New releases last two weeks: Drum And Bass

Review: Wild breaks from the wild west; Welsh beat sculptor Abstract Drumz gets busy on the mighty Over/Shadow. Four cuts heavy, each one designed to slap your rave silly. 'Just A Ride' opens the EP with atmospheric aplomb. Brisk pads and live jazzy breaks set the scene, hitting hard in all the right places. Elsewhere 'I Like The Rain' galvanizes AD's Celtic status with unhurried charm before 'Ethereal Remix' gets a lot more frenetic. Finally 'Culture '24' closes the EP with some of the heaviest chops of the set. Wallop!

Review: Turin-born and raised artist Andrea has explored plenty of different genres across his wonderfully experimental sounds, but mostly they are couched in techno with hints of 90s breakbeat and IDM. "Living Room is his third album and finds him tapping into an introspective sound with reflective melodies and a cosmic sense of travel. Right from the off, you're cast adrift in a world of shimmering melody and plucked strings, cascading arps and widescreen synthscapes and it is there you stay for the whole absorbing duration, though sometimes lithe rhythms bring more propulsion. A magnificently accomplished and detailed work.

Review: Just how solid of a balance between highs and lows can you get? Fastidious research study into EQ optimisation seems to have gone into this shunter from Bladerunner, Chimpo and Sl8r, three new-gen juggernauts of the UK drum & bass circuit. Helping Philly Blunt achieve their lit-up ends, the pair kick off the label's latest subseries with a limited transparent red 12", nodding visually to its mid-90s heyday. Bladerunner vets suspected replicants with two empathic response tests, 'Chronic' and 'Straight Up', both cut from the same tough, emphatic cloth. On the flip, Chimpo & Sl8r make their label debut, swerving between grime and jungle with a distinct Manc slant, a sound refined across releases for Metalheadz, The North Quarter and Hospital. A sharp extension of the Philly Blunt legacy, which began in 1994 with rave-wrecking cuts like Leviticus' 'Burial' and Dillinja's 'Sky'.

Review: A heavyweight ensemble of drum & bass minds take on Break's most recent set of productions, pushing them deeper into system territory. The Bristol veteran revisits his own material alongside a dream team of remixers including Skeptical, Calyx, Mefjus and The Sauce, each adding distinct bite and tension to the originals. Alibi's flip of 'Headshot' is all murky propulsion and low-end snap, while L-Side draws out the yearning in 'Gunshot Love' with Liam Bailey's vocal laid over thick, heaving bass pressure. Charli Brix floats through Break's own icy rework of 'Lost', while SP:MC cuts through the dense, noir-streaked paranoia of Skeptical's 'Box Clever' edit. Clean but rough, emotive yet primed for damage, this is high-grade d&b from a cross-generational cast who know exactly how to thread vocals and subs without compromise.

Review: Cologne-based Belfast boy Dominick Martin has been delivering deliciously good albums as Calibre for the best part of a quarter of a century, frequently departing from his trademark drum & bass sound to showcase his love of other sub-heavy and mind-bending sounds such as dub techno, ambient and dubstep. On Little Foot, his first album in two years and 22nd in total, he leans into this considered eclecticism. For proof, compare and contrast the tactile and dreamy 4/4 dub of 'Blame Dub', the dub-wise junglist bruk-up of 'Special', the mutant two-step delight of 'Ukrained', the angularm, sub-heavy UK techno of 'Threadvare' and the Mark Ernestus style spaced-out dub techno of 'Choosing Beggar'. And that's just CD1. A genuine triumphant from one of bass culture's most distinctive musical voices.

Review: South American-born, Amsterdam-raised veteran Carlito returns with his long-awaited debut full-length on Liquid V, a 16-track journey through jazz-laced drum & bass at its most melodic and human. A founding presence from the Essence of Aura days, Carlito's production here feels both assured and lovingly detailed-balancing break science with harmonic finesse. 'Fiesta En La Playa (VIP)' and 'Sing It Now (Swerve Mix)' bring sunlit flair to the dancefloor, while deeper cuts like 'Passenger' and 'Savanna Rain' showcase his instinct for bittersweet atmospheres and syncopated space. T.R.A.C. features on 'On My Mind' and 'Scream', injecting a breezy vocal uplift that nods to Carlito's US connections. From the shimmering pads of 'Hold Me Tight' to the taut rollers like 'Ah Who' and 'Cobalt', every track feels cut from the same soulful cloth. A generous double-pack from a figure still shaping the genre he helped build.

