Atmospheric Drum 'n' Bass Youtube thread

For some bizarre reason I've been craving this strain of DnB. I don't actually own any, so it's great that there's a ton of it on Youtube.

A companion piece to the The YouTube old skool hardcore/early jungle thread

Hidden Camera is so classic.

Whole album is brilliant.

Anyway this thread is staying up too late bait and I need to resist right now.

I will post more later. Time to go home.

I never understood the disdain so many have towards this type of shit. So much great music came out of it, probably a higher hits to misses ratio than all the other jungle subgenres.

I don't think most of the stuff on here is disdained. What's disdained is the fuzak noodling that soon followed this stuff as a lot of these dudes all ran headlong into real "muso" schtick and double and triple albums.

This might be a touch more darkcore than atmospheric, but I was listening to it earlier and its lovely:

i know people who hate on every single Good Looking/Looking Good release. this is just utter nonsense, i have told them so repeatedly. also, my fav Future Engineers shit was their joints on Partisan, which is probably my favorite drum and bass label.

Okay well a few diehard haters aside, a lot of people still think positively about this stuff. DJ Clever's success speaks to that.

Haha I just glanced at the Discogs page for Partisan and guess who wrote a hilarious comment there! "Partisan tunes work as well on the mind as on the ass."

that first DJ Crystl track up there is top notch.

I hear you about the Good Looking stuff getting a bad rap, though I will say that most stuff I've heard, post 2000 or so, is a tad slick (smooth jazz?) for my taste. I really love the older unapologetically futurist stuff with the pitched-up amen breaks the best.

i came on this thread to hate, thinking i wasn't ready for this again yet, but it actually sounds really nice.

can someone help me remember this artist i used to listen to a lot around the time all this stuff was happening. it mighta fallen more in the idm camp. it had skitterier beats, and jazzy samples, but with more of a hip hop perspective. i wanna say his name started with a P, but i can't remember. he was kinda big too. sounds sorta similar to that Photek track upthread.

Can't youtube from work but some of my favourite slick atmospheric drum & bass numbers are:

Big Bud - Millenium
Lamb - Gorecki (Global Communications Remix)
Klute - Leo 9
Dave Wallace - Expressions Parts 1 and 2
Roni Size/Reprazent - Ballet Dance
Doc Scott - Far Away
Peshay - The Vocal Tune
Alex Banks - Control

Jaxon are you thinking of Plug??
Adam F - Aromatherapy

Argh the Adam F tune is part of my list obv.

tim, yes! duh. luke vibert. Drum 'N' Bass for Papa was such a killer album.

does this count? i actually dug this out and have been listening to it a lot lately, it's a little more slathered in ambient goo than the ones above but i like it.

loved 'Grapevine', also 'Heaven'.

really tho this one is probably my favourite

Atlantis is also a favorite of mine, one of the first jungle 12"s i bought as well!

Is this atmospheric-ish? I think it heads that way at least, when the wonky synth sample finally comes in on the 3 and a half minute mark you can hear jungle turning into D'n'B.

No videos found for “hidden agenda flute tune”

:(

dj pulse was so underrated

oh shit, that's "inner city life" ... well, fuck that

next best thing

everyone needs in order to dance 6

well, fuck. i can't do anything right tonight.

anyway, my taste runs more towards the ruff + the smooth ... speaking of which there's a great PFM track called "the rough with the smooth" i always enjoyed

Not exactly the beat I remember, but still the best atmospheric d&b there is:

Future Bound - "Sorrow"

Another stormer. When that rolling bassline sets in, it just makes me giddy.

Photek - "Rings Around Saturn" [NOT "U.F.O."]

I've been on a Photek kick lately. His second best song (after the above):

"The Rain (Photek Remix)"

...Crap. It was there a couple of months ago. Take my word for it. It will take you there.

Those three songs were all on the mixtape that introduced me to this genre. One side was filled with the most effusively evocative atmospheric beats, and the other side was a weird mix of Photek tunes (the above plus "UFO" etc), along with "Circles" and some possible jump-up bidness. I think it was probably the DJ duo of Double-A ("AA") & Twist - out of Toronto? They went on to put out some releases on Breakbeat Science. God, I want to find that mixtape. There was one jump-up song that was a James Brown remix..."I don't know, but whatsever I play, it gots to be funky." (Then a count? "One, two, three, four.."? - still in James Brown's voice). I know someone here can ID it, right?

LTJ's best?

