Picks Of The Week (29.06.24

1. REPAIR, Mikeyy - Lose It All [Let Them Cook Records]

Recommended if you like: Lee Mvtthews, Mylen, Melt.

You know what, it's been a while since we took a look at the Dancefloor talents bubbling over from the Newest of Zealands. And I've got the perfect occasion for our return to that side of the globe as well: Just this week, Kiwi/South-African industry behemoth Tenfold, which you might remember from our feature of SCARFIE's recent single, officially joined forces with one of if not the biggest Antipodean touring agencies and "cool shit doers" Audiology, deeply involved with the massive Mardi Gras festival and responsible for tours from the likes of Delta Heavy, Hybrid Minds, Carl Cox, Netsky and, like, so many more, to push the electronic music scene to the moon and even further, with their brand new collaborative imprint Let Them Cook Records! With on-point naming like that, it doesn't come as too much of a surprise that they would present us with a five-star meal, prepared by professional beat chefs REPAIR and Mikeyy, for their very first release - but before we get to that, let's get to know our cooks first!

With a basis of operation in Auckland, Bond Lance Roby had been tearing through the Aotearoan drum and bass landscape since at least 2020, when he started showcasing his dangerously dancefloor-destroying mixing skills under his DADDYLONGLEGS moniker through various mix competition entries, earning himself a finalist spot in Rumble In The Jungle's 2021 contest and even taking home the winning trophy in Deadline's competition. Between all that and the slowly but surely accumulating live sets, he also started pushing his very own sound through a series of sick self-released smashers, and together with Simple Conclusion, altercation and LINN, he was even pursuing label ownership tings with their own imprint Eroded Audio. However, the real integral moment in this most mulleted Bond's musical journey has got to be when he started pairing up with Troy Kete to form REPAIR in 2021!

Debuted on Tenfold, approved by Bou, premiered by Hybrid Minds on KISS FM and spotlighted on UKF's playlists, REPAIR's debut was such a smashing success, that the quickly following onslaught of career milestones weren't even that much of a surprise. Their followup Stay With Me with Ben Shaw not only received some additional attention thanks to their very first UKF upload, it was also the basis for their very first remix competition, resulting in a 14-track EP featuring names like TREi, Willy Mav, Mylky and BRIGSY! In between more and more singles on Tenfold, the duo also made their way onto The Prototypes' Get Hype, UKF's Pilot, Viper and Elevate, working together with Aussie talent like Ruebik or Fitch, and international names like Rebel Scum and Georgie Riot, and bootlegging Tiësto, Kygo, PNAU, Robert Miles, Camelphat and many, many more. While appearing on more and more lineups all across Oceania, they also provided their indubitably ingenious mixing talents for us far-away people to enjoy on Mollie Collins' KISS FM show, Ravewear Radio, George FM, Relevant DNB and UKF's FUTURE VISION streams in 2022. Plus, Bond had been expanding his genre horizons with his significant other Cassandra with their collaborative housey-garagey project Mum and Dad!

Then, in March of 2024, the news hit: Bond and Troy are going their separate, heavily mulleted, ways. No more RE-PAIR puns. While their bond had been broken and might never be REPAIRED again, their Bond was still all-in and decided to continue steering the REPAIRplane on his own. Aside from bootlegs of Mau P's Your Mind Is Dirty and DEORRO's 5 more hours, this label debut is actually his first release since the split-up! For this particular occasion, he's recruited another multi-talent to join him in the studio: Mikeyy!

While you might know him from his cold-as-Bond's-headphones House flips, his sampling of his best friend's mum or all the fun sets and hosting gigs all over the Aotearritory, Michael Malik's Mikeyy project has been around for a while longer than these recent highlights. In fact, his first cross-genre singer-rapper-songwriter singles were dropping back in 2020! When looking at the DnB context, however, his biggest claim to fame has got to be his feature on Lee Mvtthews' massive debut album, on their single Promises. A couple months later, the producer-dj-vocalist returns once more to show off his multi-faceted vocal talent on the faster tempos, on..

... Lose It All! With Mikeyy delivering a most wonderful performance about a most unpleasant relationship ending, full of fun little ad-libs and vocal layering that tickles my brain just right, this label debut is already off to a great start, but, of course, Mr. 007 did not rest on his laurels one bit and absolutely packed the tune with lovely instrumental bits: warm, bouncy bass plucks ebbing and flowing into our ears, an incredibly summery guitar riff lead, punchy drumwork, and even a fun 4x4 switchup in the second half!

With a debut as great as this, I don't think we have to wait for this new imprint to cook - they're already firing on all cylinders! Immense vibes.

Other dancefloor vibes from this week:

Benny Benassi, The Biz - Satisfaction (Netsky Remix)
Mazare - The Losers Club EP
Used - Dangerous Game
Diamond Eyes - Worship
Human Theory - Hypnotise
Chris Lorenzo - Pump (1991 Remix)

2. Waeys - Stopping Turning / Blink & Miss [Critical Music]

Recommended if you like: Klinical, Koherent, En:vy

Waeyt, how did we never talk about Waeys on here?! No waey has he slipped through four years without a featu.. - oh, we did actually feature him, waey back in 2020, for his very first EP on Critical. The only info I really dropped about him back then was that he is Dutch though, so let's roll back the tape once more, and do things properly this time!

