Picks Of The Week (30.10.21

1. Zombie Cats - MUTATION REMIXED [Zombie Cats]

Recommended if you like: any kind of Neurofunk

Consider this my late entry for a Halloween review!

While artist albums are a hugely important format for music and thus also DnB, as it allows artists to tell a coherent story and freely express their creativity, there's also an argument to be made for remix albums. They are just so inherently fun. Names from all over the scene come together to pick apart the original, putting their very own spin on the material, which more often than not results in some pure gems. So when my favourite German-Australian producer duo Zombie Cats announced they were doing a big remix edition of their debut album Mutation that I reviewed in-depth about a year ago, I thought, hey, why not see what the remixers made out of this one?

As with all big albums, I'll talk a bit more extensively about my favourites of the LP and, between all that, throw in little TL;DL's on the rest of the tracks. Let's go!

Let's start with some newschool techy stuff, starting with Freshney's remix of Drift. If you haven't noticed my endless praise of him yet, let me give you a quick rundown: Freshney has become somewhat of a favourite of mine these last two or so years. It all started with his excellent Bloom EP on the Porto-based Surveillance Music last year, which I loved so much that I started closely following his musical journey ever since. Whether as Circumference with his good mate Kit Jones or as a solo artist, his beautifully cinematic output is always a sight to behold. Well, an auditory sight. You know what I mean. His already massive but still ever-improving production talent has lead to releases on Blackout, NËU and SINFUL MAZE, with additional Circumference appearances on Flexout, Overview and Soulvent. And now he's put his spin on the dreamy Drift!

In typical sad cross-genre eboy dnb fashion, Freshney took the I Close My Eyes vocal sample and chopped it up into a million pieces. With said voca-a-a-a-a-l chops and some really sleek fast-paced drums he turns up the energy levels quite a few notches, while still maintaining the overall futuristic dream sequence feel of the original. However, instead of drifting through space in your dream, you are now chased by alien space cops. In the second half Freshney treats us to one of the most rhythmically unique minutes you'll hear in DnB this year. The wildly bouncing almost arrhythmic (I hope I'm using that word right) Halftime beat provides a stark contrast to the hectic 16th drum loop that might sound weird on paper, but works really well in the final product. Superb remix this one.

What, you want more techy stuff? Don't worry, the all-star lineup includes three more remixes in this subgenre. On the one side of the techy spectrum we've got UKF-certified rising star Rohaan putting his signature sound on Selva, on the other end we've got Russian rising stars Psynchro turning Rock It into a deeply technical joy ride and none other than Kemal reworking my all-time Zombie Cats favourite Did You Know into a classic acid-y Kemal banger.

Next up let's talk about Felix Raymon's remix of GRRRRR! Five R's, don't you ever forget! You might have seen me mentioning him a few times here and there, like when I reviewed his entry for Flexout Audio's ten year anniversary series, but for those that have a memory as full of gaps as mine: Felix Raymon is a German producer from the Ruhrarea with a special emphasis on the deep and dark areas of the genre we all love so much. Since his first release on Moshbit Records in 2016, his hand for great melodies and his super clean technical skills lead to him being featured on labels like Addictive Behaviour, Delta9 Recordings and, as mentioned above, Flexout Audio. Fun fact: I am currently wearing a Flexout shirt!

For his remix Felix chose the uniquely techy roller, which was also one of my favourite tracks of the original LP, GRRRRR. Right from the start you notice that he transformed the menacing "being followed by a tiger" atmosphere into a beautiful and frankly quite uplifting one. The drums might chug along just as quickly, but they're way less frantic and considerably more vibey. These very same vibes are enhanced even further by the large oomph's and the comeback of the sweet melody from the intro. This would've already made for quite the nice remix experience, but that wasn't enough for Felix. In the second drop he yanks said melody from its distant, echo-y place right to the center stage. In this full unfiltered spotlight the synths now sound like a choir of alien angels chanting about the end of the world. It's absolutely bonkers. No lie, it caused me to immediately rewind the track a good 4-5 times when I first heard that. It's just so satisfying to the ear. My favourite remix on this LP.