- Bukem w/ "Atlantis"

So poignant.

I could keep going...heh.

That gothy choral synth pad - I just can't get enough.

Is this atmospheric?

Goldie - "Kemistry"

Depressing is what it is. I always thought he wrote that song after she died, but apparently the LP was dropped in '95 and she died in '99. Shows how late I was to the party.

Woah that Rogue Unit thread track upthread is AMAZING.

Ha ha Vahid, this Neil Trix/FBD Project vinyl was titled "Ruff To Da Smooth"! Plus this particular track "The Future" is great - torpid atmospheric darkside bizniz...

Sadly they don't appear to have either "She's So" or "Gestures Without Motion" on youtube.

(The remarks about Atlanta meant to refer to the ‘bass’ scene in the USA specifically.)

To me it feels the same as a lot of niche genres that had a period of wide popularity -- there's a small scene dedicated to preserving the classic sound, but the vocabulary has been absorbed by every other genre. Personally, I love jungle and breakbeats but it feels more fresh and challenging to get the same feeling in other tempos and styles, and it would feel more like a nerdy exercise to make a pure jungle or d&b track.

It also feels like a cliche for a techno dj mix to keep pushing up in tempo for 2 hours and then dissolve into classic jungle for the last 15 - 20 min.

Every now and then I'll come across some new drum & bass tune with insane sound design that implies the existence of a scene with some interesting music, but I also suspect it might be bro-y and impenetrable and I wouldn't know where to start.

the existence of sherelle's boiler room ldn 2019 mix (the one where's she's wearing the black tshirt that says "160 BPM" in orange on it) indicates to me that at last part of the young jungle scene in london is not bro-y. not sure if that means it's a good scene but if it is a bad scene then it seems to be a different bad scene than what is implied by bro-y

i agree that the techno dj mix ending in jungle is a cliche. but there are so many djs and so many mixes out now, i'm not sure what isn't a cliche. wow, two hours of jagged ambient, experimental club and global south influenced footwork derived 150 bpm beats? definitely never heard anything like that before!!!!

also i'm not sure it's any less nerdy to make a pure house or techno track or to make whatever kind of polyglot cross-genre music. it's not like a hear marcus visionary track and then i hear the new hodge + simo cell on livity and think "damn i bet hodge + simo cell could take marcus visionary's lunch money"

oh what's that you don't know marcus visionary? here, have a dodz remix and a kool radio show

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMdyh5SPT-g

https://www.mixcloud.com/marcusvisionary/marcus-visionary-the-visionary-mix-show-092-aug-6th-2021-kool-london

xp

I get what you’re saying about the nerdy exercise but meanwhile the likes of Nia Archives is charting in the UK with basically pure jungle. I don’t really hear the level of technically expert drum programming from jungle in other styles. Sure there are complex time signatures and bass beats in deconstructed club music, I’ve even heard drill called “the new jungle” — it’s not the same highly complex yet catchy syncopated interplay of bass and treble as in jungle to me.

Ffs as has been said before, techno has barely changed in 30 years. House seemed to stop developing further around 2010. I don’t really see how being a junglist in 2022 is any more pedantic than those are.

ON REVIEW: What the late great said otm

complex programming kind of a red herring imo, anyway i'm much more into ~~ complex vibes ~~

xp i mainly find out about new jungle productions by checking hardwax, they get at least a half-dozen 12s every week, though it's also the same few producers who seem to put out tons and tons of shit: for heritage acts metalheadz, shogun audio, exit records alums generally very well represented, in terms of new stuff basically it's the astrophonica to fresh 86 axis, stuff like om unit, fracture, coco bryce (25 vinyl releases since 2020 wtf), tim reaper, fff, dead man's chest, response & pliskin, sully etc

Oh I can't imagine sitting down to make a straight-down-the-middle house or techno track either, like how can the world need any more?!

And this really is not to big myself up here, I just live for the thing that feels like a new twist (whether it's actually new or not! I fully admit I have huge blindspots in the history of all this music). And I also recognize that when you're deeply immersed in a scene (whether it's house, techno, or drum & bass), the smallest tweaks can register as that fresh twist even if it sounds the same to outsiders.

Sherelle's mixture of footwork & jungle is a good point, and of course I don't know what the current scene in London feels like, I just get a refracted glimpse through online mixes and DJ twitter.

xp

It also feels like a cliche for a techno dj mix to keep pushing up in tempo for 2 hours and then dissolve into classic jungle for the last 15 - 20 min.

lol, stop sub-posting me!