Den Haag-born and nowadays Amsterdam-based Casper van Wijngaarden's musical life started taking shape as early as his childhood, thanks to his dad playing double and regular Bass in Big and regular Jazz bands. Eventually, little Casper wanted to create sounds himself and started playing Basses at home, under the guidance of his dad, until he switched gears and got himself some piano lessons. However, the love for the guitar never quite left him, and as he started getting into heavier and heavier rock and metal-ish music from the likes of Breaking Benjamin or Rise Against, it actually grew so much that he dropped piano lessons, in favour of teaching himself the guitar he got himself. Across seven years of self-learning, he had gotten better and better, but since he was also getting deeper and deeper into the mechanically-insane kinds of Metal, he never felt quite good enough to play in bands, or at least not the kinds that play the music he loves. His short stint working in IT did not feel right either though. So he tried to approach this music thing another waey.

With full support from his parents, he enrolled in the University of Arts in Utrecht to study Audio Design, and around 2016, he started unleashing his first few tunes as Waeys (a SEO-friendly misspelling of "ways", i.e. possibilities)! From meaty Halftime EDM wubs on Ninety9Lives to the wonky DnB on EDMComrades, you could already tell Casper's productions would eventually be floating high above the rest, and soon enough, that musical Wijngaardium Leviosa spell fully took effect: various insane Halftime releases on VALE and Interval, a big remix competition for New Element, his first, and only, Dancefloor tune with Against The Current, a new Neurofunk and Midtempo alias with his mate Nade called Krimea - but even outside of released music, he was already deeply entrenched in the scene around him! Not only was he playing regularly at Skorpion's Venom and Molotov events, he was also quite involved with the Nirvana Psytrance series of raves - and things only became crazier and crazier from here on out!

Via Ordure, or more specifically Rueben (I assume), Casper's tunes eventually found their way to Overview's label management team around 2019 and, to quote them, "knocked their heads clean off". Full Fledged, while never actually released, got teased by Overview's co-founder and label management operator guy sub-antics, but shortly after, his first four-tracker on the Lifestyle-but-better imprint, the Ropple EP (including a juicy skantia remix), droppled, properly putting him on the map. That same year, he also co-founded the Rolling In The Deep (or Rolling Eclectic) event series, experienced his first international gig, thanks to the team at Overview, and made his waey onto Overview's Part 2 compilation that year with Hadley.

The next year, though? Releases on Delta9, Overview, DIVIDID, Skankandbass and Critical, collaborations with Creatures and Wingz, remixes for Low5 on Differential and Krispy on Delta9 again, guest mixes for Harriet Jaxxon on Rinse FM, Studio Brussel and, once more, Delta9, a remix competition for Mapper, all resulting in a thoroughly earned win of Drum & Bass Arena's Best Newcomer award! In the span of 1-2 years, Waeys became the hottest name in the scene, and things just continued to escalate. 2021 saw him collaborating with his housemate Rueben for a full EP, and Klinical, Levela, Particle and Disrupta for truly hefty one-offs, returning to Overview, Critical and even VALE, and expanding his label rollerdex with originals on Shogun and Onyx - but it was his remix game that truly blew the roof off during all of this. Remixes for Zombie Cats, Voltage, Grey Code on Music Squad, Arkaik and Data 3 on Flexout, Cadense on Bowlcut (RIP), and, through being one of the winners of the Driving Insane remix competition, even Black Sun Empire on Blackout!

With only the tootiest of toots and the rolleriest of rollers, he kept on smashing out bangers on Overview, Critical, collaborating with Molecular, Levela, Unglued and LaMeduza, until even Noisia recognised his remixing talents and got him to rework their classic Voodoo. It wasn't just all toots and horns though. On his debut mini-album Repetition, he, ironically enough, deliberately did not want to retread the style of his biggest hits and instead let himself explore sonics outside his usual foghorny roller style, with flowanastasia, Bart de Vries, Patch Edison helping out on the vocal front. While still favouring the bangers in the immediate aftermath, especially in his collaborative work with Nymfo, Zombie Cats and Azotix, he started weaving in more and more liquid vibes into his output on Overview, Dispatch, Nymfo's Love For Low Frequencies, Critical, Sofa Sound, Vandal and Yamatai.

Now, the one and only Waeys returns to one of his two homes, Critical Music, to show off the duality of his sound, on Stopping Turning / Blink & Miss. As if stuck in a far-reaching tunnel with no light at either end of it, on Stopping Turning we slowly but surely make our way towards the distantly echoing, eerie arrangement of anxiety-inducing drums, creepy vocal cuts and sinister synths. The drums cut out, only the flimsy yet ominous synth bleep staccato and the infectious yet straight-up menacing vocal remain, both now right behind you - until we are launched into the heart-pounding hurricane of synths, drums and phone ring type basses that is the drop. What an absolute tune. We do seem to manage to come out of this one alive though, as Blink & Miss leads us straight into the sunshine, where loungey trumpets and soulful vocals welcome us into their arms. Wasting no time at all, real drum and bass evangelist Duskee unleashes a barrage of his signature pure-vibes bar spitting on top of truly sublime synths, tightly rolling drums and just all-around loveliness in audio form.

Simultaneously taking no prisoners and letting all the inmates relax in the sun, bringing together both waeghty and waevy. Incredible!

Other deep stuff from this week:

Revan - The Bridge EP
Chook - Echoes Of Existence
Dizrupt - Barko EP
Senchai - Peace Treaty / Choose 💎
Sustance - Vapour EP
Yatuza, Frannabik - Fraud
Hystatus - Patterns In The Sky EP 💎