Picks Of The Week (05.06.21

1. Children Of Our Stars - Flanell Sessions LP 💎[Selfreleased]

Recommended if you like: Keeno, Hugh Hardie, London Grammar

I know I know, I've been slacking a little on the Hidden Gems™ front last week. Let me make it up to you with this one!

My first pick of this week is the debut album Flanell Sessions by the Munich-based duo Children Of Our Stars. Technically it has already been out for a bit longer, but I've only really stumbled upon them through their Home EP on Sao Paulo based label DNBB Records that was released this week, so please forgive my slow response to this one. Or don't. I'm fine with it either way.

Okay, but who are Children Of Our Stars exactly? They consist of composer/producer/multi-instrumentalist Robin Becker and singer Katja Lebe. Since I literally couldn't anything when researching Katja's background, I'll just talk about Robin for a little now. Robin Becker, born in Lohr at Main (before you google: South-ish Germany), has been involved in all kinds of musical endeavours, ever since he started playing piano and the drums in his childhood. He went to study music with a heavy focus on the piano and marimbaphone at the vocational school in Bad Königshofen (still Bavaria), followed by studies at the University for Music and Theater in Munich (yes, that is also in Bavaria, obviously). Throughout the years he has been composing and working on classical music, including but not limited to concert music, chamber music instrumentals and symphonic works. If you can't tell, I had to translate a lot of very specific german words there and I have zero idea if any of it was translated correctly. Point is: He did a lot of classical and classical-influenced music. Not just that, he also did soundtracks for short films, documentations, trailers and advertisements!

In 2017 he went on to form the Clockwork Trio ensemble with fellow musicians Lisa Schöttl and Alexander Vaymer. Through some very interesting combinations of instruments, from acoustic sounds provided by cellos, dulcimers and pianos to the more digital synthesizers, they created some quite unique atmospheric soundscapes with this project. Since 2018 Robin is also part of Dreamscapes - The Show, which, like Clockwork Trio, is based on a number of unique combinations of different styles of music and performance: From Breakdance to Ballet dance, paired with lush pianos or EDM (including DnB!). In the middle of 2020 he then started working with the aforementioned mysterously ungoogleable Katja, resulting in in the fusion of classical and electronic music that is Children Of Our Stars. Obviously most of it is Drum and Bass, but there's also some Dubstep thrown in here and there. After a string of self-released singles throughout the rest of 2020, they started working on their debut album, which was now released around 2 weeks ago!

And that's exactly what we're talking about today! You know the drill: Not quite enough time for a track-by-track breakdown so I'll just talk a bit about my favourites of the album.

Take Us Back is my first pick off of the stacked Flanell Sessions. As one of the only instrumental tunes on the album it might not be the definitive sound of the duo, but it is definitely a great showcase of a lot of the good stuff about them. A dreamy arrangement of strings, a catchy synth melody and some interspersed lovely piano chords build up an incredibly thick atmosphere that takes you to another plane of existence before the syncopated drums even come in. Once they do, the focus is fully on the piano. I've stated it on quite a few occasions over the time I've been doing this, but I simply adore a good piano in liquid DnB. Even a simple one is awesome for me, I just like all kinds of piano melodies. This one in Takes Us Back, however, hits different. It doesn't even feel like "just" a piano loop or anything, it feels more like I'm witnessing a magnificent live performance. Around halfway through the drop the focus reshifts onto a heavy bass coming in, while the piano moves up a few octaves to add to the already very ethereal background atmosphere. Just great, unique stuff all around.

Next up we've got Hold On. Compared to Take Us Back, this one focuses even more on the piano of the composition, much to my delight. Honestly, that piano is excellent. All throughout the drop there's another one of those weighty basslines creeping in from below from time to time, while the piano and the rolling drums just keep chugging along. Halfway through it slows down a little to give space for the beautiful vocals of Katja, still accompanied by the piano though. From the on the track transitions from different section to different section, sometimes featuring the bass-heavy parts, sometimes the piano, sometimes Katja's vocals. What these combinations have in common is that they all simply sound lovely as hell. These 6 minutes simply fly by.

Last but definitely not least is Home, my first point of contact with Children Of Our Stars' music, which I liked so much it immediately prompted me to check out all of their other stuff too. While I'm obviously a huge fan of Home's wonderfully melancholic piano melody, it is all the other little bits and pieces that make this track so great in my opinion. Katja's blissful vocal performance leads us into the truly other-worldly part of the track, in which a chorus of dreamy background vocals in all kinds of pitches provide the warm atmospheric backdrop for the piano melody to shine. The thing that gets me the most about that part are the little improv-like variations in melody and "force" (for lack of a better word) of each of the piano notes, that really was the part that made me fall in love with this track. My absolute favourite of the album.

I might not have time for everything on this album, but trust me, the whole album is full of these great classical-inspired singer-songwriter type liquid tunes. Dreamy strings, glorious pianos, unique arrangements, excellent vocals all throughout. If that sounds interesting to you at all, I fully recommend a full listen through the LP, I doubt you'll regret it.

