Picks Of The Week (27.11.21

1. Killer Hertz - Stingray [Selfreleased]

Recommended if you like: Pendulum, The Prototypes, DC Breaks

I've been waiting a while for this one.

Ever since I've heard both Koven and A.M.C blast this track across the rainy and muddy grounds of Milovice Airfield, better known as the festival grounds of Let It Roll, my personal hype train for the release of this new Pendulum dub was set in motion. Yeah, you can probably already see where I went wrong. So, without further ado, let's talk about the people actually responsible for this dancefloor banger: Killer Hertz!

In short, Killer Hertz are a Brighton-based collective of musicians from all over the DnB scene. They burst onto the scene in 2016 on Futurebound's Viper Recordings, with the straight-up dancefloor carnage that are Prometheus, Cryogenics and All Out. In the same year, they even remixed Matrix & Futurebound's anthem Fire! After becoming aware of Friction constantly spinning their tunes on his BBC Radio 1 show, they got in contact with him and decided to sign with his then-new label Elevate Records. Huge tune after huge tune followed, but that isn't all there is to Killer Hertz. Pretty much right from the start they knew that they wanted to create a unique live experience. Sure, DJing is fun too, but their real end goal was something more like the live band experience from the australian band I briefly mixed them up with at Let It Roll. In 2019, that dream finally became true: Fronted by the incredibly energetic Multiplex MC, the collective brought their sound to the big stage at festivals all over Europe, including Beats for Love and the 17 Years of Mainframe event.

Wait, but who actually plays these guitars and drums and... checks notes... keytars? I've read they want people to focus on the music and the Killer Hertz experience, and not to dwell on the past too much, so I'll keep this short. The "producer core" of the group consists of Peter Chapman, better known as Erb N Dub, and the brothers Morris and Phil Jones, also known as Specimen A. Fun fact: they are the nephews of the legendary Howard Jones! For the live shows we've also got the bearded bundle of energy that is Multiplex on the mic, alongside the core group, joined by Henque Nijman and Jordy Eijkenboom. The main takeaway from all this: Phil plays the keytar.

Anyway, we're here to talk about their newest banger Stingray aren't we? So let's do just that! Stingray starts us off with some distorted bleeps and bloops that are as cartoony as a Stingray's face. However, it doesn't take long for the mood to change completely. The ray roars a huge battle cry across the battlefield that is the big blue sea, making it known that it is fully ready to earn the Sting part of its name. By adding more and more response elements to this already very dramatic call, Killer Hertz manage to raise the hype-o-meter to unreal levels in no time. Once the heavy guitar is introduced just before the drop, I just can't help but start nodding along more and more. However, once all of these elements fully come together in the drop, I am full-on singing along to the way too catchy synth. Good thing I'm back to working from home.

Sure, the synths are obviously very reminiscent of the olden days of Pendulum and DJ Fresh, but for someone who will probably never get enough of that sound, I have nothing to complain here. Especially if it's paired with the clean production skills of some of the biggest veterans of the dancefloor scene.

One of the biggest dancefloor tunes of this year. Killer Hertz killed it.

Other dancefloor releases from this week:

Beks - Devoted (SØL Remix)
Thornhill - Human (Toronto Is Broken Remix)
Paper Dragon - Reach (CLIQUES. Remix)
T & Sugah, Ayah Marar - Be There (Kove Remix)
Ekko & Sidetrack - Feel Your Love
Absence Of Self - Thirty Three EP 💎

2. missledz - Contrivance EP 💎 [SINE Audio]

Recommended if you like: GEST, Kasra, Black Barrel

How about something for the headz now?

The excellent deeply techy EP I want to feature this week comes from up-and-comer missledz, someone I wanted to feature here for a while now. Technically she doesn't fit the (way too narrow) criteria anymore, but I'll make an exception here: This new EP by her is this week's Hidden Gem Of The Week™! But who is she? Where is she from? Where is she now? Let's find out!

Mandie Cay grew up in the wild city of Adelaide, Australia. Since at least 2012, she had been killing it all around the country as a DnB DJ, supporting huge names of the scene like Koven, Current Value or Break. Around 2017 she even joined local radio station Fresh 92.7 as a regular host. However, she wanted more: She wanted to produce herself. To fulfill that life-long dream she decided to move the UK in that same year! First she ventured out to London, but soon realised that she preferred the more intimate family vibes of the one and only Bristol. Over the next few years, a whole lot of things happened: She joined the Boey Audio team as A & R, she took part in Dub Wars Season 1, organised by Rebel Music, and she took her DJ talents on the road throughout the UK, of course. During all of this however, she also started putting out tracks, first on her own, then via labels like Lifestyle Music, the aforementioned Rebel Music, Drum Army, Noxious Records and Beats In Mind. In 2020, she also organised the massive charity compilation Fighting Fire: Relief for Australia to raise funds for the Australian wildfires last year. In other words, she's been proper busy!

