Picks Of The Week (22.05.21

1. HAZEY, Ponz - Back To Life 💎[Lunchbox Records]

Recommended if you like: Wilkinson, Sub Focus, Grafix

How does this keep happening?

I try to branch out as much as possible in my listening habits, but as you can imagine I'm still staying mostly in the drum and bass bubble. While I obviously got my own preferences regarding subgenres and styles, I try to give everything an honest chance. This means there's usually at least one completely new name appearing on my radar every week. New to me, at least. Of course it's not always something I like, but often enough I'm completely blown away by the sheer quality of the music of someone I have never heard of before, sometimes because I've just been ignorant of that producer's existence, sometimes because it's their very first release ever. You wanna know how often those complete newcomers coming out with an excellent debut release end up being from New Zealand? All the damn time.

Which leads me to my first pick (and also Hidden Gem™) for this week: HAZEY! As you can tell from the long-winded intro, he's a newcomer from the great New-to-the-Zealand. Auckland, to be a bit more specific. Charlie Spicer, as he is known to friends and family and people who google long enough to find out (i.e. me), started his DJing career around 2019 and has only increased his involvement in the scene in the years to follow. In 2020 he founded Synergy Entertainment Limited, his very own event series. Usually I'd say something like "wow what an unfortunate timing for a new event series", but I guess that doesn't really apply to NZ now does it? Another year later and he's now also joining the ever-expanding ranks of great NZ producers with his very first release Back To Life!

On this debut he is joined by the up-and-coming singer/songwriter Ponz, a fellow Aucklandian who is now based in Christchurch. Before she started her career as PONZ, she was simply known as Lauren Pondes, a name under which she uploaded various original songs and vocal covers on her YouTube channel from 2016 to 2018-ish. It's also simply her name, if that wasn't obvious. After a short bit of radio silence, she came back stronger than ever in 2020. Under her new alias Ponz she immediately began being featured on banger after banger, produced by the likes of Pirapus, Hvia and Hyvybe. WeaPonz of Mass Destruction, as I like to call them. My favourite of the bunch has got to her recent liquid release Circles on Lunchbox Records though.

Coincidentally enough, Back To Life is also released on Lunchbox Records! Like HAZEY and Ponz, the Aucklandian label has only very recently sprung into existence. However, even though they've only been founded in 2020, the label's mission statement of promoting the incredible music churned out by the local NZ talent, or as they like to say it "doing cool things with nice people", has quickly earned them quite a bit of attention all over the scene. Since their very first appearance on GeorgeFM with their Lunchbox Radio show in mid-2020, they have featured the likes of CHEFF, Mylen, 33 Below, Witters and many many more. Those names might not be extremely recognizable just yet, but they are nonetheless extremely worth checking out if you don't know them yet. This year they also founded a sibling label Shared Lunch, acting as an outlet for all the non-DnB tunage of their roster, assuming from the output so far.

Which finally brings us to Back To Life! This tune, man. This tune hooked me right from the very first few softly playing synth chords. While the introductory still-quite-minimal synths create a really dreamy atmosphere by slowly bouncing around in the background, Ponz lays down a vocal that is the stuff of dreams. The kind of vocal that would make me throw up my arms at a festival. Once she hits that first goosebumps-causing long note, the instrumental really picks up in intensity and speed, quickly marching towards the drop. The previously slow and quiet synth chords from the intro are now out in full force, which together with the very punchy dancefloor drums underneath create an incredibly catchy melody that will get stuck in your head.

I really can't stress enough how great these synths are. They're so well arranged that if I heard this track blindly and you told me this is the newest banger by Wilkinson, I would probably believe you. Speaking of Wilkinson (such a smooth transition), on his recent NZ tour he participated in George FM's Soundcheck, where he got presented with a few user-submitted tunes, one of which being Back To Life. Not only did he listen to and analyse it on air, he actually chose the track as the best of the bunch! So if you were not yet convinced by my praise yet, maybe Wilkinson's approval will do the job.

Incredibly produced, uplifting dancefloor anthem. Those damn Kiwis and their awesome music.

Other dancefloor things from this week:

Millbrook, Cara Islay - Green Light (<33333)
Andromedik - Essence LP (<3333)
Skepsis, TS7 - Freak (Used Remix)
Artino, Ruth Royall, Georgia Michel - Never Let Me Go / Hall Of Fame
Sub Focus - Airplane (Culture Shock Remix)
Lateral - Take Me Away / Do It 💎
Plasmator, Endrid - The Light 💎 (hard to classify this one, but feel like it fits here the best)
Au5, HALIENE - Was It You (Mazare Remix)
Indivision - Won't You Stay - VIP Remix
René LaVice, Ayah Marar - Good Life
Jauz, FRANK ZUMMO, We Are PIGS - Sick

2. Art1fact - Shakuhachi [Art1fact Music]

Recommended if you like: Disphonia, Agressor Bunx, Dextems

It wouldn't be a Picks Of The Week without some neuro, right? Good thing Art1fact has just released another banger then!

Wait, but do you even know who that is? Okay, let's quickly make sure we're on the same page. Art1fact, also known as Artifact, also known Marcel Kennard, is a mostly-Neurofunk producer born in Munich, raised in England, and now based in Berlin. During his formative years in Maidstone, Kent (England), he was vehemently influenced by the bigger DnB events in the area like Pure Science, featuring the likes of Shy FX, Skibadee and Shabba D. He then went on to study Digital Music and Sound Art in Brighton. I don't have any exact dates here, but I'm assuming that was around the same time he started uploading the first few tunes to his SoundCloud, way back in 2013, when he was still known as the less googleable Artifact. Over the following years his talents for hard-hitting production turned some heads in the scene, leading to releases on Dutty Audio, Addictive Behaviour and Lifestyle Music. A few years, a rebrand to Art1fact and a bit of radio silence later, he has now also been featured on the likes of Bad Taste Recordings, Red Light Records, Hanzom Music and Cyberfunk. That's not all though! Like many of his contemporaries, he has started his own Patreon last year, containing an avalanche of self releases and all kinds of production goodies, from tutorials to samples. One of those many self releases is Shakuhachi, the track I'm featuring today!