DnB is having a bit of a moment here in Austin, TX, but it seems like people are experiencing it for the first time, and it is very much an offshoot of the EDM and US dubstep scenes, very tech-y, with zero awareness of old school jungle. It has inspired me to start piecing together a one-off set covering my own personal greatest hits of jungle and DnB from the 90s, which in turn led me to delve into this guy's massive YouTube collection of mixtapes that spans genres but has a particular focus on jungle including a lot of my favorite stateside DJs from way back when:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brewcitymik

hmm, not sure how to properly link a YouTube channel on here but it's called BrewCityMike

I think you dropped the “e”?

Nope that’s not it

Haha, interesting. Will definitely check out that channel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brewcitymik

ilx doesn't like linking to youtube channels

anyway, worth checking out, I was enjoying mixes by Phantom 45 and Odi the other day

Lmao sorry! I didn’t actually post the EXACT same link as you despite appearances, somehow the link got snipped. Maybe I should submit a mod request to delete my failures here? Anyway the end of the link should be brewcitymike1.

But yeah I used to love finding Odi mixes back in the day. He can really lay the turntablism/scratching on thick tho, my favorite mix of his sounds like dubbed in the scratching, it just doesn’t stop. But I saw him in ATL, we brought him to SF and every time I saw he really had those skills, just maybe not to the extent of the mixtape.

I also recognize that when you're deeply immersed in a scene (whether it's house, techno, or drum & bass), the smallest tweaks can register as that fresh twist even if it sounds the same to outsiders

or ... experimental club? ;-)

i'm trying to figure what you mean by nerdy. academic, maybe? like not tied to an actual scene with actual social energy? which i think sometimes people associate that (esp in electronic music) with a sense of newness.

maybe it's because i'm old but i've definitely stopped putting my new music seeking energy into a search for things that make me think newness or even "i've never heard anything like this before". i don't think i've heard anything that sounded really new or different to me since teklife, and that was ten years ago now. i feel like at this point if i did hear something new, it would just imply to me that there's some old music i've never heard before. i constantly hear reissues of weird electronic stuff from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s that - while not exactly "like nothing i've heard before" - do sound as fresh and cool as anything being putting out now.

as for actual social energy, well ... when i hear united-states-of-american ilxors talk about their local scenes it's always saltier than a bag of peanuts. and from what i've observed in other parts of the internet same is true when the local scene is new york, london, paris, berlin, tokyo, wherever. so i try to ignore the internal projection i'm tempted to do when i am at or nearby parties or see photos or videos of parties or hear or read about parties. i would not go so far as to say sociology is fallacious but i find it often says more about the sociologist than the uh sociologized

Oh yeah that guy's a hero, I had some of the early Chicago juke/ghetto house mixtapes that he posted on repeat a few years ago. I should send him a message of appreciation since he's presumably in Milwaukee.

xp

sherelle is doing less footwork more straight dnb recently (see her fabric mix w/ exclusive track "jungle teknah")

something i am really enjoying lately is the resurgence of ATMOSPHERIC GHETTOTECH

aside from sherelle's "160 down the a406" see also telephones "blue tek (raw mix)" and the new album on FXHE by hi tech (linked track "all a vibe" here, it's on apple music!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpaRbXxtfDg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tloPPD9B-w

Odi would come to Boston and the surrounding area quite often and it was always just a mindblowing experience to see what he could do

Nerdy was the wrong word, academic is closer if we're talking about trying to reanimate or fully inhabit a style from 15 - 30 years ago. But hey, if there's a current scene that someone is engaging with and contributing to (either local or online), more power to them.

something i am really enjoying lately is the resurgence of ATMOSPHERIC GHETTOTECH

omg

I'm glad that the electronic dance scene appears to be growing here, but I don't think I'm wrong to say it lacks a certain amount of hipness and tends to lag fairly far behind more central cities like NYC, London, Berlin, etc

Found the other previous recent thread with jungle vs d&b talk. Will’s trenchant commentary is what really stuck with me.

Probably not your cup of tea if you just want ‘authentic’ breaks chopped in an S1000, a tired pad sample and a sine wave sub though.