Review: Decoder brings his deliciously dark take on drum & bass to this new one from Over/Shadow. It drills deep into the heart of a smoky, strobe-lit dance floor while also offering plenty of mental soundscapes to explore with your eyes closed. 'DT103' has crisp breaks and warped bass under shards of broken, glassy melody and 'DD1' then floats on a more skeletal rhythm with grazing background pads and apocalyptic bass. The Technical Itch remix brings even more in-your-face textured percussion and 'MB29' shuts down with a cosmic exploration and skittish drum patterns.

Review: Dom Angas has come a long way from his Moving Shadow singularity 'Can't Punish Me', which soon saw(tooth) an enviable career in techstep well underway. The nominally double-taker artist now issues 'Reimagination', throwing back to another shadowgraph from the MS era, 'Imagination'. This tune appealed best to the dystopian rollage crowd: there's no drop, but rather a straight barrage of hyper-crunchy cybergoth Reesework and parched beats. His new 'Reimagination', from now, continues to channel the mood but this time with added hope and angelics, shortly before a forget-me-not VIP of the original track reveals a wicked Star Trek sampling darkside version: "There are times when I find myself transfixed by a shadow on the wall, or the splashing of water against a stone. The hours pass, the world around me drops away, replaced by worlds being created and destroyed by my imagination."

Review: Breakbeat wizard Fanu returns with another multi-genre mash-up diving deep into the sounds he's mastered over the years: jungle, drum & bass, hip-hop and beyond. His rhythmic versatility and fearless approach to production is present and correct once more from the off:' 'Strobelight' is a tightly programmed workout with dark bass blasts offset by heavenly vocal coos. 'Ether' is even more involving with a lurching rhythm and snappy hits, and 'Free Fall' then casts you adrift in the cosmos, floating on the swirling pads with a more airy, spacious atmosphere. 'Coma'(feat Arcologies)' is a blissed out closer with more gentle but still dynamic drums. Ether shows Fanu's still pushing the envelope, one break at a time.

Review: Rotterdam producer, vocalist and DJ, Skyes (Mike Everling) is one of Fokuz's favourite upstartists, this being his third contribution to the label after a brilliant opening Minos collab 'Looney Tunes', then followed by an equi-tastic toon jungle four-tracker from 2024, 'Never Say Never'. This time he's got a 'Jazz Hangover', with 'Holding Back' bringing crudely resampled bloops and vocal ohs, and 'Send Away' enlarging the junglist massive through filtered dub triggers and rousing brass. Don't sleep on the B-sides either, where the title track sobers us with a dose of breaks mechanisation following an implied overindulgence in jazz humanity.

Review: Infamy, Infamy, they've all got it.... On rotation because this absolutely pops hard and is far too good to be trivialized with an old Carry On quote! 11 years have passed since the artist also known as A1 Bassline returned to his Infamy alias for these two brutalist jungle jams but they still sound shockingly good to this day. Abrasive, choppy, and loaded with tightly coiled energy. This is proper jungle, the way it's always been on Inperspective. Grab this now if you haven't already.

Review: Silent Force Recordings drops a heavy 10" teaser ahead of the much-anticipated The Last Transmission album. This sampler of it features two standout cuts from Pixl and Murder Most Foul, who ramp up the excitement for what's to come. Gritty, atmospheric, and razor-sharp, both tracks tap into the label's signature blend of deep breaks and futuristic dread. The sound designs are pristine and the beats heavy so it's a fine preview of the full-length project due later this year-raw, cinematic drum & bass built for dark rooms and loud systems. Silent Force isn't playing here.

Review: The debut full-length from Bangladeshi-Canadian producer Raf Reza fuses UK soundsystem culture with his own deep-rooted Bangladeshi influences. Raised in Tokyo and musically shaped in Toronto and Glasgow, Reza blends dub, bleep, breaks and jungle with Baul music samples and vintage Bengali film soundtracks here and it results in a brilliantly original style. The album explores sonic futurism and asks how diasporic and Dhaka-based electronic cultures can intersect. With a unique mix of field recordings, semi-obscured monologues and dubwise textures, Reza's identity-driven narrative comes to life and cements him as a bold, genre-bending voice in cultural fusion and sound.

