I will likely listen to and comment on this mix soon. Thx especially for tracklist and download link.
I wanted to ask a question prompted by your tracklist. It seems that when “Intelligent Drum and Bass” and “Atmospheric” a-la LTJ Bukem died in the early 2000s, the genre “Drumfunk” has existed more or less since.. but.. is quite limited in total production output, and has been tapering off in recent years? Like, there’s 10-15 labels at most, and half of them are either Paradox, Nucleus, Fanu or a few other guys? It almost seems like to try to play choppage you don’t have a lot of options? Am I missing something? I tried to do some mixes in this style but couldn’t satisfy my preference for artist uniqueness across an entire mix..
Hi Awesomer! Thanks for the feedback, yes you’re right, it’s really hard to compile a “drumfunk” mix now, and it’s a real problem that the tracks are very similar to each other, in fact, Paradox himself has a lot of boring tunes that differ just by soundscapes and a couple of breaks. It’s true both for vinyl and digital downloads. But I use the term “drumfunk” just to let people identify the general style of a mix. In fact, breakbeat-oriented stuff existed “at all times” of d&b, and I prefer to combine those leftfield-oriented things with drumfunk itself. So it’s not strictly drumfunk, drums may be non-funky but still create proper vibe.
I listened to your mix a couple of times over the last week or so, sometimes on the macbook speakers other times via the bose speakers downstairs. Here’s my feedback.
Mixing is solid throughout. I didn’t really notice you mixing which for this style of music is pretty difficult to achieve. Smooth transitions and smooth levels throughout. I could have used maybe a little more explicitly obvious mixing, when music is this breaky I kinda want to hear cutting between tracks to really accentuate the contrast between the breaks.
Tracklist was good but tracks generally sounded pretty similar? Considering that you really do seem to have put work into being diverse in terms of producers and sub-genres of choppage, this was sorta surprising. But on the plus side the tracks all fit together in a logical progression and in terms of sound aesthetic. Some of these tracks were damn hard drum oriented stuff! For as interesting as the drum programming was throughout, there was no particular track that really stuck out, perhaps because the mix generally lacked vocals or samples?
I appreciate the tracklist and download link! Also thank you for answering my question about drumfunk/choppage. It’s nice to get confirmation that it wasn’t just me missing some secret source of genre relevant stuff. Your commentary on Paradox is very much my experience.. good stuff in general, but “differs just by soundscapes and a couple of breaks” hehe!
