Picks Of The Week (29.04.23

1. Mob Tactics - Beyond The Circus EP, Pt. 3 [RAM Records]

Recommended if you like: S9, SyRan, Andy C

What a week for dancefloor this has been! Two chart-breaking heavyweights remixing the likes of Calvin Harris and MK, cheesy wonderfulness on Lost In Dreams and Liquicity and bouncy bangers on UKF and High Tea. While I would love to talk about any of these, today I actually want to start by taking a look at the (r)amazingly heavy, breakbeat-laden stormer kind of Dancefloor tunes that the executioner Andy C himself would regularly rinse all over the planet. The likes that Mob Tactics are known for.

If you have somehow lived your life under the biggest (Dinosaur) rock in the whole wide world of DnB and don't know how to react to that name, allow me to give you a brief history lesson. Actually brief this time, I promise! No rambling, just RAM bling. Anyway. Behind the intimidating name Mob Tactics are two actually lovely people who just concatenated two cool sounding words: Mark Sims, who started out doing some serious solo damage as The Funktion around 2009 on the likes of Proximity Recordings and RUN DNB, the latter of which he was actually managing at the time, and Luke Bugden alias Poison, whose earliest outputs can be traced back to at least 2001, assuming no one else was running around with the DJ name before him. Either way, Luke wasn't just churning out Luke-warm sizzlers, he was firing off some seriously Luke-burning-hot heat left and right. Mark, in his Funktion as label manager, reached out for some fire to sign and didn't just receive what he was asking for, he also gained a friend. Eventually, Luke asked him out to a studio date, which ended with the two of them banging out one tune after the other and a couple months later, Mob Tactics was born.

After their debut on Traffic in 2010, they went on to pursue a self-made career at the beginning, by releasing their tunes via their very own label Tactical Recordings. In 2012, they also started sharing their gems with a couple underground labels like Anodyne Audio and The Zoooo (four o's), which quickly lead to more and more exciting names like BTK's Dutty Audio, Prolix's Trendkill and DJ Hype's Playaz! Just a little while later, Mob Tactics became part of the extended curriculum at MTA, C4C and RAM! Just the fact that their tune Wolf Trap received the honour of becoming a part of the sixth edition of Andy C's infamous Nightlife series was already indeed more than a lot, but things only kept escalating. 2015 saw them joining the Viper family, where they showed off most of their illegally good tactical nuke bangers, with only a few remixes on Eatbrain and Disciple in between the onslaught. Until 2018, that is! First with a solo release on Jade's legendary neurofunk label, then with their long-awaited return to the label of their dreams, RAM!

Now blasting out their Dancefloor destroyers from the safe haven of Andy C's impossibly imposing imprint, they basically became the label's figurehead, the ambassadors of what the label stood for. The RAMbassadors. Of course, they still occasionally ventured out to other labels like Bassrush, Eatbrain and Charge, with remixes for Mampi Swift & DJ Fresh, Dub Elements & Levela, Drumsound & Bassline Smith and State Of Mind. Way to break the ampersand pattern, you twisted Kiwis. However, after having thoroughly established themselves as a force to be reckoned with, they took a bit of a hiatus during the latter two thirds of the pandemic. Don't fret though, they have kept themselves busy writing the next series of bangers, which they have begun to unleash at the beginning of the year, one EP at a time. Not only did we already get the return to Eatbrain with the Grave Digger EP, we also got even more wonderful weapons of mass destruction in the form of remixes for long-time friends Prolix and Volatile Cycle, but what has really placed them firmly at the top of this year's most prolific yet most consistently awesome producers list is their Beyond The Circus EP series.

After two already quite ridiculous editions, we have now reached the end of this particular saga, with the third and final edition. Let's talk some more about that, shall we?

What would a great EP be without an over-the-top ridiculously long intro? Exactly what I and our main tacticians were thinking! For this, they sharpened up one of their 2019 razor-sharp originals into an even more off-the-walls rave smasher than it already was, resulting in the EP opener, LDN Bass VIP. How, you ask? Well, for starters, the previously "standard" ~1 minute buildup was reworked to instead be a two minutes and 30 seconds insanely hype-inducing, incredibly effective hands-in-the-air sequence of events. Not only do we get slowly looping bleepy bloopy melodies continuously accelerating to a point of absurdity, over time the virtual crowd starts clapping along to the ever-increasing speed too and the boys even start teasing the titular LDN bass a little bit. After building up this tremendous amount of hype, it's surely almost impossible to actually deliver on these promises, but thanks to the original drop's sheer massiveness, they only needed to tweak the basses to be a little bit more over-the-top and everything to just be that tiny bit more ravey to keep me happy. What a tune!

Did you know that Luke has been living in Seattle for these past few years, moving in with his wife and talented vocalist Joanna Syze? Why am I bringing this up? Well, even though Seattle isn't really known for its tornados, it wouldn't surprise me if Luke brought some sampling inspiration from his new-found coastal home across the Atlantic to the next tune, the alternative to the foghorn craze, the literal tornado siren blaring Twister! On top of an extra punchy, steppy beat, the sirens continuously rev up and down over and over again, with a rather phat distorted bass mirroring its every move. To say it with the perfectly fitting vocal sample's words: Ridiculous. From one end of the energy spectrum to the other, we continue on with the hydrogen bomb level vibe that is We Dream In Ultraviolet. Lovely strings, lovely pianos and lovely vocals all take a part in building up that special nostalgic oldschool vibe that make me think back to the olden days (okay I'm not that old but you get me) and to top it all off, we even drop into the finest early 2010s kind of gentle wobble action, with quickly-firing breaks on top to keep it all flowing together. Did I already say how lovely this all is?

