Picks Of The Week (15.06.24

To balance out the endless Neuro I will have subjected myself to during this weekend of Darkshirenanigans, I thought I'd take the energy levels down a few notches this week, with not just one, but two Hidden Gems Of The Week™️!

1. Seven-Headed - Jilted / Red Dragon 💎 [SubCulture Recordings]

Recommended if you like: Fre4knc, Yannons, Petroll

Let's start by dissecting one particular exciting name coming out of Groningen's vibrant (Drum and) Bass music culture: Seven-Headed!

Or is it Rotterdam, as his Four Corners bio says? Or maybe somewhere else in the Friesland area, as aluded to in his ZolderkamerPioniers press coverage? You know what, let's just say he's from The Netherlands for now and start from the beginning.

Wherever the intrigerende naam is situated now, 22-year-old Matthijs Van Kouteren has been chipping away at this music thing for quite some time now. However, back when complaining about school maths was still one of his main concerns, back when he was an aspiring gaming star on the YouTubez, he was more of a guitar enthusiast than anything else, with the drums and the basses fortunately following suit in the following years. During his studies at the Academie voor Popcultuur (in Groningen, for those still keeping track about the geolocation aspect), he not only continued absolutely slaying it on the guitar, he also became known as one third of the Drum & Bass & Breakbeat collective Dysfunctional. Sadly, not much remains of it online, except for some announcements for fun-looking raves with full medical gear during Covid times, but luckily, Matthijs continued the DnB production on his own, as Seven-Headed!

Just a year later, his debut release Charagma turned at least seven heads (a couple of them sitting behind the decks at VISION Radio) on Four Corners' fifth edition of the wonderful Foundations VA series, swiftly followed by the one-two-punch release that was Luxor / Jesters with fellow Groningian Pneuma, on Subplate. To further strengthen his network in the scene and just get some new perspectives and helpful experiences, Matthijs not only joined the aforementioned ZolderkamerPioniers project for up-and-coming Frisian creators, since this year he is also participating in the Hit the North talent program, responsible for names like Fred Goverde, The Vices, Johnny loves me and many more I frankly don't know anything about - but the project seems amazing! Aside from the occasional guitarist gig with the band Be My Guest, he's of course also been shelling the deep and dark tunes out all over the area as a regular at both the Ondergronds and SubCulture events, with the clear highlight being his recent opening set at VISION's outing at the legendary Simplon earlier this year.

Shortly after, Mr. Kouteren also became part of the SubCulture Recordings family, with a tune on their debut compilation Physis: Parodos. Considering all of this deep involvement, and the fact that this newest double single is also coming to us via the SubCultural way, we should probably take a bit of a look at SubCulture Recordings as well, eh?

At the tail end of the peak pandemic times, so around 2022/2023, Jesse van Dijk and five other students realised just how scarce opportunities for socialisation amongst international students and young artists had gotten. During a party in an anti-squatting house, they realised they wanted to be the change they wanted to see in the world and came up with the idea of a collective to solve this exact problem. Under the Anti-Squat umbrella, they put on anything from Halloween parties to Christmas and New Year’s markets, bringing together people of all backgrounds. With events and every-day life gearing back up to normal levels again, they pivoted to a more specific type of event, championing the vibes the members had grown to love and sometimes even produce: Dubstep, UK Garage, and, of course, Drum and Bass. SubCulture was born!

From 2023 on, the first official SubCulture raves started rolling in, with the likes of Banoozled, Red Manta, Kietsune, and Liquicity DJ Contest veteran (and maybe even future winner?) Rouleur regularly bringing on the best liquid, deep, dark and dancefloor vibes DnB has to offer. Occasionally they do make their way out of town, like when they came down to take over Oldenburg's Club Metro a couple months back, but SubCulture's focus is squarely on pushing Groningen's finest local talent as best as possible - sometimes even collaborating with their colleagues over at Ondergronds. This year, they decided to expand their operations, with their incredibly fresh mix series Mysteriae. Week in, week out, Groningen-based talent all across the Bass music spectrum, from the usual SubCulture regulars to completely new names, get a chance to take listeners on a journey through their favourite tunes. Just two months later, in April 2024, the brand took another huge leap forward by becoming a full-blown label, SubCulture Recordings!