Want more deep takes on the originals? How about shooting star Waeys' excellently tooty remix of the techy roller Always? Or what about Chris.SU's energizing oldschool-yet-modern rework of the lush Dreams? Let's dive a little more into a different direction though.

While people like Freshney or Felix Raymon are definitely underrated as hell, they already kind of cut their teeth on other labels and are well-known among the headz in their respective subgenres. However, there's two remixers on this LP that are pretty much complete newcomers and I want to talk a bit more in-depth about one of them: The aptly named Helloworld!

Helloworld, also known as Shannon Paton, is yet another entry on the seemingly endless list of huge talents from Down Under. Even though this is his first "actual" release, the Perth-based producer has been putting out some absolutely banging free downloads on various platforms for quite a few months now too. Sometimes on Close2Death, sometimes on BassRabbit, sometimes simply on his personal SoundCloud, always worth listening. He has also been working a lot with a certain Killer Industries, a name which you might remember from the Flava Remix EP a few months ago. Just a little fun fact for you.

For his first official Helloworld to the DnB scene, he chose to take on the switchy earthquake-causing I Want. Instead of immediately dropping into the massive wave of distorted bass like the original did, Shannon instead opts for a slightly slower build. After flexing his vocal chop skills for a little bit however, he does drop into an ever-so-slightly even more massive version of the aforementioned BRRRRR. He follows this up by his amped up version of the vibey zigzagging bass, which is even more put into the spotlight here thanks to the less in-your-face drums. Even in the second drop he keeps switching it up by jumping into a glitchy-wonky stepping beat, before going back to the structure of the first drop. Loads of fun little ideas in this, and some insane basses that will screw your face up permanently if you listen to it for too long.

The other newcomer is the Graz-based artist Gestalt, formerly known as Sinus. He took Keepalive and twisted it into a menacing half-time stepper, which I expect to hear on VISION Radio in the near future. Really impressive for someone's first release, and that goes for both remixes!

Last but not least, I of course have to mention the huge amount of A-List Neurofunk producers that set the originals ablaze with their specific unique styles. My favourite of the bunch has to be Current Value's remix of the title track Mutation. If you've somehow never heard of him, here's the TL;DR: Current Value, aka Tim Elliot, is a Berlin-based producer of all kinds of nasty distorted drums and basses. He's arguably one of the most prolific artists we have in our scene, with 10+ (!) albums and countless singles and EPs on all sorts of labels across a decades-long career. Most of the time he's exploring the realms of Neurofunk, but he's also known for venturing out into more jumpy territory. I mean, one of his albums was even released on Souped Up of all places. If you love weird sounds and strange atmospheres from an alien planet, he's the guy for you.

And man, did he deliver on his Mutation remix! He pretty much took the progressively-building original and turned every knob up to 120%. Every single melody, every single element is just bursting from their sheer distortion, while still not getting out of control. Even if you didn't know who did the remix, that controlled insanity is just so Current Value-y that you'd guess correctly pretty quickly. You've got bursts of pure energy crashing through the walls of distortion every now and then, you've got bleeps and bloops that sound like your spaceship is malfunctioning, there's even a switchup into some quick-firing drums towards the end of the drop, what I'm trying to say is thst the energy is through the roof. Mad remix.

Want even more Neuro to bash your head in to? Don't worry, there's plenty! Sinister Souls are turning up the heat and bringing in the kittens on their remix of GRRRRR, Pythius cranks up the snare-o-meter to the maximum on his remix of Alien, Picota & Kumbh take it back to the early days by turning Outset into a old-school Neuro banger and newcomer Cyntax shakes up the most straight-forward slapper of the album Flava by going the triplet route.

This remix album is like a little glimpse into what the Neurofunk world is all about lately. The Zombie Cats reached to people from all over the scene, from complete newcomers to seasoned veterans, spanning pretty much every subgenre in the heavier spheres of DnB, from new-wave techy goodness to old-school neurofunk bangers. Safe to say, they all delivered.

Other neurofunk/techy things from this week:

Circumference - Breathe
Grey Code - Simple Things (Rueben Remix)
Xylym - Maelstrom EP 💎
Nemean - Terminate
Seekraze, Tao Maffa - Cholia EP 💎
Sign - Clockwork Determines Our Order 💎

2. Mazare, Nick Luebke - Spirals [Heaven Sent]

Recommended if you like: Matrix & Futurebound, Feint, Protostar

Yeah yeah, not from this past week, but let me explain: I really wanted to write a second, less neurofunky review and, while there were a few good candidates from this week, I thought, hey, why not write about that track from the week before that you've been looping all week? I'll let you figure out how I decided.