Last but absolutely not least, we've got the energy-wise relatively minimal but deepness-wise quite maximal EP closer Checkmate. With a bunch of acoustic-sounding drum loops layered up to form a proper stomper of a rhythm, a bassline that menacingly grumbles at you and all sorts of fun sound effects keeping us in check, this quickly proves itself worthy to be newest entry in the long list of rave smashers that these two have put out.

Four completely different, yet equally banging and equally rave-y, Dancefloor smashers. What better way to cap off this stunning return to form for Luke and Mark?

Other heavy stuff from this week:

MK, Dom Dolla - Rhyme Dust (Dimension Remix)
Lexurus - The Funk
Kanine - Escape
Natty Lou, Nes Mburu - Mi Nawe
REAPER - CALL MY NAME

2. C:rcle, Gid Sedgwick - Oscillate [Korsakov Music]

Recommended if you like: Lexurus, Changing Faces, METHOD

These past few years have seen a steady supply of wonderful new Dancefloor talent cropping up on the scene. Inspired by the big hitters like Dimension and labels like Liquicity and fueled by a steady increase in international shows and a new wealth of online resources, this particular wave of newcomers can't even be pinpointed to just one place. Of course New Zealand and Australia are popping off like crazy these past few years, but even places you would often associate more with Neurofunk than Dancefloor are starting to grow their local talents into future headliners. One of the best examples of that is Slovakia-based C:rcle.

Patrícia Bujňáková isn't just a name I would 99% absolutely butcher if I did these reviews in audio format, it's also the name behind Korsakov's newest exciting signing C:rcle. With her classically trained father playing the double bass in an orchestra and her family home just generally being filled with music at all times of the day, it doesn't really come to a surprise that Patrícia ended up pursuing music as well. While Hold Your Colour by you-know-who was the initial spark that ignited the burning passion for DnB, it was the 2016 edition of the one and only Let It Roll that really got the ball rolling on her own active participation in the genre. Dreaming of one day playing at this now-favourite festival of hers, she eventually asked Neorge, co-founder of the Mäsokombinát collective, to become her DJing sensei, which he of course accepted. Would have been quite the plot twist if he refused! Anyway. Up to 3 times a week you could see her swing over to the Mäsokombinát studio, quickly building up her DJing muscles and just around a year later, she was already booked for her very first gig, going b2b with her mate Braň aka Y.Then!

Over the next couple of years, her newly-acquired skills and wonderful tune selection would lead to her graduating from student to master as both a core part of the Mäsokombinát crew and the all-female DJ label Mousãi, with her smashing up the dance in clubs in Prague, Ostrava and Budapest. 2019, just three years after starting this journey, she hit another huge milestone and a proper full-c:rcle moment: she played at Let It Roll for the first time! Circles are probably the best shape for being let roll, so it makes a lot of sense. My attempts at humour aside, this was just the beginning of an ever-expanding catalogue of W's Patrícia has been collecting over the past few years, with the biggest one probably being her warming up for Dimension at his live show in 2021. While she was already living quite the dream of hers, she wanted to take things even further and decided to use the spare time during the pandemic to pursue music production too. With none other than Liquicity shooting star Lexurus as her mentor and artistic guidance from the Korsakov people, she was basically destined for greatness from the get-go and in late 2022, it was finally time for her very first hit to hit the Korsakovian shelves: Love Survives!

Around half a year of having to ignore frankly way too many stupid YouTube comments later, she keeps the ball rolling with another certified anthem: Oscillate, with electronic rock star and Korsakov regular Gid Sedgwick on vocal duty! We begin by smoothly gliding into the vastly vibey space of the intro, with beautiful synths pinging on our intergalactic radars, where Gid guides us on our emotional journey of the day. Soon enough, a rather catchy synth melody with a bass-y guitar strumming along underneath it all slowly makes its way into our field of hearing, eventually overtaking everything else and taking our spaceship on a proper Dancefloor joyride. I've read in an interview that she's quite the perfectionist, especially in production, and this track is a great example of that. Not only is every single sound in there executed in an incredibly precise manner, each additional melody and each extra element works together so well that you sometimes barely notice just how many layers are at play. She even switches it all up in the second half, first replacing the buildup synth droplets with a whole other, equally lovely looping melody, and then even giving the lead melody the rearrangement treatment in the drop.

Oscillate? More like Osci-great! Really Osci-rating this one! An Osci-straight-up banger! Going to show this to all my Osci-mates! I hope we don't have to Osci-wait too long for her next tune! But even if we do, you know what they say. Better Osci-late than never.

Other upbeat stuff from this week:

Mazare - Dreams Only Last For A Night EP (<33)
Jon Void - Closer To Close / Your Love
Calvin Harris, Ellie Goulding - Miracle (Wilkinson Remix)
Nighthawk - Never Cared 💎
Fitch, Emile Battour - Sweet Disposition