Picks Of The Week (19.06.21

1. Magnetude, Receptor - Goodbye [Evolution Chamber]

Recommended if you like: Teddy Killerz, Prolix, Fourward

Help, my heart can't take this much awesomeness at once.

After what has got to have been at least 84 years of waiting, Goodbye, the collab of the century between Magnetude and Receptor has finally landed! Okay maybe it was a little less than that. Time flies differently in a pandemic or something. For example, when I listen to Goodbye on loop, hours seem to pass in the blink of an eye. Okay before I fully start singing my hymns of praise, let's give a little bit of background to everyone involved here. And when I say little, I mean a lot. I love the tune and the artists involved too much to just brush over it.

Let's start with Magnetude, more specifically the Bri'ish half of the infamous Britanni-Ruthenian duo. Turns out it's really hard to find a good synonym for "Anglo-Russian". Anyway, time to talk about James!

James Overtech, or Jae Overtech, has been part of the DnB game since he was in literal school. Well, if you count swapping DnB tapes on the playground at lunch time as being part of it. Which I do! As you can guess, it didn't stop there though. At age 15 he already tried getting into his first DnB raves, or more specifically one of the One Nation events at Stratford Rex. Even though the security guards didn't let him in at first, thanks to One Nation founder Terry “Turbo” Stone he was eventually allowed in. After this Inciting Incident, it didn't take much longer for him to enter the realm of DnB production too. He was just 17 when he picked up his first DAW, good ol' Fruity Loops 3. A year later he got his first pair of 1210's, completing his transformation into full-on DnB head.

Not only did he quite quickly establish himself as one of the DJs to watch out for in the scene, he also soon used his management skills he acquired during his Masters Degree in Music Business & Law to found his very own label Overtech Recordings in 2010. With his keen eye for talent and managerial skills to boot, he soon built the label up as a haven for all the best new Neurofunk talents, including the likes of Qo, Nais, Place 2b (nowadays known as part of Teddy Killerz), Joe Ford and High Maintenance, all of which have become an integral part of the scene after being featured on the label. James' work on the label soon attracted the attention of the seasoned label Close 2 Death Recordings, which he consequently formed a close (2 Death) working relationship with. So close (2 death) in fact that in 2012 he became the Co-Owner and A&R of the veteran label, leading to people calling him the Simon Cowell of Neurofunk. Through this work at Close 2 Death he came across a particular new talent straight out of Russia: Rusty K.

Alright, we need to go back a little bit again here. Rusty K, also known as Rustam Mansurov, grew up in a small village in the outskirts of Ryazan, Russia. If you're like me and now want to open your favourite online map service to see where exactly we're going here, let me help you out here: Ryazan is a few hours south of Moscow. In said small village little Rustam started producing when he was n i n e (yes, 9), when his brother brought him a demo version of, you guessed it, Fruity Loops 3. However, it took until 2010, a little bit after he started his English / Computer Science studies at the Ryazan university, for him to fully start the Rusty K project. His first public SoundCloud uploads trace back to late 2011, when he debuted on Ammunition Recordings. After a few unsigned Neurofunk, Drum- and Dubstep uploads, he got involved with the aforementioned Close 2 Death Recordings, where he first met James. Somewhere during all this, James' label colleagues played him some rough cuts of a few Rusty K tracks, which simply blew him away. Sure, some of the edges could use some work, but the musicality, the originality, the pure heavyness was all there. They started working together, with James consulting here and there on the prodigy's productions. Since this teamwork seemed to work out quite well, Rusty asked James to manage him and, well, you can guess what his answer was.

Things started looking better and better for both, Rustam went on to release on Lifted Music and Neuropunk-predecessor TAMRECORDS and James got a job at Triple Vision Record Distribution in 2015. That was also the year Overtech Recordings was restructured and rebranded into a completely new label, Overtech Music. With talents like Rusty K (duh), Signal, Task Horizon and himself attached, the label was off to a great start, but another project would soon after become their main focus instead. Around the same time, Rustam and James started working even more closely together on tunes. Once they had finished a few of those, they sent them to Lifted Music's Chris Renegade, who immediately wanted to sign it, under one condition: That they create a new name for this new producer duo. Enter Magnetude! That collection of tunes they sent to Chris ended up becoming their debut EP Hyperdrive. After another Lifted double single and an EP on Eatbrain, the Magnetude bookings started coming in. Even though it might not have sounded like that, up until that point, all their collaborations and contact happened via the Internet™. Even after working together for years, the two Magnet-dudes never actually met up in real life until 2017 at a Blackout Party in Zurich with Julia Marks. Their magnetic attraction was so strong they didn't even need to be close together for the project to work! Or something. Anyway, around 2018 another huge label came knocking on their door: Andy C's RAM Records, who promptly signed them.

