Picks Of The Week (05.08.23

1. Vici - Saturn [Stellar Audio]

Recommended if you like: Screamarts, The Caracal Project, Secula

Stellar Audio, again so soon? Well, what can I do when they keep featuring the sickest talents' sickest beats?

For the 6th entry in their SOL series of EPs, they reached out to none other than one of the most underrated, technically most vicious and versatile virtuoso Victor Vici Chatain! Smack in the middle of the bustling winter sports hub that is Grenoble, Victor has been working at getting the Vici (or VC) name out there since at least 2013, but not necessarily in the spheres you might expect. Electro, Dubstep, Drumstep, UK House, Deathstep and even Frenchcore were all par for the course in the château Chatain, both in his productions and his DJ sets. Sure, legend has it that he has been loving the drums and the basses since he was only 9 years of age, but it arguably took until he joined the the Grenoble-based Bass Jump Krew and then became a part of the DnB France family with his contribution to the 2016 edition of French Plates for him to fully convert over to the dark side that is the DnB scene.

While his very first few tunes are not online anymore (sad times), his early 2016 era stuff is already proof enough for me that even when focussing on mostly DnB, he kept the diversity and wide array of sounds, from Neuro all the way over to Liquid, with the techy side dominating later on. It doesn't come as too much of a surprise, then, that he quickly became a regular on French DnB powerhouse labels like Impact, Kosen and Hyperactivity, before beginning to massively expanding his label catalogue both geographically and size-wise with releases on In The Lab (on which he's going to cap off the Rice remix trilogy very soon™️), Delta9, Skankandbass, Sinful Maze, Neksus Sound and even Blackout Music. That's right, this is going to be the second time I'm talking about someone who was featured on Blackout's second Adaptation compilation and then went on to release a double single on Stellar Audio, after Submonitor a couple of months ago. Just an oddly specific fun fact for ya!

Let's talk about the music though, shall we? On our interstellar trip to the title track Saturn, Victor pairs us up with a Neil deGrasse Tyson type to learn all about the gas planet and more specifically, its rings, visualized by a rather foreboding combination of massive yet distant atmospheric drums and, well, basses. Once we come close enough to properly see it, however, only the otherworldly beauty of it all, from the swirling storms of gas to the rings reflecting the sunbeams, remains. Now imagine that beauty, condensed into a futuristic, sonically out-there, techy synth stab, and you have the main ingredient for our drop. Together with some steppy drums, amplified by distorted yet very precisely controlled basses, and all sorts of other staccato elements relentlessly slapping us across the face, we basically have no choice but to step along with it. Once we make it through this first comet storm, we drift further off into orbit, with the big basses from the intro coming back in, before we fall right back into the madness.

Now that we survived this onslaught, it's time to relax a little bit, with the flipside Sense. Floating through space, we spot this fluttery, ethereal beauty in the distance. We attempt to navigate closer to it, and the closer we get, the more we realise just how massive it really is, with huge, space-y synth chords building themselves up to the point where they take up our whole peripheral vision. Suddenly, silence. Only a stuttery, magnificent synth remains. Right after, however, said synth is joined by a wild arrangement of extraterrestrial heavy breathing, distorted basses mimicking the sound alien insects probably make, clicky snares unlike anything you have heard before and wonky basses interjecting every now and then, to form our first drop. This ride is not even close to being over yet though. We fade out once more, waking up in what sounds like a dark basement underneath a lively bar, and once we finally fully come to our senses, we experience a slowed-down Halftime version of it all, with big synth walls surrounding us while large, more acoustic drums echo through our heads.

Still not over yet though. We fade out once more, with only the relentlessly stammering synth guiding us to our last destination: a 4x4 drop! Don't worry, the zeitgeist-averse under you, this one's not a mindless donk (not that there would be anything wrong with that), for the finale of this 6 minute joyride Vici only uses the most sensible and gentle of 4x4 beats to smoothly lead us back to safety, bird chirping included.

A feast for the senses that will (sa-)turn every snoozefest into a proper rager in no time. In other words: Leonardo da Vici did it again!

Other techy and weird stuff from this week:

Simula - Death Rattle
Redpill - Let Go
Blueboss, One Kmash - Warsaw Weather 💎
Dübël - ECLECTIC EP 💎
Ipsiom - Dream State

2. Various Artists - Future Fire EP - Vol 2 💎 [Viper Recordings]

Recommended if you like: Finding exciting new talents!

A compilation full of exciting Hidden Gems™️, compiled by the mighty Viper Recordings? Count me in!

Well, right away you might say Jon Void might not count as a newcomer anymore, but he absolutely deserves a bit of spotlight for what he has achieved in the past few years if you ask me! Even in jungle that is the German DnB stronghold Cologne that Jonas Lensing has been residing in, he has always been a name to look out for, ever since his first few productions started rolling over the scene in 2014. As Void, his productions could be seen on the likes of anything from 40Hz and Druid to later also Mayan Audio and Rampage's Radar. However, Jonas decided that if he wanted to play with the big bois, he needed a new, maybe more googleable name. Debuted with the straight-up iconic My Bassline on Cologne's own PLAY! Music, it was now time for Jon Void to take center stage. While PLAY! proved to be a great platform for him to continue working on his darker, harder-hitting tunes, with the rebrand he now also wanted to explore the more light-hearted, sing-along-able kinds of Dancefloor, on none other than Dutch Dancefloor behemoth Liquicity, on which he ended up becoming a proper mainstay.

