Picks Of The Week (06.04.24

1. Circumference - Time [Neksus Sound]

Recommended if you like: Rillium, YAANO, Xeonz

It's about damn time we talk about the absurdly amazing Bristol-based boyband collective Circumference! Well, I mean, technically, we already did back when we featured Soulvent's Soul Music 2020 compilation and Kit's 2021 debut EP, but, if I'm being honest, that barely covered anything of their wonderful journey so far. So let's take this extra spicy new release of theirs as an opportunity to rectify this mistake and delve a little deeper!

First off, as the intro implied, you should know that Circumference consists of two excellent producer friends, Finlay Freshney-Lee and Kit Jones, but let's take a look at the former first, before we get to the latter.

With parental influences ranging from the likes of Joy Division and Public Image Limited seeing regular airplay at the Freshney-Lee home to his dad also being an absolute menace on the guitar, it makes sense that music would be a big part of Finlay's life, but you probably wouldn't expect him to end up where he is now. While all this meant he was already big on music in general, it was the infamous "2012-2015 era of dubstep and general bass music" that made him a massive fan of all things electronic. So much so, that he even tried his own hand at getting something made, with his very first released tune arriving in 2015, a Techno banger under the alias Dimensions. However, both the genre and the alias didn't survive what I'm just gonna call the Noisia effect™️. After initially discovering the legendary Dutch trio through the more Dubsteppy parts of their multi-faceted discography, Finlay of course eventually also stumbled upon their DnB output, and the rest, as they say, is history.

History we'll talk about further, of course! Over the years, the drums and the basses took more and more hold of him, and in 2017 he unveiled a brand new project to tackle both of those at the same time: Freshney! After kicking off the alias with bootlegs of Dead Limit and Fox Stevenson's Miss You (a proper wombo combo), it was time to put out his first originals, with his debut EP Convolve leading the way on Lost Recordings in 2018. You know what also happened that year? Circumference was officially born! Wait, what? Well, when Finlay started his studies at the college in Exeter in 2017, he befriended this guy called Kit Jones. Similar to Fin, Kit's got a lot of his musicality through his family, with dad’s CD and vinyl collection and the "extremely musical nan" being the main catalyst in his early years, but his start into the electronic world would follow not all too much later, thanks to stumbling upon Daft Punk’s debut album Homework in 2010. Production-wise, he was more of a Bassline and even Garage dude, but everything changed when this freshman dude called Finlay came around and showed him this weird fast music.

In 2018, both Finlay and Kit started organising events under the BASS-EXE banner, which is where they actually debuted their collaborative project for the very first time. Their production debut didn't take much longer to arrive either, with their freely downloadable banger GLASS LID on The Skank Bank dropping in 2019 and their first official release, a remix for Ruth Royall's Paper Dragon project, following in 2020. With inspirations ranging from Hildur Guðnadóttir to The Sauce and unusual instruments like the Armenian Duduk being incorporated in their creations, their output really was unlike any other, and quickly found a home on the likes of Soulvent, Flexout and Overview. While this dynamic duo was working out rather well, they still had a whole lot of solo ambitions to share with the world during this time.

On the one hand, Finlay not only remixed Zombie Cats, collaborated with Portuguese maestro Jon Tho on Soulvent and pushed his sound across basically the whole techy scene, with Surveillance, Blackout, NËU, Sinful Maze and Redacted all clamoring for that sweet sweet new patella, he also pursued some experimental vibes with his second alias not.LNEAR. On the other hand, Kit finally started putting out some of his own stuff, starting with freebie Faulty and ending with his aforementioned EP on Surveillance. On the third, joint, hand, the both of them showed how ridiculous their remixing talent can be as Circumference, with respins of Grafix's Stutter and KL!P & LAFA's Remembr. After a bit of a break in 2023, the now Bristol-based bois returned with a bang - their Alter EP on MODUS! As if that wasn't massive enough, they now raise the bar once again, with their debut on a label so uniquely heavy in the sounds that it's pushing that we frankly need to talk about it more often on here: none other than Annix & Simula's imprint Neksus Sound. So let's check it out, shall we?