Review: Words and terms such as benchmark, revolutionary and paradigm shift are thrown around far too casually and liberally when writing about music. But if there's one electronic album that really does live up to those tags it's Ultravisitor. Still sounding like it's from another planet to this day, from the moment eponymous opener headbutts us with an ice breakbeat shatter to those very last guitar plucks on 'Everyday I Love', this is concentrated Squarepusher in every possible geometrical permutation. So many breakcore and IDM parameters were set on this exceptional body of work. From the metal militancy of 'Steinbolt' to the fantastical drive (and wild slap bass) of 'Tetra-Sync', this remains a wholly unique LP that's both wonderful challenging and definitely not of this earth.

Review: Originally dispatched to the universe digitally via Candy Mountain, Sun People's powerful 'Emotional Distortions' now enjoys a vinyl boost-up and is sounding all the better for it. Landing just in time for the summer, each cut startles and satisfies in equal measure. 'Seul' lights an electroid fire, hitting us in our most introspective feels before 'Runaway' takes things up a notch and adds much more techno urgency to the scenario. Flip for two more slightly slower tempo shock-outs... 'Rhythm Guitar' brings a little funk before 'Exhausting Care' closes with more angular electro sharpness. Time to get emotional.

Review: French techno alchemist Vardae is the latest artist to feature on German experimental drum & bass label Samurai Music. Vardae has dabbled with 85/170bpm speeds before, most notably on his excellent 'The Kaipos' EP. This time we get a full EP's worth of deep techno-influenced drum & bass, a sound that is familiar to anyone following recent trends in the deeper scenes of techno: acid lines, forest drums, mystic vocals, etc. The opener 'The Light Motion' is a halftime groover with fluttering percussion propelling it forward. The second 'Chaeming Your Soul' has a more recognisable drum & bass rhythm underneath, bringing to mind Overlook and UVB-76's back catalogue with powerful acid washes over the top. 'Voices Of Depossesion' has a conventional four-to-the-floor beat but at a blistering BPM and 'Flaming As A Cloud' ends with an excellent drum & synth-ony. One for fans of Marco Shuttle, Pessimist, et al.

Review: Western Lore reasserts its place at the vanguard of contemporary jungle with this 12-track set, a widescreen survey of the genre's evolving emotional and rhythmic terrain. Founded by Bristol artist Dead Man's Chest, the label's curatorial strength lies in its ability to bridge eras and sensibilities-pairing established names with new voices, hard breaks with softer contours. His own 'Living Real' opens the collection with echoing vocal trails and crisp percussive rolls, while Denham Audio's 'Be Sweet To Me' offers a sweet-and-sour blend of hardcore tension and wistful pads. Sonic returns with the razor-edged 'X', Response & Sourpuss stretch time on the haunted 'Four 4', and Eusebeia's 'Epoch' drifts into panoramic ambient territory. Standouts from Vilhelm Hasselgren and Ravver carry the same detail-oriented production that defines the release, full of submerged textures and cinematic drama. What links each contribution is a shared reverence for breaks as both pulse and palette. As with earlier volumes, this isn't just a snapshot of jungle-it's a reminder of its capacity to shift, absorb and outlast.

Review: One of the flagship albums by Aaron Funk aka. Venetian Snares (alongside Songs About Cats, Higgins Ultra Low Track Glue Funk Hits 1972-2006, Winnipeg Is A Frozen Shithole and The Chocolate Wheelchair Album), Rossz Csillag Alatt Szuletett marks itself out in his sonography as a breakcore album which, aside from its lobotomising breaks, features mostly classical strings and brass. Gloomy and melancholic, the album's title translates from Hungarian to "Born Under A Bad Star", i.e. "cursed from birth", and the record transmits a superstitious chain of influence, with track 3 covering Budapest composer Rezso Seress' 'Gloomy Sunday', which was said to have inspired the suicide of the original musician's own girlfriend. Renditions of Mahler, Stravinsky, Paganini, Prokofiev and Edward Elgar all follow in morose but energetic fashion, demonstrating the Canadian IDM artist's quirkily sized collection of drill bits.