Now, after countless more bangers under his belt, he makes his debut on Viper with the fittingly-titled Haunting! While you might want to complain that it's a bit early to kick off spooky season, the eery vocal, the mysterious atmosphere surrounding us while the mighty basses shake us to our very core and the absolutely monstrous yet restrained drop do such a great job of putting you in the mood for skeletons, pumpkins and what not, that any such complaints should be officially considered null and void. Huge tune, in other words!

Next, we've got a duo I had to dig a little more for, Clank & Maider! If you're in the know, you might have seen Simon "Clank" Artmann and Florian "Maider" Hauser tear up some dancefloors as early as 2011, but back then Florian was still called Chronicle and Simon was still involved in the SEPIA DJ-MC ensemble. As part of the Guerilla Warfare Music crew, the Austrians have been basically everywhere, sometimes on their own, sometimes back-to-back with eachother, but it wasn't until 2022 that they decided to officially join forces as the duo you see in your playlist today. After an honestly banging debut on DeVice earlier this year, it's now time to welcome them into the Viper family, with Walk This Earth! Of course, they don't waste this tremendous opportunity at all and bring us some of the heaviest-hitting, almost annoyingly catchy Dancefloor womps, beautifully delayed for maximum hype, on top of some proper stompy drums that will get your feet clanking in no time! Keep an eye on those two.

And keep your third eye on Quoone and Sensus! But wait, who are they again? Well, first of all, Quan Quoone Nguyen is a soon-to-be medically trained Houston-based no-problem-haver that is (Quo)on his way to stardom! From his very first few productions in 2018, lovingly titled "trash stuff I began with", that mostly consisted of (Melodic) Dubstep and Ambient, he evolved into a DnB loving maniac around the time 2020 rolled around. After his first foray into eye-themed DnB with Eyes VIP on none other than High Tea Music, he didn't take too much time to dispel the notion of being a (quo)one hit wonder with his High Tea follow-ups coming soon after. However, it was really 2022 that the rise of the Quoone™️ started taking shape, with him crossing off high calibre labels (quo)one by (quo)one, from Simplify and its sublabel Manifest to good old YANA, while very much remaining involved in the tea business. Now, he debuts on Viper with the thrilling conclusion to the George Quooneye trilogy saga, Third Eye.

But wait, we gotta talk about Esteban Sensus Janssens too! Like his collaborative partner of today, the Belgian newcomer has embarked on this musical journey in 2018, with a bunch of self-releases and free downloads. However, unlike Mr. Nguyen, Esteban has been right at home with DnB right away, starting off Liquid-y with releases on High Tea and Nu Venture, before going on a new adventure with his deeper wubs on Drevobos, before once again pivoting to Dancefloor with some proper Estebangers on Drop Diaries and now also Viper! So, how are these High Tea bois going about opening our tertiary organ of sight? With a super catchy, bouncy back-and-forth between an absolutely gargantuan bass growl and a fun little synth stab attack, situated on some hefty steppy drum action, garnished with a ton of cinematic atmospheric goodness. Quoonsus strike again, for the first time!

Finally, we've got Locoda giving us the Green Light for one more tune, featuring the wonderful vocalist Katie Belle. Locoda is the brain child of Manchester-based Phil Roberts and Andrew Smith, but as if often the case, that's not where things actually started. While it's hard to find any real information about their musical career before this particular project, I did manage to find out that they started out doing lovely Liquid stuff as Eleven in 2020. While they didn't seem to lose their love for the lushness in the rebrand, with their Locoda debut Closer on CODE also being properly delightful, they apparently decided to expand their sound a little to now include some Loco-Dancefloor! After already making the connection to Futurebound's powerhouse label when they played for their 18th anniversary event last year, it only made sense that their Dancefloor debut would find a home on the one they call Viper. For this world premiere, Phil and Andrew reached as far down their bag of tricks as possible, unearthing all sorts of space-y atmospheric bit and bops like radar blips and quickly spinning wobbles, high-energy wall-of-sound synths and relentlessly ratata-ing drums, and arranging them all together into one big banger of a tune.

A bunch of new Dancefloor talents from all over the world come together to showcase their bassface-causing talents - Hell yeah!

Other dancefloor stuff from this week:

Lost Frequencies - The Feeling (Lost Frequencies & Andromedik Deluxe Mix)
SILK, Paige Cavell - Reason (Pirapus Remix)
Various Artists - Ophelia Presents: Advent - Drum & Bass LP
1991 - Chant
Flowidus, Lauren L'aimant - Save Us
Idle Days - Over It