Picks Of The Week (15.04.23

1. Andromedik, Pirapus, Indy Skies - Ride Or Die [NCS]

Recommended if you like: Polygon, Itro, Solomon France

Sometimes I struggle to choose which release to cover on here, because I am not really passionate about anything from that week in particular, but this time I had the opposite problem: There was too much to choose from! Whether it's Andromedik and Pirapus, Bensley, skantia, Hybrid Minds or NOVALU, I could have chosen any of them, I was looping them all basically! However, every single one of them was already featured on here rather recently, so I thought, maybe I should expand my search radius a little bit? While continuing to loop Ride Or Die in the background, I was putting together a list of candidates to choose from and I was even about to start the research process for one - that's when I realised I never talked about Andromedik on here before! Not once! Sure, Pirapus has been a staple of this format, most recently with their Nomad EP, but basically one of the faces of Liquicity himself? Nope, nothing. How crazy is that?! Obviously, I couldn't stand for this injustice any longer and since my brain was only thinking about this new single 24/7 anyway, the choice was easy: Let's talk about Andromedik!

Straight outta Antwerp in Belgium, also known as the stronghold for Dubstep and Drum & Bass in Europe due to it being the home of the one and only Rampage festival, Axel "Andromedik" Demarbaix has been working on all sorts of musical things since he was an actual child. When he was 9 (!), he started going to music school, first enjoying learning about all things classical and later also going down the Jazz rabbit hole, crafting an incredibly solid foundation of music theory skills in the process. In his early teens, his sister introduced him to the wonders of electronic music, or more specifically Dubstep, by showing him Camo & Krooked's remix of Professor Green - Monster, which he immediately became obsessed with. At 13/14, he went on one of the first of many Skiing trips, where a friend of his got inspired by the setting and decided to show him the spy thriller Secret Agent by certified Belgian legend Net-ski, unwittingly causing an avalanche of DnB obsession that would absolutely consume Axel. At 15, another friend of his, who was already crafting their own Dubstep beats, started training him in the mystical arts of music making, properly setting things in motion for the young Belgian's own career.

First as Ax, a couple weeks later as AxD, another couple weeks later as Andromedic, young Axel was trying his hand(romedik) at all kinds of genres like Trance, Chillstep and of course also DnB, with his greatest hits at the time being Clear Shadows, Look Further and, by a landslide, "FL studio Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites Piano Remake (.flp)". Strange titles aside, it was soon time to shed the early iterations of the name and finally settle on the Andromeda Galaxy inspired name we all know and love: Andromedik! After a slew of self-releases, including but not limited to Accelerate, Electrocute, River and The Freefall, he reached out to Rampage's label Radar Records via Facebook, which might sound like a blunt approach, but actually resulted in him landing smack in the middle of their, well, radar! Like his namesake, the Dromedary, he was holding back a lot of (auditory) fatness, but this move was an important first step for them to all to be unleashed onto the scene.

Just with his first few releases on said label for direction finding and another couples ones on the wonderful High Tea Music, he was already making quite a few waves in the scene, with BBC Radio 1 support from Friction and later also Metrik. Towards the end of 2017, he also joined the NoCopyrightSound family, with his first non-DnB release in quite a while, Firefly. Things really escalated in 2018 though. Not only did he, as part of the Radar Records Soundsystem, open the dancefloor of Rampage's indoor festival in March, he also became the newest planet in Liquicity's Galaxy Of Dreams! One fateful day, he, Itro and the boys from Polygon all got together to work on some filthy Jump Up tunes, which they luckily failed miserably at. Since Itro was working at the label at the time, they showed the resulting, now quite uplifting and summery Dancefloor tune to Liquicity, who were blown away and immediately wanted to hear more from everyone involved. So Axel sent over Your Eyes, which landed on the third Galaxy Of Dreams compilations and marked his debut on the label, the full Harmony EP with his three amigos, and just a couple months later the ultimate anthem to end all anthems: Forever.

This involvement resulted in him playing at both Summer Festival and Family Day that year, with his Pukkelpop debut sandwiched in between the two, and meant that he appeared on the infamous Liquicity yearmix a whopping 5 times! Of course, he also continued to grow his relationship with streaming behemoth NCS, adding Let Me In, With Me and Titan to the list. The next few years the career milestones just starting falling over like dominoes: show debuts in Estonia, Germany, UK and at Let It Roll, smashing remixes for Cartoon and Dan Dakota, working together with Voicians and early inspiration Feint, a ton of single releases on Liquicity culminating in his first album Essence, support from the likes of Sub Focus, it was all a bit mad really. That was just the beginning though! All sorts of releases on NCS, sometimes solo, sometimes in collaboration with fellow Belgian prodigy Used or early mentor Murdock, his first Liquid tune released on UKF, remixing Lee Mvtthew's Kiwi anthem Takeover and even Take That collaborators Sigma, the release of his Time EP, and receiving the incredible honour of putting together the very first non-Maduk-curated Liquicity Yearmix last year! Somehow he even managed to finish off his Master's degree in Business Engineering during all of this.

