Picks Of The Week (14.09.24

1. Pirapus - GO BACK (We Can't) [STNS]

Recommended if you like: SOTA, Primate, skantia

Some names might carry more recognition, or will win more awards in the all-too-often annoyingly UK-centric awards come December, but anyone who recognised the dubs literally all the big names, from Kanine to Camo & Krooked, played out at all across the entire festival season, will know it's absolutely been the year of Stadium-turned-Future-drum-and-now-Auckland-bassed duo Pirapus. As someone who's been singing their praises since 2021 - incredibly often on here as well - and is of course very familiar with them and their many dubs, it honestly has been incredibly exciting to hear their futuristic bangers on oh so many big sound systems. It's like the scene is finally starting to get my hype!

Not only is their sound finally catching on in more and more places, they've also been tutoring quite a few of my favourite up-and-coming dancefloor producers over in Australia and probably even more places, while continuing to explore the future sound™️ with more Brody Leigh collaboradiant goodness and even some Cyber Dubstep with INSANE. Recently, they announced their signing with the legendary MB Artists for some long-overdue European shows (of which I'll be attending a few at the very least), unleashed the first of their coveted festival dubs, BLOW THE ROOF with masked avenger REAPER, fusing the very best of both of their sounds into one hell of a banger, and are now following all that up with the second in line but first on my list of wanted, nay needed ids, GO BACK (We Can't) on STNS.

So what is it about this tune in particular that not only managed to make me love it, but also made all those artists play it out all over the world then? Perhaps it's the instantly earwormy, wonderfully cheeky, almost hardstyle-y, uniquely them horn lead. Perhaps it's the incredibly effective whirlwind of skippy stutters stabs, paired with growling bass and alien abduction noises responses. Perhaps it's that little delay at the beginning of each drop phrase creating a simply addictive rhythm. Perhaps it's that little yuh. Perhaps it's the excellent clanky snare. Perhaps it's the stuttery glitched-out vocals leading us into an extra bleepy bloopy 4x4 version of it all in the second half. More reasonably, it's probably all of it, fused together with their signature Pirapus magic™️. Either way, I absolutely love it and cannot wait to mix around with it myself!

I most certainly cannot go back to the days where Pirapus weren't the hottest name in the business. Huge. Massive. Big, even.

Other bangers from this week:

Circadian, System F - Cry
Nebulate - Doomsday EP
Screamarts, Blocksberg - Walls
Mean Teeth - Bring Back The Funk Remixed Part 3
Gydra - Lava Run VIP / Ikra (Jade Venom Remix)
Teductive - Home (Hackmorizon Remix) 💎

2. Alix Perez - Entanglements LP [1985 Music]

Recommended if you like: Calibre, Lenzman, Satl

Sure, we've got all sorts of people with different tastes frequenting our little sub (shocking, I know), but I'd be hard pressed to name a release you lot were anticipating more than this one, at least in recent history. While this definitely deserved a dedicated spotlight writeup, time simply was not in my favour, so a spot on here will have to make due. That being said, a deep dive into this scene's biggest sepia, black and white tone enthusiast is long overdue, so let's make like the amphibians whose sounds are so in vogue lately and jump into the pond of deep darkness and soulful beauty - let's talk about Alix Perez.

Born in literally 1984, Belgian native Alix Depauw grew up right as the electronic music scene he himself would later become a big part of started growing out of its early roots into the "bass music" umbrella we know it as today. With a lot of Funk and Soul influences coming into his life from his dad's side, and a love for everything vinyl, Techno and, more importantly, Jungle brought into the mix from his mom's, young Alix had been served up quite the unique musical cocktail. Add to that his own early love for French and American Hip-Hop, the percussive rhythms he was experiencing at the Belgian carnival of Binche paired with the even drum-heavier sonics of Krust, Peshay and Photek his mom would play out at home, first live dance music experiences at the Dance Valley festival in Holland and a healthy techno diet ranging via R&S and Detroit joints, and it's not hard to see how he would end up with the eclectic, multi-genre spanning taste he's now known for.

After living in France for a little while, his mom and him would make the, in hindsight at least, pivotable move up north to London in 1999. With Alix already introduced to the world of DJing a couple years before - at 14 by the real MVP of this story, his mom - the immensely diverse musical culture of the English capital soon inspired him to participate in the conversation himself, by starting his very own production journey at 17. While pursuing his graphic design studies at uni, he would continuously work on improving the craft, and trying to get the results out there by distributing demo CDs all over London. Eventually, tunes like Dub Rock and For The Masses got picked up by Horizons and Fokuz (respectively) in 2005 and after further outings on Spearhead, Integral, Soul:R, Metalheadz and perhaps most notably Shogun over the next couple of years, Alix Perez had swiftly turned into a household name to look out for, to the point that outlets began describing him as "Leader of the Nu Skool". However, it arguably was his debut album 1984, Shogun's very first artist LP, that really put him on the map.