Shakuhachi (Gesundheit) starts off with a vocal sample that I could swear is taken from a train station somewhere, but maybe it's the very echoey background atmosphere that is making me think that. Slowly but surely, a raspy deep gurgling is coming closer and closer while various other heavy-hitting elements seem to rehearse their part way in the background. Then: BRRR. A large room-filling bass starts a call-and-response with some weighty yet speedy drums, only to be joined by loads of other catchy little melodies coming in and leaving left and right. It's a bit hard to describe it without making it sound chaotic as hell, but trust me, this chaos is tightly controlled and really well-executed. Pretty much the only thing staying the same throughout is the initial large bass, everything else is evolves all throughout the track. Fun (Art1)-Fact: The Shakuhachi is a Japanese and ancient Chinese longitudinal, end-blown flute! That very same flute can be heard multiple times throughout the track, most obvious as a transition between a few of the different drop sections, but sometimes also just in the middle of it all.

Very large tune! That little da dada-dada melody is going to be stuck in my head for a while.

Other neurofunk things from this week:

A.M.C - Operator
The Clamps - Seduction Scale EP
Gancher & Ruin - Obey
Surge - ENCOUNTER002 (released before but now also on Spotify!)
SLWDWN - Without You / Secrets 💎
Perplex (DnB) - Open Your Mind 💎
AIRGLO, dela Moon - Chain-Melted State
AKOV - Ensnared EP
Freqax, Sequential, Allfreq - Interference 💎

3. Phace, Affe Maria - PLAISIR PLAISIR [Neosignal Recordings]

Recommended if you like: Camo & Krooked, Misanthrop, Moekel

Yay, more german stuff!

Come on, you guys know who Phace is. Short version: Florian Harres, Hamburg-based, active since 2004 (!), known for his extremely unique techno-inspired Neurofunk, his many collaborations with fellow german producer Misanthrop and the many great labels both of them run (Neosignal Recordings, Neodigital, NËU MUSIC). If you're not familiar with him yet, I very much urge you to check him and all his labels (yes all of them) out. Don't worry, you'll get a proper deep dive into his history at some other time.

Affe Maria might be a bit of a new name for some of you though. It was a new name for me too, to be fair. Affe Maria is the Austrian-born drummer-turned-producer Daniel Karelly. During his studies at the Drummers Institute in Düsseldorf, which he finished as that year's top student, and his short Jazz & Pop Drums journey at the art college in Arnheim, he used a lot of his free time to delve deep into the world of production, with a big focus on Dubstep. After a few years of intense production and solo gigs he moved to Hamburg in 2011 to channel all his experiences together into one big band project, the Hip-Hop/Electro/Rock group Rakede. This is where it became weird for me. I actually know Rakede. With their tour promo video Bitte Bitte (Tischkonzert), a "table concert" version of their song Bitte Bitte featuring knuckles-on-table drums, beer bottle hi-hats/snares and helium balloon voice modulators, they landed a huge viral YouTube hit here in Germany way back in 2013, which I still got in my Liked Videos playlist. The fact that 8 years later I'd be talking about that here is kind of blowing my mind a little. I didn't even really listen to DnB back then!

Anyway. The following years Affe Maria continued working and performing with Rakede, even releasing two full albums, the self-titled Rakede and Es geht mir gut! (Sehr, sehr gut. Sehr gut!), which translates to "I am fine! (Very, very fine. Very fine!)". That's exactly why you come here to read all this, to finally learn some German! Aaaanyway. His successful career as Engine 2, as he was called in the band, concluded in 2020 when Rakede disbanded. Now that he's on his own again, Affe Maria is gearing up for his first-ever solo album, but before that joined his mate Phace on the 8th edition of his series of collaborations LINKED to bless us with some real nice drums and basses on PLAISIR PLAISIR!

A dubstep/reggae/hiphop/rock producer joining forces with a techno-neurofunk legend, that's got to be an insane track, right? Well, yeah, but not in the way you might think. Sure, PLAISIR PLAISIR is still quite techy, but way way way more vibey and melodic than the usual Phace experience (Phaceperience). While it would be easy to draw parallels to the minimal synthy styles of the likes of Camo & Krooked or Misanthrop, it would also feel a little dismissive, as the track is much more than just that in my opinion. The first time I heard this very very lovely track on Vision Radio I immediately got goosebumps. This atmosphere, man. The soft yet heavy, perfectly arranged bass caresses my ears so gently that I just want to close my eyes and drift away. Don't even get me started on that little pause halfway through the drop, I am getting goosebumps just thinking about it. Oh yeah, by the way: If you, like me, don't know French, "plaisir" is french for pleasure. Or it's just pleasure but pronounced in a very heavy german accent. Either way, it's a very fitting title.

Phace continues to impress me on every single track he releases, and if this is what his work with Affe Maria sounds like in 2021 I'd be 100% down for a whole album of Affe Maria x Phace. Incredibly vibey, dreamy, etherial, mesmerizing, all of the good things.

Other liquid/deep vibe things from this week:

Dossa & Locuzzed - Dusk
Nuvaman - Flux 💎
Monrroe - Warsaw EP
Phil Tangent - Temporary Solace EP
Motiv - Victoria EP (these summer vibes are just loovely)
Fred V - Trust Me / Prosopagnosia
HD - North Star / You'll Find Love