Now, he once again returns to the sounds of non-existant intellectual properties with another entry in his long list of pure anthems, Ride Or Die, with the aforementioned stars of the hour Pirapus and up-and-coming Auckland-based Hiphop/Pop/DnB vocalist Indy Skies in tow. In other words, one of those combos that sound so amazing on paper that you get slightly anxious that it won't meet your very high expectations. However, everyone involved is literally unable to disappoint, no matter the circumstances, and so they have of course delivered a stunning fusion of both of their styles. Not only is it expanding on the futuristic stabby synth sounds Pirapus have already dabbled with on their Euphoria remix last year, it also sports the extremely punchy Dancefloor drums and the frankly ridiculous catchiness of all the best Andromedik tunes. Add a wonderful vocal that is so good it won't leave my brain alone, neither during the day nor in the dead of night, a fake-out-slash-drumless-buildup first half and a full-on 4x4 second drop, and you have rightfully earned yourself a high place in my Best Of 2023 list. I love it.

Even though I'm basically spamming the hell out of Ride Or Die these past few days, I cannot see myself getting tired of it anytime soon. One of my favourite tunes from all artists involved, and that's saying something!

Other Dancefloor stuff from this week:

Bensley, Skyelle - All I Wanted
hayve - Flow
Madface, Voicians - Personal Jesus
Jessee, Mila Falls - Only You
D-Sabber, 10xx - High
L D R U, Christina Lizzul - Righteous Places (Fitch Remix)

2. Phloem - On The Line / Back Pocket [Galacy Records]

Recommended if you like: Edlan, SiLi, Low:r

Did you know that the Phloem is living tissue in vascular plants responsible for transporting carbohydrates? While not quite the same, there's also another kind of Phloem out there - one that's responsible for transporting lush liquid bangers to those who need it the most!

The man behind this tune distribution system is Folkestone-based Tom Botting, gathering inspiration for his world-class auditory bouquets in the world famous Garden Of England that is Kent, UK. Bit of a muddled metaphor, I have to admit, but you get me. Tom has been curating a wide array of beautiful soundscapes right from when he first embarked (fun fact to explain the joke: the phloem is also known as the "inner bark" in trees!) on this journey around 10 years ago, with most of his early tunes being self-released on his SoundCloud. However, even without the help of labels, Red Sky At Night, Peculiar and Midnight Love got the attention of BBC Radio Kent Introducing in 2013! Just two years later, Phloem dropped his debut EP, Only Love, on sprawling Dutch imprint Influenza, after which things really started looking up for the up-and-comer.

Shortly after this early milestone, Phloem's bootleg of 50 Shades soundtrack tune One Last Night ended up being uploaded to Liquicity's channel, planting the seeds for quite the fruitful collaboration between him and the label. Not only did he play at Liquicity London the following year, in 2018 he even joined the ranks of the label itself, with Luminance! That wasn't all this time had to offer though, Phloem also joined the Soulvent family with Pathos in 2017 and was invited for guest mixes for Kasger's Liquid & Beyond and Hugh Hardie's show. However, that's when things got a little quiet around him for a while. Until the 2020s, that is. In 2020 he created Hijinx, a whole separate alias for the darker, more minimal stuff he had been having a lot of fun with lately, which was debuted on Soulvent's Soul Music 2020 compilation. Back on the main alias, he released a tune with the still very wonderful people at High Tea, first collaborated with fellow Lenny Leniz on Galacy and then remixed him on Differential, and finally had his solo debut on the Liquicity sister label a couple weeks back.

If you think he's already had enough, you are sorely mistaken though! With his new double single On The Line / Back Pocket he once again reached all the way down into his seemingly never-ending well of wonders for his most sublime tunes yet. First, he cranks up the valve of free-flowing drums to create a steady flow for us to smoothly float away on on On The Line. That's a lot of on's. To make things even more tranquil, he puts together a melodic sandwich comprised of a heartwarming bassline basis, minimal yet emotional Piano-driven cheese, some saucy atmospheric guitar play, a bit of synthetic relish and, to finish it all off, the titular, incredibly catchy vocal on top. That's of course not all though! On the flipside, he reaches into his Back Pocket for even more vibey basslines, distant vocals echoing all throughout the mountain ranges and valleys this track makes me imagine, and high-speed drums making their way to the most inner parts of our motor control center, causing a nasty case of the head bops.

Simply Phloenomenal!

Other liquid stuff from this week:

Sub Focus - Fine Day
Hybrid Minds, Dan Fable - Favourite Song
Pola & Bryson, goddard., Lens, Javeon - Way Up
Tatora, Perspective Shift - Retrospective Clarity
Puzzle - Graceful
Apparition - Fragile
Various Artists - Soul Warming Sonics LP