Thanks to the sounds of the Virus TI synth he bought during the writing of it, he not only created one of this genre's finest albums ever, he also evolved his entire approach for songwriting from sample-based thinking to more hardware-focused production. Over the next few years of singles and EPs, he slowly but surely started accumulating more and more goodies to play around with, until he eventually stripped it all back to the essential equipment with the advent of his second long player, Chroma Chords, in 2013. With the different approach to production also came more and more genre experimentation all across the board, both on the album and post-rollout on Exit, but to actually paint the full picture here we gotta mention the aliases. Not only has he done a couple one-or-two-offs like Alter:Native in 2007, ARP.101 in 2010 and the supergroup project Richie Brains in 2016, he's also been exploring his love for low frequencies in entirely new ways together with Eprom under their Shades alias since 2015. After first working together during a writing session for Foreign Beggars, they realised their styles meshed together incredibly well, and went on to put out a whole catalogue of mindbending bass music, with their two albums In Praise Of Darkness in 2018 and From A Vein in 2022 being the obvious highlights.

Of course, he kept the Perez name going all throughout this as well, but after his initial few years at the top of Shogun's lineup, he sought to express himself on an even deeper level of creativity by finally fulfilling his long-held dream: creating his very own label, 1985 Music! As with all of his projects, Alix's razor-sharp audiovisual vision did not just make the initial years of his own releases on the platform stand out to the point that it immediately won Best Newcomer label at the Drum&BassArena Awards in 2016, once it embraced demos from the outside, it evolved into the haven for the best of the best the deep, dark and liquid spectrum has to offer from some of the scene's most talented producers, with Monty, Visages, Skeptical, Halogenix and SubMarine on the DnB front, and the likes of Drone, Cesco and Metrodome covering the slower tempos. While the amazing music was definitely the focus, Alix also made sure that everything else clicked together too: Straight-up stunning and very deservedly award-winning artworks, bespoke merchandise via his own 1985 Studios clothing line (which he expanded with the new No Bounds venture earlier this year), vinyl pressings for all of its releases, incredibly diverse compilations, crossovers with DLR's one and only Sofa Sound, and no exclusivity clauses, ever.

On One-Nine-Eight-Five, Alix kept a steady flow of instant classic EPs coming on the Perez front, a lot dominating the clubs on release and some still going strong even years down the line, but also never really lost touch with the lush liquid he made a name for himself with. In fact, since moving all the way over to New Zealand right as the pandemic came to be, he seems to have made a concentrated effort to keep the sound alive on some of his bigger projects like the excellent Without End mini-album in 2020 or the Wairua EP in 2022, balancing out the other sonic meanness he was smashing out like last year's Headland collaboration LP Hellion, his collaborative work with DLR, Bou, Visages and of course Eprom, or even solo work like his straight-up scary Gloom EP earlier this year. After so much soundsystem destroying heaviness, it's my pleasure to announce that this week saw the return of the soulful, lush and all-around vibey, with the advent of his newest mini-LP, Entanglements!

As if trying to offer an antidote to the stress of the always-busy always-online always-doomscrolling world we live in, the medium player's intro and title track Entanglements eases us into this lovely world with an extended two minute intro full of acoustic sonics, before gently guiding us onto the dreamy ride of sublime, piano-driven syncopation. In Your Eyes continues the vibe effortlessly, straightening the drum action out into a smooth roller, giving us a truly superb piano experience and introducing a most wonderful vocal into the mix - all slowly unraveled over its 6 minute runtime. Next, we go back to the basics with Elastic Soul sampling the Revelation Funk classic Elastic Lover, exuding the classic soul-driven liquid funk energy of the early days of the subgenre. R2R takes the brassy instrumentalisation of its predecessor and works it into a rather wobbly Jamaican soundsystem kind of vibes, with tons of intricate drum work all crashing in and out of eachother and a vocal reminiscent of, if not actually sampled from, the late and great Fats.

The second half of the album opens with Kauri, named after a type of tree common in New Zealand and featuring 1985 regulars, frequent Perez collaborators and french trio infernale Visages, taking another classic vocal sample, working their combined lushness magic™️ on it and taking us on an infectiously rhythmic drive through the countryside. False Promises not only gives us another soulful vocal to close our eyes and just enjoy, the simply perfect combination of guitar riffin', synths driftin' and piano shiftin' really do keeps my spirits uplifted all throughout, before Dark Pulse takes the vibes down a few octaves, rolling it out with some proper snappy drum action, interjecting bass whomps and waves of satisfying rumblings rolling out underneath it all. Lastly, we take a thorough, deep exhale with the sonic stroll through pure ambient beauty that is Continual Emotion, closing things off rather nicely.

A 40 minute strong Alixir of melancholic, heart-breaking and -filling lushness. The LP might be mini, but the vibes sure are maxi.

Other similar vibes from this week:

Phil Tangent, Steo - Bedouin (Satl Remix)
GLXY, DRS - She Sings For Me (Workforce Remix)
Adam F - Music In My Mind Revisited (DJ Marky & Makoto Reboot)
Culture Shock, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs - Back In Time
ARTY, Jay Sorrow, Etherwood - In My Head