Picks Of The Week (14.03.26

I want to preface my usual waffling with one thing: The choice which releases to cover this week has genuinely never been easier. Even if you don't want to read about them, I do urge you to check them out immediately!

1. Omadhaun - Hornets 💎 [Inspected]

Recommended if you like: Culprate, Vorso, Voljum

First up, someone I had not heard of even once before. In my defense, there were not that many chances for me to have gotten to know him until now. In fact, now that I'm looking for any semblance DnB in his (officially released) discography, there were literally zero chances. Aside from some SoundCloud stuff, this is his debut DnB release! Before we get to explaining why I am freaking out about this, and making it my Hidden Gem Of The Week™️, however, let's turn back the clock a bit.

1.1. Ryan Quinn Porter (2019)

Due to being exposed to plenty of diverse musical sickness by way of his parents' impeccable tastes, Ryan Quinn Porter has himself built up quite the exquisite sonic repertoire over the years. With inspirations coming from all over the world, sound system culture, technological experimentation and just left field music in general, it makes a lot of sense that once the Worthingian got to creating tunes of his own, they would be sonically all over the place, in the best possible of ways. Okay there was this perhaps more normal band Pink Ocean he was part of, but I can't find any of their songs anyway, so that one might as well have been weird too!

The first bigger production project he was happy to share with the world was his 2019 debut EP, Internal Locust. Featuring guitars laid down by Ryan himself and percussionary action from another taste-setting relative, his uncle Sean Quinn, and from what I can tell the blood-unrelated Dylan Simpson, this one not only made waves in his local circles, but also brought a certain someone's attention with it. Innocently sent to their feedback stream just to get some pointers on what to improve in future endeavours, Ryan instead captured the stream host's heart and soul with his unique way of putting sounds together. That mysterious streamer? None other than Culprate!

1.2. A friend of Culprate's (2020 - 2026)

In fact, he was so enamoured with Ryan's output as Omadhaun so far, that he asked him to support him on his album tour - which meant Ryan had to go and learn how to DJ, first of all! Thanks to the mic de pán (as the French call it), he had enough time on his hands to take his mixing skills to a Culprate worthy level before the actual show, and while he was at it, he submitted an entry into Keep Hush and AIAIAI's open deck competition Off Sight. Since I'm mentioning it here, you can probably tell where this is going but: he won! Out of 600 submissions (!), he made the cut along 7 others, and got to present his stylish mixing on their official channel.

While he also graced us with another one of his production miracles, with his remix for Oslo Twins' 'The Edge' in that same year, the following years were more about the DJing. Multiple outings at his mentor's event series Culprate & Friends, support slots for Jungle Syndicate's birthday event, and even appearances at Boomtown - not too shabby! Slowly but surely, the discography on his SoundCloud grew a bit as well, with bootlegs for Skepta, Warda, and, uhm, Mario I guess showing what he can do in the realms of 140, DnB, and rave sirens laden Garage, respectively. Seriously, that Desert Theme bootleg is a work of Bristolian art!

All of this might sound unassuming enough, but trust me, it all lead to one of the best EPs we have gotten in the past years. So let's check it out then!

1.3. Hornets EP

Opening with the faint humming of a not-too-distant swarm of titular insects just living their best hive-lives, 7-minute oriental opera and title track Hornets takes its sweet time to set the tone just right. Across almost two minutes, guitars, keys, strings, vocals all transport you to a world of Dune-esque proportions, which soon after erupts into holy war, as the swarm begins its attack. Hectic as heck, ever-changing drums and thoroughly aggressively buzzing hornets offer a violent contrast to the otherwise so gentle, reverberating melodies Ryan builds up and expands upon over and over again. We have not yet survived the hive's onslaught yet though, as deeply rumbling kicks vibrate so vehemently that our sanity is at risk of breaking apart, before the decimated but still very agitated hornet pack grumbles, glitches, and breaks apart one last time.

While not as much of a cinematic epic as its predecessor with its under 4 minute runtime (gasp!), Through My Mind's piercing vocals, imbued with hundreds of haunting effects and constantly iterating its hypnotic mantra, quickly let you know that this one is quite special as well. As we make our way deeper into the mind, absolutely bonkers drums that just need to be experienced to be believed, incredibly stylish synth work and waves of bass wash over us in ways you don't often experience in a tune. Speaking of rare experiences, String Theory for absolutely sure is one! Front-to-back string action going from dramatic to lovely to hectic and back again, while the everything around it descends into actual chaos? Sign me up! Wonderfully wonky rhythmic elements, 4x4 bass assaults, all leading into an outright break-beastly firework of a drop, which of course keeps reinventing itself with growls unlike any other, constantly evolving percussion and slower wobbly parts - it's genuinely like listening to a short play!

In fact, a play is probably a good description for six-and-a-half-minute epic Vesuvius as well. Softly, we water-drop into a scenic tour through unique guitars, operette vocals, and wobbly whomps, but that is just the very beginning of this particular Odyssey. Bit-crushed drums lead us to an arrangement of whimsical yet otherworldly tractor beams, out-of-control breaks, pling-plong keys, hip-hop scratches, flutes, and dramatic vocals, all pressed through various levels of glitchiness, before we suddenly switch into an actual stop-start snare pattern, that gives way to menacing waves of bass, and so many things entering our brain you just have to give in to the madness of it all. Lastly, we got our boi Culprate remixing the tune that kickstarted it all, Internal Locust! A tad bouncier, with all sorts of plinky ploinky keys and whompy-glorpy basses, while still playing around with stereo like the original, was the first impression, but Culprate being Culprate, this is of course just the beginning. Venturing through multiple tempos and genres, we eventually end up in a truly absurd DnB world, with acid-laden bloopies rewiring our gray matter's circuitry into oblivion - this one's a journey.

