EVERY GENRE PROJECT - September 20 - Dancefloor Drum and Bass

Genre of the Day - Dancefloor Drum and Bass

Album of the Day - Mosaik by Camo & Krooked (2017)

Today’s genre feels pertinent, as tonight (or, by the time this article goes out, yesterday) I will be attending my first official, ticketed non-text-message-based and non-Coachella rave. This development is a virtue of a visit from my wonderful sister who is a dedicated fan of the genre and ticket-buying wizard, casting spells on AXS and Radiate all to bask in the lights and the energy of her favorite DJs. I also got to take an excellent elective for my minor about the history of EDM last semester, so I feel I’ve made up for my lack of raves thus far in learning about the culture. Musically speaking, there’s nothing more potent than absorbing it in real time, something I often note as I try my best to absorb genres particularly enhanced by the in-person listening experience. 

The prospect of dancefloor drum’n’bass conspicuously sounds like some of the undercurrents running through the threads of yesterday’s article, flamenco pop. Nearly every significant genre, if it makes past a decade or so of sustained interest, is subject to what the excellent music scholar Fabian Holt refers to as soft-shell dynamics (a revisited article I discussed in highlife and the Nashville Sound, if it’s not uncouth to reveal); there is a ‘perceived core’ defining the essential, distinctive sound of a genre, and then there is a soft shell of music that incorporates its essence but with popular elements. Soft shell dynamics imply a vested commercial interest at play; the record and touring industries seek to stimulate mass interest in a particular sound, particularly in the EDM context in the early 2010s when companies like SFX Entertainment and Live Nation, anticipating a newfound EDM-pop breakthrough thanks to the social media and the growing crossover visibility of figures like Calvin Harris, Avicii, and Skrillex, snapped up dozens of previously independent festivals. 

Drum’n’bass perhaps has never operated on the same levels of big house EDM or the Nashville machine, but today’s genre reveals that soft shell dynamics can occur on any scale of genre, though it sometimes has to do more with artists’ experimentation with blending core and pop as a parallel but less commercial development to more dominant EDM strains’ molding into pop structures. As drum’n’bass has grown out of its origins as an unmistakably distinctive and dense mode of expression helping express and lend power to marginalized Black Britons creating music in an urban environment, its meditations on speed, rhythm, and percussive sound have made it one of the most influential creative modes for electronic producers. We teleport to the 2010s once dancefloor drum’n’bass retools its structures for, well, danceability, adding more succinct, sharp synth leads, build ups, and less abrasive sounds. It’s both an evolution to keep a vital sound alive and positing it towards pop structures/ Purists might object to it, but it also opens d’n’b up to a whole new paying audience—what’s the trade off, ultimately? 

An eternal common denominator is that continental Europeans love house, techno, drum’n’bass, anything gritty and electronic. Tonight, we’re seeing princely-looking Dutch DJ Mau P. Austrian duo Camo and Krooked’s took on drum’n’bass amidst a variety of dancefloor sound starting in the mid-2000s, and their 2017 Mosaik sees the two liquefying their drum’n’bass into shiny sound design and peculiar, innovative drum patterning evolutions. The savvy synths and lonely vocal samples characteristic of so much ‘10s EDM like Odesza as on opener “Broken Pieces” are representative of the retooling over the decades. The drums of “Slow Down” approach more jazziness than the typical grittiness associated with drum’n’bass, fluid and gentle. They shift into the experimental occasionally on “Witchdoctor,” reminiscent of hard bass with its unconventional clapping and slippery synth work. Perhaps it’s only projection, but the desert guitar strums and diffusive and entrancing bass sleekness of “Heat of the Moment” feel geared towards festivals like Burning Man and Coachella, shifting their vision of drum’n’bass thoroughly to any context they desire. “Come Together” is one of the best blends of dancefloor euphoria and ripping drum’n’bass asserting their joyful coexistence on the ravefloor, if you’re only brave enough to get out there and take in these new takes on sounds constantly in development.