Danny Byrd - Radio 1 Essential Mix

Right, I'll admit that this one didn't actually grab me straight off in the same way that Sub Focus's April 2009 Essential Mix or Blame's February 2009 Essential Mix did, but on listening back to it a few times, it's really bloody impressive.

Whilst Sub Focus and Blame's mixes are both amazing D&B sets, Danny Byrd's Essential Mix stands out as more than this. Across the two hours, Danny Byrd sets out a lesson in D&B, but rather than being one of those ubiquitous "Jungle Classicz '94"-style mixes, Byrd presents a treatise on the state of modern D&B and its place in the wider dance/rave culture of the UK. It's a celebration of both drum and bass as it stands today, and the tracks, artists and sounds on which this scene is built.

It's amazing to think that the UK dance scene only really kicked off twenty-two years ago and yet in just two decades it has become so diverse, spanning so many genres and sub-genres. It's also easy to forget that trance, D&B, techno and house all share the same roots. Both nostalgic and yet forward looking, this mix is a must-listen for anyone with any kind of interest in dance music.

Download!

Track listing from the BBC here (*Warning* Do not access between the hours of 10.00 AM and 12.45 PM as you might encounter some Fearne Cotton)

After Action Report: L.E.D Festival 28/8/2010

As we trekked down to Victoria Park, Hackney, for the first London Electronic Dance Festival (or LED; wonder which came first, the name or the acronym?), we were expecting August rain and mud. Fortunately, the sun came out and the clouds parted. An auspicious sign for what looked to be a great day of music, albeit a weirdly diverse one.


We skipped LED's Friday night, with the headliners David Guetta, Calvin Harris et al. promising largely cheese-flavoured house (great if that's what you're into, but not really the sort of artists anyone would want to pay money to see when you can hear their stuff at a million Lloyd's/Wetherspoons across the country on a Friday night). I'd had a quick look at the Internet chatter, which suggested the first day of the event had been a bit of a shambles, with set times all over the place. It's important to remember however that people always rush to Facebook when they feel even a tiny bit aggrieved with something, so one has to take the e-rage with a pinch of salt and the anticipation of Leftfield and Aphex Twin far over-powered any trepidation.

Anyway, as we approached Victoria Park, everything seemed to be running well. Security weirdly confiscated the lid from my water bottle, whilst missing the eight keys of uncut cocaine in the bottom of my bag, but apart from that there was little trouble retrieving the tickets and getting through the gate. We arrived to the sound of Sub Focus's Timewarp thudding away in the distance and were surprised to find that it actually was Sub Focus, on at three in the afternoon.

Sub Focus - Fantastic set from Mr Douwma, even though he kept veering off into house and dubstep (at least it keeps the kids happy). MC ID largely got in the way of the music (as to be expected) but occasionally shut up long enough for the audience to hear what the DJ was doing. Was amazing to hear Xample and Lomax - Link To The Past go off loud, and it's impossible to get bored of Last Jungle and Rock It, no matter how much it's been run into the ground over the last few years.

Professor Green - Pretty good performance, even though Grime isn't really of interest to anyone ever. General opinions seem to be that he sounded like Eminem, but that this was a good thing.

Shy FX - Lovely, solid drum and bass from a DJ that for some reason I've always found it hard to get excited about, even though he's done great sets in the past. Opening with SL2 - On A Ragga Tip set up the perfect festival vibe and with the absence of an MC, Shy FX's set was actually more satisfying the Sub Focus's.

Boy Better Know - Lots of shouting men. Meh.

Annie Mac - Functional set from the Radio 1 DJ. Wasn't expecting anything special, but the crowd seemed to be enjoying it. The overpriced beer/cider double team must have been working its magic by this point.

Goldfrapp - For a festival with only two stages and not that many acts, the fact that Goldfrapp clashed with Aphex Twin was pretty unforgivable, although perhaps the organizers felt that Aphex's abusive electronic hatenoise and Goldfrapp's airy synthpop would have little crossover appeal. Anyway, we missed the start of Aphex to see Goldfrapp, but for this I have no remorse. Goldfrapp gave an awesome performance, with Alison Goldfrapp seemingly dressed as a swarm of bees, mixing older tracks with newer stuff as the sun set over Hackney. Lovely stuff.

Aphex Twin - Despite missing the start of Richard D. James' LED performance, we fortunately arrived in time to feel the full force of his deranged techno throatpunch. As his set built to a thunderous climax, it felt like being trapped in the boot of a taxi whilst dinosaurs pound on the outside, shining lasers and strobes in through the keyhole (i.e. he smashed it).

Leftfield - Being the last act, everyone flocked to the main stage to catch Leftfield in action, so there was no way to get near the front and feel the full impact of the band. Leftfield will always hold a special place in my heart, as Leftism was one of my first albums, and it was fantastic to hear so many tracks dropped. Space Shanty, Afrika Shox, Open Up, Afro-Left; they all still pack a one hell of a punch, and when Phat Planet inevitably went off for the encore, my head exploded.

So overall, LED was certainly a great day out, with even the shit selection of overpriced beer and slightly dodgy timetabling not enough to hold it back. The only major problem had to be that the sound levels were all over the place. I assumed this was due to evil sound technicians messing with the drug munchers, but it was more likely the result of licensing restrictions. Was quite a shame though, because a little more oomph would have pushed Leftfield into the stratosphere.

