Music Post Disclaimer: Please prepare headphones with good bass or a subwoofer and look up as many songs as possible on Spotify/Soundcloud. Some are available on Youtube or Spotify only. Have a good listen!
It’s Drum and Bass again! This time, in contrast to Colorful Drum and Bass, it’s lacking colors completely and it’s much darker at the same time, hence it’s name Dark Drum And Bass. To get in the right mood as quickly as possible, listen to that, best during the night:
Technical Itch – The Hand (an exclusive version, I couldn’t find that on Youtube)
Besides featuring a certain lack of melody, its beat is not merely uplifting but rather banging your head against the wall … eventually breaking the wall. It’s very energetic, raw and quite uninhibited, like jungle drums. Listening to that kind of music usually doesn’t ruin my mood but rather calms me down without making me tired. Right now, there’s no simple rule for when that works for me. Sometimes, even a sunny day in a park or coming home from a wonderful night with friends is a good fit. Depending on the day, I also manage to fall asleep while being exposed to Dark DnB. It’s unpredictable, but in general it seems to be related to the lack of melody and the richly decorated beat. Part of what usually constitutes the melody in music is transformed to either noise or to a very amelodic set of sounds which are supposed to sound mysterious or dangerous, creating a dark atmosphere and luring monsters out in the open.
You don’t need to be in a certain mood to enjoy that music but depending on how much you like or dislike that mix of beat and noise, it might be very annoying to listen to. There have been times when I couldn’t listen to Dark DnB for that reason, very similar to hearing (and touching) two pieces of styrofoam scrubbing each other. Long ago, in a land where my mornings were horrible, that made me want to make those styrofoam pieces suffer for their blatant audacity (some people feel the same for chalk scratching a blackboard surface). For instance, the same once applied to flies crawling across my skin when I wanted to sleep, eat or work. I think that Dark DnB touches this unique nerve. Try listening to Dark DnB and meanwhile, imagine a Game-of-Thrones battle to get rid of all those nasty flies, eating them dragon-roasted for breakfast with styrofoam forks. What a pretty mess! Luckily, my mind changed and I accept flies nowadays.
The weather gets noisy with a chance of thunderstorms. Although not featuring an irregular beat throughout the whole song, those two songs contain at least one part of Drum and Bass:
It seems Blame manages to cover both ends of the spectrum (Colorful and Dark). If you’ve watched Terminator before, you’ll immediately recognize the theme:
A unique piece of Dark DnB, featuring a constant full-song buildup … supported by a sound very similar to a revving engine, slowly overheating:
- Metrik – The Departure
- Metrik – Engine Room (engine at normal operation)
The first authentic musical factory I’ve been to, with many different kinds of machines and production lines. During that song, some kind of thing gets assembled and those machines are having a lot of fun!
Machines which weren’t able to contribute get deported to another planet, permanently:
Although I like the noisy element of those previous songs, there are other approaches to creating an obscure atmosphere. Black Sun Empire and related artists have a lot to offer in that regard, playing with very smooth but strong bass and, once in a while, high-pitched saw noises:
- Black Sun Empire – B Negative
- Black Sun Empire – Bitemark (Zardonic Remix)
- Black Sun Empire – Don’t You (State of Mind Remix)
- Command Strange – Tesla Underground (a discharging tesla coil)
- Jade – Acid Flood
- Black Sun Empire – Pull The Trigger
Instead of listing too many songs here, I’d like to refer to a few albums from Black Sun Empire: Endangered Species and Cruel and Unusual. The former includes an album mix with a lot of variation compared to the original songs, give it a try:
For dessert, a more melodic song to tune out slowly: Traktion – Park Patrol
Sweet dreams!
PS: Because it was a bit harder getting into the right mood for that post in a land full of sun and beaches, I preferred to first listen to The Hand (see introduction) and afterwards to a pony music video: PMV: Pendulum – Witchcraft
Johannes Ghiletiuc 