What followed was multiple big festival appearances, one of which being Let It Roll 2019. Guess when I discovered and instantly fell in love with Magnetude. Two weeks after I came back from Let It Roll. The universe is cruel sometimes. In that very same year, the duo felt the need for an independent, more free place to release their Magne-tunes and got talking with Task Horizon and Receptor. They reworked Task Horizon's early self-created label Evolution Chamber into a fresh new platform for all kinds of DnB music, even going so far as to move the previous releases on it between 2014 and 2019 to a whole new separate self release label, so they could start from a completely clean slate. With all three founding artists and even some completely new artists like Saints Robbers (see my previous review) providing some seriously heavy tunage, Evolution Chamber has swiftly become one of the best places for high quality DnB.

But wait, we still got another missing puzzle piece to complete the picture: Receptor! Mitya Veshunov, Receptor's real name, is one of Russia's most versatile producers around. During his formative years his parents quickly noticed his love for music and gifted little Receptor a whole Yamaha PSR-740 synthesiser, at the age of ten. These talented producers and their early starts! He started his career in music in early 2004, but it took until 2008 for his productions to see the light of day. And when I say light of day, I mean it was released on Lifted Music's sibling label Breed 12 Inches! That debut single was followed up by releases on Black Sun Empire's early label Obsessions, Disaszt's Mainframe Recordings, TAMRECORDS, John B's Beta Recordings and eventually even Hospitals sister label Med School. As you can see from that list of labels, he not only quickly received international support and success, he also produced in a whole variety of different styles. "Russia's answer to Spor", as Garud from Teddy Killerz has put it. While his fear of flying prevented him from touring the world all the time, he still managed to visit and perform in various parts of Europe, when he took a truly massive train journey all over the continent. However, since this obviously limits his "normal" income, he decided to also enter the world of TV, commercial and video scoring, along with some Russian pop and rock production roles. He might have been laying low a little during the last few years, but when he does come back out of the shadows, it's always to present another huge banger of a tune. Just like right now!

Enough backstory, let's finally talk about Goodbye!

Okay first things first: Goodbye is a goddamn masterpiece of a Neurofunk track. Maybe it's the drought of new Magnetude releases in the last half year that causes me to jump at anything new from them, you say? Nah, it is much more than that. When I first fully listened to it, and not just the Neuropunk mix cut of it, I already felt the very strong urge to add it to all my "favourite" and "best of" playlists barely halfway through the first drop. I love it.

As with all Magnetude tunes, the cinematic atmosphere plays a huge role. If you haven't seen their incredibly detailed breakdown of Ent'racte's story, please check it out. However, their storytelling through sound design is so perfect you don't really need any explanations to understand the themes they are going for, and Goodbye is not an exception to that rule. The more I listen to it, which admittedly is a lot, the more I feel like I'm reliving the ending of a video game, more specifically one with a malevolent rogue AI intent on killing me, à la GLADOS in Portal 1&2. The contrast between that high-pitched computer voice comforting us with phrases like "Please don't cry" and the absolute carnage that the instrumental is causing all over the place, the whole grandiose atmosphere caused by the background choirs versus some of the almost Chiptune or 8bit sounding melodies, all of the elements work together to create this perfect piece of storytelling.

Seriously, this is probably one of my favourite tracks from either Magnetude or Receptor, which is saying quite a lot. Not only is the vocal incredibly catchy and the instrumental just a straight up banger in every sense of the word, there's also just so many details to unpack that make it 1000% worth it to listen to it again and again (and again). The way the drums switch between a more rolling break loop in the first part of the drop, where the main synth melody repeatedly hits you quick and hard, and a simpler two-step version, when the melody starts relentlessly bashing your head in in the second part, is just masterfully executed. And don't get me started on that little half-time part in the second buildup! The more I analyse it the more I love it, and I already loved it quite a lot to begin with.

