Picks Of The Week (04.11.23

1. Pythius - Turmoil LP [Blackout Music]

Recommended if you like: Toronto Is Broken, Zardonic, Prolix

Okay, the Drum&BassArena award categories are all well and good, even if the winners are always controversially UK-centric, but can we maybe introduce some sort of label award for dropping the most fire albums? Because Dutch Neurofunk Forge Blackout has been on a roll lately, with an outstanding one-two-three-punch album/extended edition/remix cycle from the two they call Neonlight, frenchman Redpill dropping absolute insanity just a couple months ago and now none other than Metal-Hardcore-Neurofunk and cat enthusiast Pythius! As is now basically tradition here, thanks to Blackout's relentlessly and consistently high quality, let's dive into this newest long player coming from over there, and see how many fuck off's per minute we can average this time. But first, we gotta give our protagonist some backstory!

Backstory

Right in the middle of Blackout's home base Utrecht, Hylke Gerben Klazema has been trying to scratch that inner musical itch ever since he was but an 8-year-old knaap. The drums were his first musical passion, which he religiously practiced in several rock and metal bands, with whom he even attempted to perform (surely satanic) Jazz and IDM crossover rituals. After transcending into DnB through the certified classic Resonant Evil - Hold Your Breath and his first couple Blackout raves in the mid-2000's, reaching genre enlightenment some preachers might even say, he traded the band in his garage with Garageband and started playing around with his own electronic sounds. Don't worry, he soon moved on over to Logic, then Cubase and now Bitwig. But that's way too far ahead already!

Cut back to the late 2000's. Hylke was enjoying his student life, raving the weekends away, until he eventually thought, hey I should try this DJing thing out myself! Equipped with a proper, very serious DJ name, DJ Fiets, which translates to DJ Bicycle, he started venturing out into the world of spinning tunes in 2009, with his alter ego Tropical Hylke, sometimes together with The Golden Boys, coming out of the coconut-margarita-filled shadows (created from palm trees) every now and then too. While this was all fine and well for random DJing, he did find these to be a little unfitting for the more serious project, with his own productions and all that, he had planned on pursuing. And so, Fiets became the hair-bunned Pythius we all know and love today!

With inspirations ranging from Telemetrik on the DnB side of things to all sorts of metal bands like Der Weg einer Freiheit, Wolves in the Throne Room, Myrkur and Amenra and even Synthwave artists, it was almost guaranteed that Pythius would become one of the more interesting artists around, but it took a while for him to fully get a grip on the mystic ways of Neurofunk production and realise this potential to the fullest. His 2011 debut EP Downward Spiral on Mindtrick went into a way more minimalistic and deep route than you might expect from him, and the 2013 White Noise / New Era single with fellow Utrechtians Sinister Souls was a straight-up Dubstep excursion, for instance! With his remix for another treacherously talented Utrechtian duo, Ordure, in the same year he was already showing off his Neuro ambitions a little, but something way bigger was just around the corner. Remember how the Blackout nights were some of his first DnB raves? Well, he never really stopped going to them, and at some point, Hylke realised that he liked these nights so much, he didn't just want to remain a mere raver, he wanted to be part of it - so he applied for an internship there!

As part of the team behind the prestigious event series and imprint, he didn't just learn all sorts of things about the worlds behind the stage curtain, he also seems to have gained some valuable insights into Neuro production, as evidenced by the absolutely massive Abandon EP that he dropped on the label just a year later. While he admitted in his 2018 AMA that a lot of his sound design skills came from simply "dicking around with synths", I would say that the combination of the increased one-on-three time he spent with head honchos Black Sun Empire paired with his studies in Electronic Music Production at the Herman Brood Academy definitely also helped a bit. Just a guess though. With his skills now thoroughly sharpened, the sick releases started rolling in over the years, one EP at a time, earning himself nominations for Best Newcomer at the Drum&Bass Arena awards and leading to the first of many appearances at huge festivals.

