Fabriclive 44

With my limited interest in and knowledge of drum & bass consisting of Pendulum (who I enjoy but consider to have infinite versions of one song) and DJ Hazard’s amusing hit of last year, Machete (he gets the women and kills the bad guys!), I was preparing for Commix’s mix-record to be a headache inducing attack of super sub bass lines, heavy sawtooth leads and ridiculous lyrics. I was, however, pleasantly surprised with the first track which greeted me with calm, atmospheric pads and synthesised bird song. Hmm… when are they going to drop the ‘surprise’ heavy beat, I thought. Nope! Proven wrong, a classic dnb drum beat came in but with less aggression and intensity than I was expecting. The sub bass soon followed, but also defied convention by staying humbly in the background rather than bullying its way to the front making your speakers vibrate and buzz with severity.

The whole mix proved very surprising to me as Commix ignored the high-energy, high impact histrionics of most dnb and instead brought forward the more smooth, atmospheric side of the genre which is widely overlooked. Full of Rhodes pianos, flutes, and synth strings and pads, the more chill-out, relaxed dnb of artists such as Rufige Crew and Alix Perez is more akin to soul, jazz and lounge music, only with a light sub bass and traditional dnb beat. A complementary use of heavily reverberated sound effects and voice, also exhibited, further brings the music over to a more ambient, atmospheric sound.

Further into the album the mood steadily progresses from serenity into the more energetic, anxious and agitated tone of artists such as Data and Spectrasoul, whose tracks create a sense of urgency and pressure, though retain a lightness usually not associated with dnb. The inane lyrics do start to expose themselves though, with Logistic’s ‘Murderation’ consistently telling us that they’re ‘gonna murder him’ and Kemo telling us on Lynx & Alix Perez’s ‘Dangerous’ that it is in fact ‘dangerous’ (though who is getting murdered and what is so dangerous is sadly never explained). The use of voice does pick up, however, in tracks such as Commix’s ‘Bear Music’ and Breakage’s ‘Old School Thing’, but only as background accompaniment.

Commix even manage to get some electro and techno into their mix with the latter half of Dangerous and dBridge’s remix of their own ‘Belleview’, alluding back to their early influences of techno, minimalist and house. The mix also enters more experimental territory with the sinister quality of Instra:mental’s ‘No Future’, made up of extremely minimal drums and bass and the eerie monotones of GlaDOS-esque voices telling us of the ‘lies’, ‘confusion’ and ‘terror’ in London, as well as the jerky and unconventional drum beat to Photek’s ‘Yendi’.

Finally the album ends with its best track, ‘Photograph’ by Instra:mental. With a placid yet strangely troubled tone, the gentle synths and glassy pads bizarrely remind me of the soundtrack to Ecco the Dolphin on the old Sega Megadrive. Euphoric yet gloomy at the same time, the track is very hard to pin down and along with the samples of children playing and crying in the background it brings forth images of under-water, memory and purgatory.

In fact, the whole mix brings forth these ideas along with peace, stress and emotion – which I never thought I’d say that about dnb! The downside for me is that the drum beats and samples are relatively repetitive and the smooth rolling mixes, which do create a seamless, continual flow, make most of the tracks sound fairly alike, making it hard to distinguish one from the other. Also, despite this new side to dnb that rarely gets recognition or air-time, I find nothing especially exciting about this album and though Commix want to promote this genre as suitable for dancefloors, I struggle to see it getting played for anything other than atmospheric background music.