I will start a Magne-feud with anyone who doesn't like this one. I wish I had a Receptor pun too. Either way, 11/10.

P.S.: Happy belated birthday Rustam! (it was last Thursday)

Sources

2. V O E - Take What You Want / Come This Far [Viper Recordings]

Recommended if you like: Magnetude, Memtrix, Koven

What a week, holy shit.

Loads of great music has been released this week, of course, but what made this week extra special for me was that my absolute favourite DnB act from Adelaide has made some serious waves. Of course I'm talking about V O E, the incredible producer/singer-songwriter duo Tom and Caroline, also known as Tevlo and CARZi. I've reviewed them¹ so² often³ here, you should be familiar with their backstory at this point. What you might not know yet is just how many more breakthrough they've had in the last couple of months. Remember when I said "Mark my words, they're going to be huge."? Well, we're pretty much there already now. They've made it up the vine. Not only are they one of the top winners of Black Sun Empire's Driving Insane remix competition, they have also featured on the last edition of Blackout's Evolution series. Their first ever release, Asking For It, has passed the 1 million streams mark. Caroline has lent her beautiful voice to Sektor & Subsequent's Run From The Sun on Liquicity and to Madface's and Symplex's Call On You on Viper Recordings. They are literally everywhere right now. My fan heart was already jumping all over the place all of the time recently, but last week was when everything started going even more crazy. Or should I say CRAZi? Not only did they announce they are now officially signed to Futurebound's Viper Recordings, but the first half of their insanely good double single has been uploaded by none other than YouTube promo channel behemoth UKF. I have been waiting for this moment since forever. I can't tell you just how extremely happy I am about all this success they're having right now, there's no one that deserves this more than them. The upload was nearly a week ago now and I'm still smiling about it. I'M HYPED OKAY.

While I'd say all V O E releases are perfectly suitable for an UKF upload, I can also fully understand why they chose this exact one. Take What You Want is their best work yet, period. It starts off with a singular heartfelt piano that is used as a backdrop for one of Caroline's best vocal performances yet. As the emotional lyrics with a flair for the dramatic pick up in energy, the instrumental follows by introducing another melody mirroring the vocal, while the piano switches into double time. As soon as CARZi cries out the titular words for the first time, the whole vibe switches. A wall of bass engulfs the listener, as the vocal reaches the heighest of emotional heights. Then the drop hits. To quote a good friend of mine's first reaction: Bruh. A literal explosion of energy. I'm struggling to even find the right words for it. Each single snare hit causes a violent headbang on my part. Anything I might have in my hand is thrown across the room. If I'm wearing headphones while listening to it, I'm pressing them harder on my ears every single time. Even if I wasn't listening at full volume before, I will turn it to 110% when I get to the drop. It's the purest and best form of insanity. You know what's even more insane though? The second drop. B R U H. When that key change hits, I literally can't stop my face from contorting like I just ate 10 lemons at once while screaming TAKE WHAT YOU WAAAANT along with the vocals. Perfect track, honestly.

While I'm obviously a tiny bit (A HUGE BIT) hyped about the first half of the release, that shouldn't take anything from the great followup, Come This Far. For me, this track is another example of the uniqueness in V O E's production. Of course it's still a heavy track that I would broadly categorise as Neurofunk, but it's just so different from most of what's out there. All elements of the intro just give off this "tribal" atmosphere, from the used vocal sample to the big drums sounding like they're preparing you for war. The war being the drops in this case. At first the armies are marching in strict lockstep towards each other, here represented by the consistent two-step drum rhythms of the first part of the drop, but soon they start simply charging each other and chaos ensues, which is when all the elements kick into overdrive and cause some serious carnage in the track. Beside it being a really unique track, it is also an extremely cleanly produced one too. Like all of their tracks of course, but still very much noteworthy.

Not only should they 1000% play on the main stage at Let It Roll as soon as possible, I would even go so far as to say promoters are actively stupid if they don't jump on the opportunity to book them now (assuming it's in their budget of course). They're already past the "next big thing" stage, they're already huge and they're only gonna get bigger from here on out.

In summary: This release is V O E-ncredible.