Various collaborations with legends like Neonlight, State Of Mind, DJ Hidden, Optiv and CZA and remixes for Telekinesis and Cause4Concern later, in 2018 it was finally time for his debut album, Descend! Maybe it's because I got into this whole thing around this time, but to me it feels like a lot of instant Neuro classics were born during this era, not just from the album and the ridiculously sick remix packages that came along with it a year later, but also from the followups like Whiplash with Nuklear or his whole Upheaval EP! And all that while he was (and maybe even still is?) apparently also working on both a metal side project and a Synthwave alias with Fred from Sinister Souls! Around 2019, he stepped back from the label activities, allowing him even more freedom to pursue all things musical, resulting in a whole slew of remixes for 3RDKND, his drinking buddy Zardonic, Limewax, Redpill, Celldweller, Neonlight and Prolix, among even more others. The kicker? He was also putting out on diabolically sick singles with some truly outstanding artworks all this time, which it turns out were all leading up to his second album, Turmoil! Yes, exactly, the one we're talking about today!

Track Breakdown

We are violently launched into the Metal-infused Neurofunk orbit of Pythius' second long player with the unbelievably sick opener In My Head. By channeling his inner Linkin Park with that incredible intro riff and getting UK vocalist REEBZ to once again deliver a truly stunning performance balancing both pure power and heartfelt emotion, you just know there's greatness awaiting you further into the track, and you would be completely wrong about that. It's not just greatness, it's true excellence. Seriously, just listen to the way Pythius slaps us back and forth from the fast-paced Reece bass madness to the harsh bass stabs, or the machine gun fire joining in on the fun later on, or, my favourite part, that whole Half-Time, pure Metal second half, complete with genuinely gruesome guitar riffs and insane growling from REEBZ. We follow this masterpiece up with a swerve into pure Neuro territory, Doctrine, featuring label bosses Black Sun Empire themselves. Exactly as you might expect from a classic combo like this, this one has it all: an atmospheric intro, a wonky stomper of a rhythm, horrifically (in a good way) distorted melodies, a bass unlike anything else, and, which might actually be a bit of a surprise, some crazy hard drumwork straight outta a marching band? Hell yeah!

Speaking of hell yeah, next up we've got Chimaera, the long-awaited collaboration with Italian actual mad man Merikan! In true Merikan fashion, the track is hyping you up to a crazy amount before it finally drops, but, as always, these sky-high expectations are easily exceeded by the industrial inferno being unleashed afterwards. Not only are these two maniacs channeling the raw high-octane energy of Hardcore without specific auditory references to it and while still remaining strictly syncopated, with that lead they have also put a melody into my head that simply won't go away and that will always make me want to jump up and move. Not to mention the relentless switchup towards the end of the drop! To calm down a little from all this, Pythius switches gears into the more minimalistic Neuro realms, with Byss. Instead of big explosive, well, everything's, the star of the show is the catchy, cheeky bassline continuously moving up and down the musical stairs, with ever-evolving drum work twisting and turning it all the way through.

Enough minimalism though, let's get rickety-rickety-wrecked, son! You know what the best approach to such utter destruction is? Burn 'Em Down! With a vocal sample uttering that titular simple yet incredibly memorable catchphrase, Pythius launches an all-out assault on us, consisting of a somehow even more catchy, straight-up iconic call-and-response between a nefariously naughty explosion of an all-encompassing synth and the breezily bouncy, sadistically sassy bass that will remain a part of every Neurofunk DJ's playlist for years to come. Look out for the absolutely disgusting Halftime switchup in the second half! After things have finally finished burning down to a crisp, it's time to come Back To Life, with the sounds of french madmen and Best Producer nominated Burr Oak on the instrumental feature and the ever-amazing Rhode on the vocals. After easing us into the experience with an absolutely wonderful, ethereal atmosphere, amplified even further by Rhode's angelic voice, things slowly start to crumble again and before we know it, utter destruction is back on the menu. Heavily syncopated, with the drums going through like five separate evolutions in the span of only a couple seconds, filled with somehow even heavier, masterfully mind-melting bass and occasionally interjecting, soul-shattering growls from the abyss, we are all but a pawn being wildly thrashed around by this top-tier supergroup. Seriously crazy.