You know who also did a charity LP last year? SINE Audio! Smooth transition, I know. One could even say it's a contrived transition. Anyway. Like a lot of labels these days, SINE started out as an event series. The brand was founded back in 2015 by APEY and quickly managed to put on shows across London, including collaborative events with the likes of Dispatch Recordings, 31 Recordings and ProgRAM. While they had already started putting out Free Downloads under the SINE name in 2019, it took until early 2020 for them to branch out into becoming a "proper" label and, thus, SINE Audio was born. Great timing aside, I think it's safe to say that the label flourished. With impeccable releases by Invadhertz, Kin:etic, Xolyx, Qua Rush, ELK, Maykors and many many others, they have become one of my go-to labels for the deep-techy and deep-liquid side of DnB. Honestly, they have struck gold with some of these releases. Just like with this new EP by missledz!

The EP kicks off with 70 Percent and it's immediately clear that Mandie is not kidding around on this EP. In the intro we're already treated to some fun little techy audio snippets, but the drop where everything is expertly woven together into one big face-mangler is the part that really caught my attention and made me stop what was I doing. To the backdrop of a massive yet atmospheric bass and a great set of rolling drums, we are treated to a tightly controlled chaos consisting of some of the weirdest sounds you can image. Everything comes flying in left, right, top, down, diagonal, upside-down (must be those Australian genes amirite), which might sound and also is wild as hell, but never crosses the "too chaotic" line. If this is her at 70%, I am really curious about her at 100%.

Next up we've got the title track Contrivance. Just like before, missledz built another tight set of great clicky rollings drums to nod your head to. However, this time, the focus is on the uniquely distorted noise synth that scrambles the brain of everyone who dares to listen. In a good way! In an interview I found online, she mentioned that she likes playing around with sound design until a noise emerges that she can use for a tune. If that wasn't obvious before, it definitely is now. What a delightfully weird main melody this is. While this "main theme" of the track is used pretty much all throughout the 5 minutes of runtime, it is mangled in so many ways that it always stays fresh. Sometimes it's transformed completely, sometimes it's contrasted with large, equally weird, basses playing call-and-response with it, you get the idea. Ridiculous tune.

Last but not least we've got Drop It on the agenda. From these three tracks, it is probably the most moody of the bunch. Since the other two are proper off-the-wall weird, that doesn't necessarily mean anything yet. We're still blessed with a smorgasbord of strange sounds, however this time they're just a little more atmospheric. Less "look at the DJ with a confused bass face", more "put your head down and skank like crazy", you know?

All in all, just a great EP all around. If you thought you wouldn't get to hear some of the best techy business on this EP, I must inform you that you have been miss...taken.

Other deep, dark and techy stuff from this week:

Drumsik - Shatter EP 💎
Phace - System Irrelevant EP
Grey Code - Ethics Rebirth / Prima
Cynical Gene - Nocturnal Friends 💎
Camo & Krooked, Mefjus - U
Current Value - Runway EP

3. gladde paling - supermarkt baslijn 💎 [big paling sound]

Recommended if you like: ???

Now for something completely stupid.

It's a 1:37 track by someone called gladde paling, which is Dutch for "smooth eel". gladde paling is the brain child of Laurens Van Dijk, who also produces all kinds of different electronic genres under his Lumi alias. But what is this big paling sound, you ask? Well... mostly nasty, belgian jump up, filled to the brim with various stupidly fun Dutch sound bytes and other sound effects. Sometimes taken from Dutch songs, sometimes he just put random phrases into the standard text-to-speech software and threw them in there.

Since starting the project earlier this year, he has put out 12 tracks, ranging from just 1:27 minutes (release the een vliegtuig extended mix, you coward!) to a whopping 2:20 minute runtime. Even though I only spent like 15 minutes listening to his whole discography, I think it was easily one of the most fun 15 minutes of the year for me. I just had to feature it as another Hidden Gem Of The Week™ here.

This new one, supermarkt baslijn, is a spoof on what sounds like a classic Dutch kids song about going to the supermarket, but instead of a kilo of whatever the original says, we're buying a kilo paling, of course. The rest of the track is just so chaotic and switches itself up so much, I don't even know what else to say. The track is ridiculous, the artist is ridiculous, but all that aside, it is also kind of... awesome? Take a listen yourself, you won't regret it. It's all super short anyway, so you don't even have to commit that much time!

In short: Big paling tune.