Picks Of The Week (02.10.21

1. Grey Code - Opal / Soosay [Metalheadz]

Recommended if you like: Klinical, Amoss, Data 3

You wanna know what's crazy? That I haven't talked about Grey Code on one of these threads yet! Well, good thing he just put out a two-tracker on the legendary Metalheadz! However, let's first jump back a few years to see how we got here.

Spencer Warren, Grey Code's mortal form, was born in Lewes, just outside Brighton, but has since then moved to Bristol for study and, eventually, musical purposes. As every online piece about him will tell you, he comes from a quite musical family. Both of his parents are multi-instrumentalists that like to dabble in all kinds of music - obligatory link to his father's SoundCloud - and his brother - ThinkTwice - was the one who introduced him to producing in the first place! While Spencer started out playing cello in school, he switched over to guitar at around grade 5. Just a casual fun fact, no need to remember it for later or anything. Anyway, in 2013 his brother convinced him to start producing Dubstep with him. As Sponce he did just that for a little while, until he stumbled upon a few albums that influenced his musical productions forever: The Upbeats' Primitive Techniques and Noisia's Split The Atom.

I'm not entirely sure how the timelines line up exactly here, but I think we can assume that him being an early member of the tightly-knit group of forward-thinking producers that is the infamous Music Squad (which also includes the likes of IMANU, Vorso and Wingz among around 40 other names you should most definitely follow) also played a huge role in his Drum & Bass journey. In 2015 he showed the first few steps of said journey to the world by releasing his first few DnB tracks as Sponce on Fumei, IMANU's and Skadi's old label, and T3K Recordings. Later in that very same year, he decided to rebrand from the spongy Sponce to the new and shiny Grey Code. To quote him, "Same music but edgy name". Over the following years he managed to slowly transform that "same" music into an increasingly unique combination of beautiful atmospheres and deep, rolling basslines that turned a lot of heads. Some of them were even made out of metal and were spelled with a z.

After a few years of making waves on Dispatch Recordings, MethLab, Principle Recordings, Skankandbass and the Music Squad label, the label of the gold-toothed man came knocking on his door. Yes, I mean Metalheadz. In 2019 he officially joined Goldie's legendary label with one of the best releases of that year, the Reprieve EP/mini album. I loved (and still love) that EP so much I even mentioned it in my DnB In 2019: A Year In Review post, way before I started writing for you guys here! While Metalheadz continued to be his "home label", he also ventured out a little by also releasing on Flexout Audio, DIVIDID and, of course, Dispatch. With his new double single Opal / Soosay however, he once again returns home!

And what a return it is! While Grey Code certainly has something of a signature sound, he is always very open to experimentation in his production, as was most recently evidenced by his output on DIVIDID. And now even more recently evidenced by Opal. Remember that fun fact I told you about him playing the guitar? It comes back into play in this one! While Opal is still fully drenched in Grey Code's impeccably arranged atmosphere full of beautiful synths and strings, especially in the intro, its main focus is on the ebb and flow of his quick-paced rhythmic guitar play. In a way it acts as a second set of drums alongside the insanely heavily distorted main drums, chugging along while the earthquake-like bass shatters your eardrums (in a good way). Towards the end Grey Code switches it up once more by scaling everything back to seemingly just the drums and subbass. For the melancholic finale he brings back in a few of the melodic elements of the intro to round everything off. As strange as it is hypnotizingly amazing.

Secondly we've got the more "traditional" Grey Code rolling banger, Soosay, a collaboration with fellow Music Squad member Euph. And when I say traditional, I mean without a doubt one of biggest tunes of this year. The way he plunges from the thick atmosphere of the buildups, with little to no drums at all, into the deepest of the deep depths of the drop, accompanied by some amazing continuously shuffling drums, just gets me every single time. Not only is this track a perfect example of why Grey Code drums are some of my absolute favourite drums in all of DnB, the work on that purring bass is just sublime too. Ridiculously good tune.

All in all, Grey Code has once again proven why people consider him to be one of the best in the game.

