive for us!

Flavour Park Jam

In the short life of the blog ive already mentioned the work of this artis once before but he really is my favourite by a long way at the moment!

2562, which may be the worst producer name ever (except perhaps hutyluty) made an album out of just dosco samples from 1978 or some time near then! i mean how hipster is that? its great.

plus i now seem to have a precedent for posting pictures with each tune

so have this

Mark Bradley appreciation

This is Mark Bradley, former Walsall box to box midfielder who now plays for Rotherham i think..

My sincere hope is he finds this blog whilst googling his own name, and realises he was a childhoo hero to some of us (ie. me),  whilst in the process becoming my first reader

go go bradders

I tried to think of a song which would represent him but all i could think of is this (the drop into cactus is him socring a goal)

Take the Plunge

This song makes me pull the facial expression of that horse there (cool picture btw i dont know who did it)

Porcupine

 Yo porcupine you heard that new objekt tune named after you?

 ye, i have mate, bassline at 2:43 makes me go like

shit is certainly cash bro

Without U

this is for when im in a good mood ie. summer but shit is still cash

without u by LeasyMusic


heres a picture of michael jackson badly photoshopped onto a beach to help you get into the mood

who knew he had such a great beach bod

Salt Lake Cuts

 2:35 onwards especially...