Everyone who knows me or has seen my last.fm statistics knows I can't stop listening and singing along loudly to cheesy/uplifting dancefloor (shout-out to my neighbours never complaining about that). And who would fit that category better than Italian anthem machine Mazare! But before we get to the part where I fanboi endlessly about his newest song, let's dive into his background a little.

Like you could already tell from the intro text, the marvelous Mister Mazare is an Italian drum and bass producer. What if I told you that wasn't always the case though? The DnB part, not the Italian part. If you know his music it won't come as a surprise to you that growing up, Mazare was listening to a lot of his parents' extensive Rock collection. However it wasn't until he listened to David Guetta's When Love Takes Over that a switch in his head was turned on. From that moment on, he knew he wants to make a living out of this music thing.

A few years later, around 2014, his efforts paid off with a debut on the Chinese multi-genre label Vous Records. Even in these early, Trance-EDM-y tracks (I don't know subgenres outside DnB very well if that wasn't obvious), his talent for well-crafted melodies whose beauty will instantly put you in a good mood was very much noticeable. So noticeable in fact that, after a few more Vous Records singles, he was contacted by EDM behemoth Spinnin' Records for a release in 2017! While that was already a huge step in the "being able to live from producing music" direction, Mazare didn't want to stay in that corner of the electronic music spectrum any longer.

Jump forward to 2019: a new, exciting drum and bass artist just had their first debut release on Monstercat! Yep, during his time off from music he decided to completely revamp his sound, at least tempo-wise. On amazingly beautiful single after single, most of them released on his new cat-themed home label with some later branching out to Ophelia and Lost In Dreams, and banging remix after remix, including for_Seven Lions_, SLANDER, Essenger and Dabin, he showed the world who's the boss in the uplifting rock-inspired dancefloor genre. However, this year he seems to have leveled up his game even more. Not only did he release his debut EP Paracosm, on which he fused his love for Rock with Electronic Music more than ever before, he also did two memorable livestreamed performances, one for said debut EP at Grotta Gigante and one for Monstercat's tenth edition of their Uncaged compilation series at Fortezza di Osoppo, with quite a few extra singles and remixes to round everything off.

One of these remixes, his take on SLANDER's Back To U directly lead to the release were discussing today! In short: SLANDER was so impressed by his remix chops that they started talking more and more and ended up lining up some releases on SLANDER'S very own label Heaven Sent. This new single, Spirals is the first one of those!

Yay, time for the fanboi part! For this first impression on the label Mazare recruited the vocal talents of Nashville native Nick Luebke, who excels in pretty much all of the ways possible here. From his subdued verses to the heavenly harmonized bridge to the effortless back and forth between falsetto and his "normal" voice (there's probably a fancy Italian word for that too), I just can't help but love this vocal performance to death. Maybe it's due to the constant looping, but even when standing in the freezing cold waiting for my train (totally hypothetical situation), my mind wants me to sing this a million times in a row.

However, it's Mazare masterful production that really elevates it to the highest heights for me. I can't even decide what exactly I love most about it. Is it the background electric guitar creating a melancholically beautiful atmosphere from the very start, even without any other elements present? Is it the beautiful harmonies created by the key change and additional guitars during the bridge? Or maybe the majestic uplifting feeling of hopefulness that the absolutely masterful synths in the drop convey? Maybe it's even the short half-time section in the second drop before going full throttle again once the vocals come back in.

The great thing is, I don't have to decide. I can just love all of it dearly, and I do. If you're vibing with Mazare's usual style, I can guarantee you'll adore Spirals just like I do. It's beautiful goddamnit!

Other uplifting dancefloor things from this week:

Sigma, Carla Marie - Hope (Andromedik Remix)
VovKING - Katana
Kove - Sweet Music
Mojay - Let You Go 💎
NCT, The Outsiders -Overcome (Rameses B Remix)
Tall Order - Don't Tell Me