Picks Of The Week (12.08.23

1. Dan Dakota - Yot Klub [Liquicity Records]

Recommended if you like: Blooom, Camo & Krooked, 1991

Wait what, new music from Dan Dakota? Don't worry, your eyes are not deceiving you, this is actually happening!

For those still standing in the dark, allow me to complete the picture with a full pathline from his very beginnings to his glorious return: Straight outta Stampede City, maybe better known as Canada cosmopolitan city Calgary, Dann Hughes has been working on putting his personal stamp on what's happening in DnB since around May 2011. Inspired by the likes of Netsky, Camo & Krooked and Fred V & Grafix, Dann started playing around with the uplifting Liquid-Dancefloor sound of the 2010s under the alias SpyHill. While not a whole lot of this can still be found, as he apparently purged it all to start fresh in 2012, the stuff that did survive, from a couple Liquid vibes to bootlegs of Chase & Status, already hints at the glow-up that would soon follow. He was still not quite satisfied with the name though. After a very brief stint as "Dann Dakota", he quickly realised that you only really need one N in your artist name or people get confused (trust me, I know the pain) and so Dan Dakota was finally born in 2013! What do we do with duplicate letters? We Let Em Go!

Around this time, he also started sharing some of his unreleased tracks with the people at Liquicity, who quickly fell in love with it all, signing a bunch of his dubs right away and uploading even more of them to their YouTube channel, starting with Dann's Free Download Play Fair. However, before it was time for this relationship to fully blossom, Dann put out his debut self-titled and the Rush EP on Supreme Hustle Recordings, the latter of which even got airplay on BBC Radio 1Xtra, and remixed one of his early inspirations, Fred V & Grafix! Then, in 2015, his debut release on Liquicity materialized, but it was 2016 when things really started to get going. Not only did he drop absolute anthems of the scene like Stood In The Dark and We Let Em Go, he also weaved in more and more of the "maximally minimalistic" and Future Bass influences into his work, which became especially evident in his Liquicity follow-up Try Not To Worry, his two double singles on Supreme Hustle, and his debut on none other than UKF! It only makes sense then, that he was chosen to remix Camo & Krooked on their Mosaik remix album a couple years later.

You might have noticed the phrasing there. Yep, there was not a whole lot of Dakota news from 2016 on, except for his anthems being remixed for the Liquicity Reflections project and maybe Dakota Johnson's involvement in the Fifty Shades saga. He wasn't just keeping quiet because he got bored or something though. Not only did he have a hard time healing from an accident that crushed two vertebrae in his spine, he was also battling alcoholism at the time, both of which he successfully managed to conquer around the time 2020 rolled around. By this point, however, Dann was already long in full album mode, just churning out tune after tune without sending it out for release, which meant he had accumulated a ton of new material. The next few years were spent bringing the ones that stood out the most up to modern production standards and he has recently teased a list of like 20 tracks that he seems to be really happy with, meaning he's got a huge amount of dubs almost ready to go, living up to his surname I guess.

But first things first. Throughout all of this, there was one tune in the pipeline that kept listeners asking "when release". One tune that's so quirky and unique yet also hard-hitting that Camo & Krooked played it in their BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix in 2017. A tune so memorable that you would recognize it anywhere, even half a decade later. A tune that's been in the works since 8 years. Of course, I'm talking about the one and only Yot Klub. After a relaxing time watching the sun go down with our fellow klub members, the anticipation for the unforgettable night-out to come keeps rising, eventually reaching previously assumed unreachable heights, before we hard-cut right into the minimalistic yet absolutely phat, bassy bouncy throw-down in an almost Big Room-esque fashion. While the back-and-forth between the tropical knocking and the ear-drums-shattering bass is the main star of the show, there's so many other fun things to enjoy in this legendary battle. From the simplest "woo!" or the shortest cut-off bit of a huge synth to even some sounds indicating the age a little bit, like the water droplet he also used in See Me Through VIP, the details are sheer endless.

Even a whole 8 years later, the colourful firework of bass, synths and sound effects that is Yot Klub still feels incredibly fresh. More like Damn Dakota!

Other weird and wonky things from this week:

Buunshin - i think i feel...
[BORDERS] - Want U
Refracta - More Noise. EP
Syú - Gohan 💎
Erotic Cafe' - Origin Of Chaos EP

2. Minos - Soul Shards [Relik Recordings]

Recommended if you like: Trail, Submorphics, Simple Souls

Now that the sun is actually back in full force and I'm fully regretting ever wishing for the rain to stop, I think it's time for some summer vibes to cool us down in this horribly humid nightmare weather. Let's talk about Minos and his newest single!

You might remember me writing about Steffen "Minos" Ulrich's album Tribe about two years ago and it's safe to say that a lot has happened since then! Collaborations with Messiah, SOLR and Syren Rivers for his album, not only further releases on his home base Fokuz, but also appearances on Four Corners, HEADSBASS and Faces Of Jungle, all in typical Minos quality, spread across the Liquid spectrum. However, this constant stream of high quality vibes wasn't enough for Steffen. A couple months after his album dropped in 2021, he decided to become an even more active participant in this scene, with the launch of his very own label, Relik Recordings. After kicking it off with an EP of his own, he invited the likes of Surreal and Fintain to exhibit some lovely liquid artifacts of their own. Now, the label head honcho himself returns from his latest excavation to present his most prestigious rarity yet: The Soul Shards.

And man, are they ever deserving of that name! We've got a vocal sample that is coming dangerously close to peak soulfulness (any more and the human body would not be able to cope), a couple of gentle guitars funking it up real nice together with a couple pleasing piano chords here and there, exotic birds chirping in the distance while you relax at the beach, rolling drums smoothly flowing through the scenery like a blissful summer breeze, all fitting together absolutely perfectly.

In other words: A very welcome refreshment in this all-too-exhausting peak summer time.

Other liquid things from this week:

FinnaDrift - Pit Stop At The Café EP
Kimyan Law - Ethereality
Sigma, Gardna - City Lights
Maykors - My Trip In The Future EP
Catching Cairo, BCee - Overdue
Mitekiss, Ruth Royall - YKOM
SOLR - Amour EP