WELCOME TO THE JUNGLIST MASSIVE, WE'VE GOT FUN N GAMES: 2017 Rolling Drum and Bass/Jungle/Liquid/Neurofunk/170

(Was gonna link directly to that post but it’s a messy link and I’m scared now.)

tends to lag fairly far behind more central cities like NYC, London, Berlin, etc

London is kind of unique but NYC particularly and Berlin as well feel like they’re just played out. The only “artists” who can afford to move to NYC now have either a wealthy patron, a trust fund, or some techbro career backing them up. I just don’t hear much actual good music coming out of there these days.

Obviously the internet has really shaken up the central vs local dynamic too. Imo SoundCloud rap showed that a niche scene can really flourish even if it mainly exists only in virtual space.

lol, have you been to Austin, TX where blues rock is the dominant form of expression?

like, I get what you are saying, but from where I stand they seem like avatars of the future

Really? That was weirdly true in China too among the expat-adjacent community but the main drivers of the blues dominance were geriatric pub rockers. Is it actually dominant among even white young people much less less privileged folks who would normally be listening to hip hop and R&B/pop?

one of our treasured landmarks is a statue of Stevie Ray Vaughan, so you tell me

Things old wypipo like, yeah.

Idk maybe my internet theory is pure BS, maybe its main effect is entropic where we just end up with this universal mush across almost all locales, not like the internet has improved any scene in America that I can see (and yeah maybe this reflects the “sociologist” more than the society under examination).

Austin is a very white city, yes, but it has tons of bars and clubs and you can find shitty music catering to various ethnicities, the point being that cutting edge electronic music makes up a very tiny to non-existent sliver of that and the audience it pulls in is no less white. Berlin (or NYC) may be old and boring now, I don't really know, but they seem to exist in an utterly different universe to me.

my understanding is that they know a thing or two about blues rock in london and berlin! and that in fact that style may even be more popular there than techno or house or jungle, just as in austin!

it is true though, there are definitely places in america where they still listen to both types of music (country and western)

sure, I'm not trying to claim that techno/house/jungle/etc is the most popular music anywhere, but clearly these cities have multi decade institutional scenes that have evolved over time. When I arrived in Austin in 2000 there was just nothing whatsoever, and it has only grown bit by bit since then to be slightly more.

and a lot of that growth was driven by the popularity of EDM and dubstep in the US

In the U.S. I guess I just assume that the niche scenes are going to be just as niche in every city, but the larger the city = the larger in absolute numbers that scene is going to be. Exceptions made for regional music that only truly exist in a given city.

And the UK is still a wonderland of dance music (especially non-house/techno dance music) in my mind, please don't tell me otherwise.

xp

I have heard some stories from UK producers who have come here with a vision of Detroit or Chicago as dance music wonderlands, and had a rude awakening, lol (not that there aren't pockets of great scenes in those cities).

Yeah I haven’t been to any SRV tribute shows or anything but in Atlanta the electronic music scene is almost definitely more diverse than the crowd that would draw. Atlanta has a biggish mostly black deep house scene these days tho.

Also a growing audience for Afrobeats which could be considered electronic music. Tbh it would really surprise me if there were no d&b scene in Austin pre-2000. Dallas had a MDMA dance scene in the 80s before any other American city. Knoxville ffs had a reputable d&b scene in the 90s.

I was far from the only d&b DJ in Asheville when I started. There was something going on around Austin, maybe it just died out.

if you compare Austin and Atlanta demographics, you might see a slight difference

there may have been something here, but I certainly could not find it when I moved here in 2000

I was far from the only d&b DJ in Asheville when I started.

Are you still in Asheville?

xp

You had to get with the email lists back then. For me it was seraves and sfraves, I’d guess there was a txraves list then too.

I’m in Atlanta now.

I did go to a rave in Houston around that time, it was ok

coming to Austin from Boston in 2000, the dance scene here just felt like small potatoes despite the fact that there are massively more bars and clubs down here, it could just be that everything is just spread too thin to consolidate here. and of course Boston always felt pretty quiet and slow compared to NYC.

Right for sure. I made the opposite move from driving hours and hours around the SE to go to parties, then moving to the Bay Area where at the time there would be multiple illegal warehouse parties on the same block in West Oakland. Then they’d all get busted in series, the cops moving from one to the next.

Oh this was the other mixtape youtube account that I leaned on during the pandemic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MixtapeMagi

"MixtapeMagic"

Unimpeachable

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u28gyVCudbw

thought i was well familiar with the works of blame but this is new to me! “groove research” from 1995

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGApW2g8Nfw

Dopo Goto - the songs from the disc one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXsZz4bwEYQ