My debut drum'n'bass album 'Akash' out now! [FREE ALBUM DOWNLOAD]

Hello everyone, hope this blog post finds you well.

So, eagerly waiting for the ice fishing season I finished my dungeon crawler RPG in mere days or weeks (see previous post).

Then I had this idea that's been in my mind for 10 years or so. I was messing around with Linux at the time and LADSPA had a numpad-like sampler where you could import audio, clip it and assign the clips to buttons on the keyboard. I can't remember the name of the program though, but I was big into drum'n'bass production back then. I recall chopping Firefight-breaks with it and getting something nice out of it.

The loop stuck, but I never finished a tune. A few years later when I did some neurofunk and sent tracks to record labels, I mentioned about possibly making an album instead of singles and EPs.

Both these ideas combined I started working on a tune, and 'Labyrinth' was born.

It's quite simplistic techstep/neurofunk track, but I believe it's one of the first I've made which utilises break chopping and editing. I tried mastering this technique back in 2007 or so, but all I could really do with the technology at the time was speed up or slow down breaks (in other words you chop the break to 16ths or so and move them to a new tempo in the beatgrid). Later Cubase could do this automatically but with the discovery of Ableton Live and Warp I could quickly come up with new ideas instead of chopping the break manually.

The synth sound is created in NI Massive, and the preset is mostly copied from Sub Focus' DnB Masterclass-videos. Basically how it works there's a rather complex filter-modulation on an unison saw wave. As for the main bassline I went with distorted sine bass playing staccato to get a trouser-flapping feel to it. The sub is usually the same; a pure bass-heavy sinewave with mild distortion for upper harmonics. The bass group is usually sidechained to the kick drum which gives the track additional energy and a "pumping" feel.

Then I took the "recipe" from 'Labyrinth' even further and tried to do the same with an Amen-like break, keeping the synth sound technically the same, and 'Lambda Core' was released.

Both of these singles paved way for my debut album wherein I used this sound exclusively. I used a moderate amount of distortion on the drums and the leads to get some grittiness on the overall feel of the tracks.

So, I started working 12-14 hours a day to get it out on Black Friday. I was working on 3-4 tunes per day to get a full album. At some point I lost interest in making an album but soon got it back. The ambient intro and outro were written quite quickly and they serve as mood setting tracks for the main course, which is 8 tracks of techstep/neurofunk drum'n'bass.

Tracklist:

1.Descent (Intro)

2.Procedural

3.Akash

4.Big Proppa

5.Coaxial

6.Blackmore Cell

7.Regression

8.Preliminary

9.Quantum Computing

10.Transcend (Outro)

Here it is in full on my Soundcloud page. Looking back it could be a bit more diverse in terms of soundscapes and maybe add an Amen roller, but I wanted to keep it straightforward. Hope you enjoy listening to it!

Until next time,

-ef