Now that our heart has been jump-started again, it's time to continue this high-energy workout with Arrival. You start to hear voices in your head that you can't quite decypher, it clearly keeps repeating something but becomes less understandable with every iteration until the noise clears up and you realise - they are here. With truly extraterrestrially distorted, screw-face-inducing bass punches, we are being beaten into a pulp and there's nothing we can do against it. Except for maybe banding all together to defeat this Common Enemy. After everything has been burned to the ground, Pythius, together with fellow Dutchie RIENK on the wonderful vocals, appeals to our commonalities in this fight against evil. However, the, for Pythius, quite uplifting one-two-whomp's are still undercut by the most devastating, chaos-creating bass, which, by the end of the tune, actually overtakes everything in its way, showing no mercy to the innocent bystanders. In other words, more of a Dancefloor touch than usual, perfectly merged with the usual Pythius annihilation.

Speaking of unusual sounds for Pythius: With Broken we kind of break away from the heavier sounds for now, instead opting for a more underground, deep and dark sound. Murky, disgusting water dripping down on us while we wade through the sewage tunnels, with all sorts of creatures piping up all over the place, until our heartbeats become so heavy and hard-hitting we have to take a break. From this Half-Time slowmo-ment, we arise anew with break-y company in the second half, nicely rounding up the progression of this unique experience. Slowly, we rise out of the underground with Canadian vocalist flowanastasia's soulfully soaring vocals on our next stop, Wide Awake. In an effort to wake us the hell up, Pythius pulls out only the biggest, weightiest whomps rattling us to our core with a rhythm that's just way too much fun, especially when the whomps multiply in the second part of the drop. One thing's for sure here: No whomp action stays the same for very long. I mean, we even end with a sick, meticulously mechanical sounding Half-Time bit! What an absolute banger.

Even though we've risen up from utter destruction, new problems are still pouring in - like that recent report of neuro-implanted people wreaking havoc in Hamburg! What, you haven't heard of it? Luckily, Pythius keeps us informed on this next stop, Implant. A very cool sample isn't the only thing this tune has going for it though, far from it! Shortly after the report finished, we cut live to our live feed from the massacre, where incredibly quick-firing acid-powered synths are relentlessly tearing through every unsuspecting politician and scientist present at the event, eventually ending in an utterly chaotic 4x4 beatdown. Later in the evening, police showed up to dispose of these malfunctioning cyborgs, intercutting the relentless acidy firing with blasts of bass until we finally fade out. Phew! Once again, it's probably best to take a breather, so let's do just that with All I Know, this time featuring another fellow Dutchie, MVE, on the heartfelt vocals. With a way more melodic and subdued approach to the production, Pythius takes us on a journey full of warm basses, beautiful synths and great vocals on this, culminating in a stunning finale that makes you want to close your eyes and let the music drift you away.

This grandiose, cinematic, Trance-inspired approach is continued on our penultimate tune of the LP, Another World. With an atmosphere so vast you cannot see the edges of it, basses so large you could fill multiple football stadiums in it, and a great back-and-forth between the more harrowing synths and some vicious bass stabs, this was already an amazing tune, but then Hylke, the mad man, takes things even further and plunges deep into the realms of 4x4 in the second half, before finishing it off with some good ol' regular drums and basses. Massive, really. We sail off into the night with Erase Me, going full circle with the triumphant return of REEBZ. Emotional piano chords, heavily reverberated atmospheric vibes, REEBZ showing off the softest of her sides, one might think this is a more gentle outro to this rather angry album. But then, both REEBZ and the instrumental turn up the energy levels one last time, with a big and strangely beautiful Half-Time-y vibe and considerably more aggressive, almost pleading vocal outbursts.

Conclusion

Filled to the brim with bangers and some incredibly sick collaborations, both on the vocal and production front, while still going out of his way to explore some sounds you might not expect from him - this might actually be my favourite release of his, ever. He really is a class(ema) of his own!

Other Neurofunk from this week:

Magnetude - Falling (Audio Remix)
Punchman - Radar, Komar
MachineCode - The Observers