So where does Matthijs come into play here then? Well, of course, he's been a regular on SubCulture lineups since the Anti-Squat days, but he's also provided the very second entry in the Mysteriae series and has been instrumental in the creation of the label, on which he's already released the wonderfully vibey Idolatry and to which he now returns, with Jilted / Red Dragon!

Once Jilted starts to work its magic on your ears, you will begin to understand why I rolled all this long backstory out for this particular release. Sure, the atmosphere is on point and the rolling drums are tight and snappy, but it's that back and forth between the straight-up massive bass artillery and the fast-paced wub machinery evolving further and further into nasty territory until the track is menacingly growling at you, that gets me going every single time. In the same vein, Red Dragon's deeply rumbling, ever-changing bassline, in combination with the incredibly quickly firing, uniquely flowing drumwork and the on-point melodic work all around, never fails to grab me by the neck to get my head noddin'.

Somewhere in there a joke about Matt(hijs) Groening(en) is waiting to be discovered, but until I figure that out, go listen to these two spectacularly large slices of sinister, gloomy, haunting deep and dark vibes already!

2. Re:growth - Get Close EP 💎 [Empathy Audio]

Recommended if you like: Creatures, Monty, Trail

On the lush flipside, we've got the debut release of Re:growth!

At this point in the review I would usually try to tie together all the shreds of information I could gather from various interviews, social pages and/or discography sources. Well, here we go: After countless years of slaving away in the shadows trying to get the vibes just right, German producer Kevin Höhensteiger, since this very release also known as Re:growth, is now finally unleashing the wonderful creations he has been witholding from us, starting with the four-track debut EP Get Close on Tyrol-based label Empathy Audio. Yep, that's literally all I got on him. Which kind of makes the quality of this EP even crazier, to be honest.

Alright alright, so if we've got nothing more to say on the artist background, what about the label? Considering we already talked a lot about them when featuring Apollo's Wanderer EP and Dub Ten's debut single last year, there's not a whole lot left to uncover, so I'll just give you a little recap of what happened in the meantime. Not only have they leveled up their game quite a bit on the rave side of things, with Empathy Labelnights in Innsbruck and their legendary collaborative event with Yamatai Records, and continued to deliver incredible music from their regulars like Apollo and Daney, Vienna residents con:volute and K SONIC and even the one and only Dunk, starting with the early Christmas present that was the Surveillance compilation, they also reworked their whole design language together with Jack from Mango Visions to be even sleeker. Love me a good rebrand. Plus, they celebrated 1000 SoundCloud followers with a free sample pack, compiled by all their regulars!

Continuing their habit of introducing only the most sublime of talents to the scene, they now present mysterious German producer Re:growth's debut EP, Get Close! Right away, it becomes clear on what a wonderful journey we have embarked on with this EP, as opener All I Need gives us an incredibly well-rounded package of only the fullest of kick-basses, the warmest of heavily reverberated atmospheres and the smoothest of drum rolls, across six whole minutes! To quickly dispel any thoughts of him being a one-vibe-wonder, Kevin shows us just how filthily minimal he can go if he really wants to on Don't Talk, showcasing an arsenal of cheeky, bass-face-causing wubs all across the frequency spectrum. Third stop and title track Get Close combines the two preceding vibes into one, resulting in a big bad bassline intimidatingly ebb- and flowing on some rather aggressively rolling drums. Lastly, Magic Mystery takes us back to the lushest of the lush parts of the spectrum - impeccably vibey vocals, a subtle yet fast-paced flurry of delightful synths, and softly flowing drums included!

With a debut as intensely vibey, sonically diverse and cleanly produced as this, you would be a fool not to check out Re:growth immediately!