One might think with a name like Time we're talking about a regular ol' singular single, but it's actually a double-sided one, kicking off with Nowhere! While the hauntingly beautiful vocal on top of a welcoming warmness building itself up further and further might start off melodic enough, the main bassline's heart arrhythmia type wonkiness soon pulls us down into a world of oddness. Straight-up weird yet mesmerising bass movements, already heavy distortion action getting more and more in-your-face, proper snappy drums - entrancing is the right word, I would say. On the flipside, Always smoothly pulls us out of said trance, with its relentlessly repeating, delightfully strange vocal distantly ringing in our heads like a morning alarm you'd like to ignore. As is often the case, however, ignoring doesn't quite work, and as Time goes on, more and more parts of the vocal open up, until we are hit smack-dab in the face, with some properly chopped-up madness. Now that we're fully present, the duo mercilessly throws us back and forth between the eery yet pleasant floating, looping and rolling and the fake-dropped chopping, stabbing, stepping and bass wubbing - simply nuts!

Time and Time again, these two have Always taken us on all sorts of wonderfully weird journeys - Nowhere else did it sound as unique, murky and straight-up banging as on Neksus though!

Other techy murky stuff from this week:

Sleepnet - II
SMG - Critical Presents: Binary Vol. 28
Farflow - Smoke & Mirrors EP (Part 2)
Dapreme - Gimmie That EP
coil circuit - Control 💎

2. Yue - Set Sail [Pilot]

Recommended if you like: Fox Stevenson, Dossa & Locuzzed

Enough Bri'ish'ism, let's check out some new Dutchie vibes, provided by up-and-comer Yue!

Saying that Fleur Koelman, the Amsterdam-based artist behind this production debut, is "new" does feel kind of wrong though. Okay okay, let's jump back in time to explore what I mean with that cryptic statement. As a kid, back then still living in her hometown Alkmaar, Fleur was already busting out some bombastic basses with her trusty cello and even exploring the songwriting side of things, but when the infamous Skrillex wave™️ hit the world, teenage her knew she had to become a part of the electronic music world as well. At only 14 years of age, which should be around 10 years ago now if my professional internet stalking notes are correct, she already played her first gigs, and not all too long after, her Dubstep-Bass-and-Deephouse DJing stage name HitGirl was born. One by one, she conquered the Dancefloors around the country, sometimes as HitGirl, sometimes going by the name of Miss Molotov, but things were taken to an entirely new level when she started interning at what seems to be the coolest, most loveliest employer ever, Liquicity.

Not only had she become one of the main faces of the brand from 2018 on, the label management also got so enamoured with the digital art projects she had been dabbling in during that time that they recruited her to do more and more artworks and animations for the imprint's releases, to the point that she's now become a huge part of the visual identity on both the main label and its Galacy sister platform nowadays. During these early days, so late 2018, early 2019, she also debuted a brand new stage name: Yue! As someone so involved with Liquicity, it makes sense that she also regularly plays out some bangers at their events, from the family day to the summer festival, but over the years, she's also spun some sick selections at raves organised by the likes of NOX, Moonshine, Beats'N’Bass and Explicit. In the midst of all of this, she also found the time to pursue the production game. Years of slaving away both on her own and under the guidance of her significant other Mr. Stevenson, for whom she's also done some truly amazing artworks and even some backing vocals every now and then, have lead up to this point - her debut release on none other than UKF's Pilot, the aptly-titled Set Sail!

With a delightfully whimsical piano and a satisfyingly synthesised vocal fill, we are instantly transported to a place of sunshine, beaches and just generally a whole lot of summer vibes, before we've even crossed the 10 seconds mark. On this plane of feel-good vibery, we are treated to a vocal performance from Fleur that isn't just absolutely marvellous and elevates the whole atmosphere even further somehow, it's also expertly punctuated with distant background vocals and more and more layering further along the intro. Not just the vocal engineering is on point, however, the pure energy radiating from the drop is just incredible. Rapid-fire futuristic synths, shuffly drums, warmly wompy bass, plus all the fun vocal processing stuff from the intro, all coming together to form one undoubtably fantastic banger.

Positively fleured by this yuegely vibey, koel as hell debut! On a more serious note though, with a debut as great as this, I honestly cannot wait to see what else she's got in store for us in the future.

Other vibey things from this week:

Andromedik - Rise EP
[BORDERS], Puzzle - Grounded
barking continues - free (Remixes)
Niallo - Agnosthesia
Nia Archives - Silence Is Loud LP