1.4. Conclusion

Apparently, Omadhaun is an Irish word for "fool", and that's exactly what you would be if you don't check this one out. Not a single second is cookie cutter or copy paste. Thanks to the stupendous amount of ideas impeccably woven together in each of them, even the shorter tunes feel like full-on EPs in their own right, while still remaining coherent and lovely throughout. Genuinely one of the best EPs DnB has brought forth in a while.

2. Against Humanity - Dark And Light 💎 [Eatbrain]

Recommended if you like: Burr Oak, yanekcore, ABIS

Your eyes see correctly, we've got another Hidden Gem ™️ on our hands this week!

2.1. Musiques des Ordures (2014 - 2026)

While there's not a whole lot I can tell you about the personal lives of Sergent Guillaume and Yann Le Strat, the two shadowy Frenchmen behind this particularly mysterious project, there's quite a bit more of history to unpack here than the Hidden Gem™️ status might imply. Back in the ancient times of 2014, the French duo stumbled upon an ancestral Ankh nearby Saqqara's necropolis, as two good friends often do, which upon closer inspection revealed a phrase we have come to know them under since then: ضد الإنسانية - Against Humanity.

Equipped with massive Imhotepian metal masks and for some reason standing proudly under the banner of "Trash Music", the duo started their journey into the world of EDM, or more specifically Electro. Via THU Records, they unleashed both the 'Wrath Of Horus' and all sorts of basslines that were too rough for even the EDM Network, who in the end relented and crowned them with their Best Of 2014 label, under the Dirty Electro category. As time went on, they expanded their genre horizon by exploring the sounds of Filthstep, Dubstep, and Trashstep, which I'm just gonna insist are all different from each other, on the likes of Buygore, THU, and their very own Trash Family. Now sporting support from legends like Spag Heddy and Code:Pandorum, they started amping up the energy even further, and by 2016, you could hear their trashily banging slappers on imprints like Crowsnest and Prime Audio - where they even got Graphyt and Mister Pandorum himself involved as colla-bros!

If the originals were not your thing, you might instead be interested in the various remix projects they initiated over those years: A remix competition for 'Saqqara', an entire remix EP featuring BRAWLER, WiseLabs, Synapse, and Arkasia, and bonus reworks by Dubscribe & Iso:R, Soberts, Blaster and Ferd. That's a lot of names! As 2018 saw Yann returning to the project from a work-induced hiatus, the duo not only switched DAWs, they also started dropping JAWs with their supremely heavy takes on Dubstep on Uplink Audio, Bassweight, and, of course, Trash Family.

And then... nothing. However, they used the three whole years after their 'Underworld' EPs to study the ancient scripture of Nubiafunk, finally reemerging from the hiatus crypt in 2024, with their very first full-on DnB EP In The Dark on the legendary Eatbrain. The next thing after that? This newest five-tracker of theirs!

2.2. Dark And Light EP

Maddening voices pull us into the machinery of doom that is EP opener Shapershifter, where a robotic 'Against Humanity' announces the arrival of the hellspawn: A milli-second of hopeful silence, followed by an outright demonic wall of bass, paired up with a techy vocal chop response. Wasting no time at all, a 4x4 switchup breakdown pushes us further down the pits of insanity, where machine gun fire melodies relentlessly rain down upon us - there's so much to unpack in not even 3 minutes of runtime! Speakers wears its Tentacles intro inspirations on its sleeve, and uses the satisfyingly cascading vocal trick to bring us into a world of supremely distorted basses and stereo-wandering synth stutters, ending in an over-the-top brain-scratching screeching I genuinely cannot get enough of.

After all this destruction, we take a bit of a breather, with title track Dark & Light. Drenched in moody, dramatically melodic atmospheric drip, and garnished with a vocal that is both deeply dark and exhilarating euphoric, the Frenchmen have built up quite the expectations here, but unlike Hermes, they actually deliver. Strikingly spikey techy stabs, menacing bass, fast-paced madness on top of monolithic basses rumbling our foundation to their core, and a second drop that sees the distortions taking over society, pushing past even the wildest of imaginations. Lost Tape opens loud and proud, before introducing the Hip-Hop sample that will lead us to a world of glitchy glory. As if the absurd, pling-plong synths sitting in a space my ears didn't even know existed with an avalanche of bass beneath were not wonderful enough, they take it up another notch and transport us to a world of punchy dancefloor drums and truly unruly, over-the-top distortion. So, so good.

Last but certainly not least, Mind Check with fellow frenchie Mathieu Akadz Lenfant, himself known to have dabbled in DnB and Humanity-related endeavours, takes it all into a bit of a steppy direction, with MC vocals echoing throughout the funky arrangement, in between the elephantastiqué basses. As with the rest of the EP, we don't stop here though, and keep escalating, until we arrive at an almost Jump Up esque whompy arrangement, but amped up ten-thousand-fold with gnarly Neuro production.

2.3. Conclusion

While much shorter than your typical Neuro track lengths, each stop of this journey is absolutely packed with ideas and incredibly entertaining arrangements, which are brought to life with outstanding production. C'est Magnifique!