Other liquid things from this week:

Feint - Silent Light
Melinki - Falling / 25 Hours
AM94 - Right Now 💎
Hallow - Rain, Rain EP 💎
Sl8r, Duskee - Evolving
Aydn - Through The Dark / Listen 💎
Nymoz - Heart Of The Sun 💎
Rafau Etamski - Little Girl
L.A.O.S - Bright Lights / Give Me

Sources

2. Kilo - EVOL (Balatron Remix) [Selfreleased]

Recommended if you like: Bensley, Justin Hawkes, I can't think of a third one

Time to feature some dnb from a country I don't think I have ever featured on here before: Iceland!

Okay okay, technically I've featured Balatron here before, but that was only as part of the Constellations - Ursa Major compilation on Diascope, this one is actually a full-on solo release by him! For those who are not familiar, Balatron, sometimes also referred to as Bjarki Hallbergsson, is one of the most forward-thinking bass music producers we've got in the scene right now. I say bass music, but he's really not bound to any genre most of the time. Ever since he started creating music as a teenager with FastTracker, he produced nearly every genre under the sun: Boom Bap for Icelandic rappers, Pop, Eurovision, Trance, Techno, House. You probably won't see him producing Country anytime soon though. And yes, I said Eurovision. Not only did he produce Elli grill, Skaði og Glymur - Jeijó, keyrum alla leið, one of the entries in 2019's Icelandic national final for Eurovision, also known as Söngvakeppnin, he also produced Líttu upp í ljós by icelandic Eurovision legend Páll Óskar. We're (sadly) not here to talk about his Eurovision work though, we're here to talk about the solo project he started in 2015, Balatron!

After hearing Hallelujah by Hyroglifics and Halogenix and Sunday Crunk (Mefjus Remix) on Noisia Radio, a whole new world of production opened up to the avid Hip-Hop fan and producer. He kept his Boom Bap drums and general Hip-Hop vibe, but, to paraphrase from one of his interviews, put ridiculous amounts of bass and design in it and bam, he had found his Balatron sound. Once he was happy with the end result, he started sending out tunes to every label and artist inbox he could find. Dutch multi-genre producer Posij was actually one of the first to respond and urged him to send it to the Noisia Radio Listener Submission inbox, a week later they actually played it out. That eventually lead to support from Ivy Lab, who soon after hit him up for a track of his for their 20/20 Volume Two compilation. Ever since that incredibly successful start, Balatron has been part of releases on labels like Flexout Audio (with a whole solo EP on their WAVES series!), MethLab (RIP), Vandal Records, SINE Audio, eventually culminating with his debut LP IÐAVÖLLUR on newly founded Yuku in 2020.

After all of this, one of the biggest constants in his life has been his productions for Icelandic rapper Kilo. This time we're not talking about one of his Hip-Hop tunes though, this time it's a DnB flip on one of the few Kilo tracks Balatron didn't originally produce: Evol!

The remix starts off very slowly, with a purely atmospheric instrumental, with distorted versions of Kilo's verses flying left and right. Only once the undistorted verses start flying in, does the syncopated halftime beat fully kick in. The instrumental features all kinds of different drums, from some really weighty war drum type kicks to some more quick-firing ones doing their own solo thing. At this point one might think this remix is going into a fully halftime direction, but that's not what Balatron had in mind for this one. For the final part of the buildup, the drums are mostly cut out to give space for Kilo as switches to his singing voice. Then the drop hits. Jheeeez, this drop. A literal wall of bass rushes over you, while the uniquely sounding main melody bounces around on top of it. Honestly, that bass makes my whole body vibrate, and I'm only listening on headphones here. I'd be scared to play this any louder than 50% on a big system, because it might just break it otherwise. Or cause an earthquake or something. My god, does this bang.

If you want to massage your ears with bass, this is the perfect track for it. Incredible remix.

Other dancefloor-esque tunes from this week:

DC Breaks - DCXV Remixes Pt. 1 (that Magnetude remix tho <3)
Rameses B - Hardwired
Mazare - Paracosm EP
Hybrid - Sky Full Of Diamons (Metrik Remix)
Lee Mvtthews, TREi - Lights Out / Control
John B - NFT (To The Moon) (best track lol)
Jaycut, Kolt Siewerts - Altobelly
Indivision - Snow
Supercurve - Technology 💎

Because it kind of fits and there was just a lot of I want to mention, here's some neuro tunes from this week:

Subl!ne - Fusion LP 💎
Traced - Paradox / Deep Vision
Qo, ComputerArtist - Venom
THIR13EN - Desecrated Village 💎
Prdk - Sanctum/Demise 💎
Various Artists - HIVE 2021 LP [Abducted LTD]💎
Various Artists - Reanimate LP 💎
Dropset - Mind Arson 💎

Sources