Oh yeah one more thing, did I mention that this release acts as a prelude to the announcement of his debut album?! I think that's the part where I say something like the hype train has left the station. CHOO CHOO!

Other great deep and techy stuff from this week:

Massive Zebra, subcurrent - Concussion
Hyroglifics - Waiting
Annix, Rider Shafique - Equinox (Phace Remix)
Hillsdom - Fauxtopia / Gaslight
Alcemist - Us (Pola & Bryson Remix)
Screamarts - Yokai EP
Tom Finster - Convoy
Skylark - Don't Worry
Various Artists - Ergo LP 💎
Askel & Elere - Do I Know U
HVRLYN - Incurzion Optics 016: 💎

Sources

2. Kalixto - Shout 💎[Lemon Drops]

Recommended if you like: Mage, Freaks & Geeks, Wiguez

Now for something completely different!

As you can tell from my flair (for the lazy: It's a Liquicity one), I'm a big fan of cheesy uplifting dancefloor anthems. I've spent the last years searching for more and more producers who could expand my catalogue of said subgenre, because I literally can't get enough of it. Once you exhaust all the obvious choices, you have to look at other places. One day, a friend of mine, a fellow cheesy dancefloor fanatic, sent me a link to a DnB bootleg of Giulia Be - (Não) Era Amor together with "oh my god please listen to this you'll love it". One listen and I knew what they meant, I was hooked. The bootleg was done by a guy called Kalixto, whose back catalogue I promptly checked out afterwards. A few minutes later I started following his artist page, because damn that was some good stuff. A few months after my initial discovery, i.e. this week, I'm very happy I now get to share this story, because Kalixto has got a brand new tune out and it's banging! You guessed it, he's this week's Hidden Gem Of The Week™!

But wait, who is Kalixto again? He's a multi-genre electronic music producer, with a flair for the drums and basses, from São Paulo, Brazil. Okay, fair warning: Since I'm not exactly fluent in Portuguese (shocking, I know), my research might be a little flawed. There was a whole lot of Portuguese to translate and I feel like Google Translate didn't always get the right meaning out of it. I've tried my best though, I promise.

Okay, back to the artist background. Jefferson Calixto Ribeiro started producing or at least releasing his music way back in 2012. The first few tunes that I could find, when he was still operating under his previous K∆LIXTO! or KALIXTO! aliases, ranged from Progressive Electro to Electro House to, well of course, Drum & Bass. Some time in 2016 he started his The Aurion alias, under which he focused even more on his DnB productions, with the occasional excursion into Halftime. However, shortly after, in 2017, he decided to rebrand one more time to Kalixto. While still sometimes venturing out into other territories, his focus was now definitely on DnB. Between all the various bootlegs and other original tracks he did since then, his submission for Deep House producer Bruno Be's "Hot Sun" remix competition even won him a release on HUB Records! Not only is that a big accomplishment in and of itself, it also has the best cover art I've ever seen.

At some point Kalixto sent out an unreleased track called Shout to a feedback stream of xalow and kvsh, the owners of the Brazilian label Lemon Drops. Judging from their expressions (second slide), they loved it on their first listen and directly signed it to their label!

I mean, how could they not! Man like Kalixto really pulled out all the stops that make an uplifting Dancefloor track great here. Kalixto's choice of a vocal sample is sure to stay in the head of everyone who listens to it, especially when you sing along to it twenty times like I did the last few days. Not just that though, on top of a great rendition of the nowadays "standard" guitar-based Dancefloor rhythm we also got a intoxicatingly catchy synth melody. If the vocal doesn't already completely fill up the earworm part of your brain, the synth will fill in the cracks. My favourite part has got to be the little solo towards the end though, with the synth going off the rails in all the best ways and the singer vocalizing along effortlessly.

Yet another great dancefloor tune straight outta São Paulo!

Other dancefloor things from this week:

Andromedik, imallryt - Running
hayve, Skyelle - Change
Yellock - Virtual Human Being LP 💎
The Prototypes - Passion (Tantrum Desire Remix)
Pegboard Nerds, More Plastic - The Ride
Nelver, Mage - Freefall
Exploid - A Link To The Past 💎