Will be interesting to see if LED happens again next year. Certainly one to keep an eye on.

Turning Back The Clock

It started with Sub Focus.

I wish I could claim to be more old skool than that, but for me, it was all about Sub Focus, or more specifically, his 2005 Breezeblock mix. Then came High Contrast's 2007 Essential Mix. Then a few of the old State of Mind Next Level Shows, ripped from Auckland's 95bFM. Until hearing these mixes, my only D&B experience had been the mighty Black Sun Empire, a wee bit of NOISIA, and some Roni Size tracks that accidentally broke through to the mainstream.

These were the mixes that got me hooked. I can't even remember how these things came into my life, or who set me onto them. I'd imagine they came from a mate's CDRs or a USB stick or something.

It wasn't long after hearing the High Contrast Essential Mix that I downloaded "Now More Than Ever", by Logistics. Since then, I've been a D&B head, and never been able to look back. I've bought more or less every new Hospital CD, a whole stack of Spearhead stuff, and a bunch of other producers’ stuff. I can't stop buying drum and bass, and I can't stop going to D&B nights, whether its Hospital, Spearhead, Ram, Renegade Hardware, Shogun, Lifted, Viper, Med School or whatever.

I've seen Logistics DJ live so many times, it borders on stalking.

Over the last four years, I have spent most of my money either attending D&B gigs, or buying new releases, and file sharing, most often via the internet is totally to blame for this.

I consume vast amounts of drum and bass music. Some of it paid for, some of it downloaded, some of it live, but I know I wouldn't have got nearly so messed up on this stuff if it hadn't been the for the internet, that huge pipe pumping beats and news and gig dates directly into my brain, and this is what scares me.

The politicians and business groups behind the 2010 Digital Economy Act claim that the bill is necessary to protect the future of the creative industries in Britain, but really it will do quite the opposite. Time was when kids would find out about new music from John Peel, publications like NME, or just by getting out there and spreading the word. Over the last decade, the internet has crashed onto the scene, and the entertainment industries have (in some cases wilfully) remained one step behind. The net is now the most important tool for promoting and distributing content, and yet the Digital Economy Act threatens to turn back the clock to 1997. The DE Bill, far from protecting Britain’s digital future, seems more like Ned Ludd kicking his way into a server farm with a sledgehammer and smashing the place up.

I'm not whinging about the DE Bill because I’m worried about not being able to watch new episodes of Lost or South Park. I like buying music. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy to know that I’m supporting the artists who produce the music I love, and whenever I buy a new Logistics release, he can buy some more hats. For me, the internet has opened up a whole world of music and experiences that I may never have discovered without it, and it scares me that other people could be denied these opportunities because of internet censorship and the government bending over backwards to meet the demands of a bald man with a yacht.

Censorship and cutting off peoples’ internet connections can only harm Britain and leave us floundering behind the rest of the world. The country needs a Digital Economy bill, but one that promotes the nation’s digital future and looks forward, rather than tries to provide life support for an industry whose consumer base has moved on without it apparently noticing.

http://www.openrightsgroup.org/

A Week Long Mass Effect 2 Binge Helps No One.

One thing I rarely get from games these days is a sense of satisfaction upon completion. The closest thing I can think of is the feeling you get after finishing a really good novel. You shut the book, sit back and just let it soak in. The original Fallout and Planescape: Torment were two games that I can immediately recall as having this effect; Mafia and Deus Ex are another two, although perhaps for different reasons.

With Fallout and Planescape, the comparison to a good novel is perhaps obvious. Both have fairly epic plots, with fantastic characters (especially Planescape) and most of all, both were jam packed with text. (That you had to read. Like a book). However, with Mafia and Deus Ex, the comparison is perhaps a bit less obvious. As the last mission is completed, the final boss destroyed, the princess rescued and the credits roll, these games really felt complete. You were done. You still wanted more, but the game was done, everything was wrapped up and you had to shut the door on the beautiful, detailed worlds created by the author/dev team.

Increasingly, I find that upon finishing a game, I often feel relief, indifference or occasionally frustration, but rarely that elusive sense of contentment. So what's happened?

On the one hand, all game mechanics everntually boil down to the same set of actions, repeated over and over in order to drive the story along. I recently completed BioShock. It was excellent, and the city of Rapture was a thing of beauty. A wonderfully realised underwater post-war dystopia, completely unique to anything else out there in games today. The story was also fantastic and the use of audio logs to drip feed you information about the horrors that had occurred kept pushing you to explore the nightmare of Rapture further. However, towards the end of the game, I found myself looking forward to finishing it. It's a bit like checking your watch in the cinema, even though you're really enjoying the film. Shooting up labs and whatnot, looting all the boxes and corpses and killing Big Daddies. It had become too formulaic. Perhaps my videogame OCD (must... search... every... CRATE!) didn't help (and I definitely should have turned the Vita-Chambers off), but when it came to the final boss, I was slightly relieved to be finishing*.

But is the problem with the length of games? Call Of Duty 4 was non-stop action, but felt like it was over as soon as the opening title screen had faded. It was annoying that it finished so quickly, but at the same time, it left you desperate for more. Both BioShock and CoD4 were excellent games, and neither suffered because of their length. I just wish there were more games that sucked you in and didn't let go until the very end. Maybe I just don't have the attention span I used to, but I think that really, all game mechanics have a finite lifespan (apart from TF2 apparently).

Also, I'd argue that these days, games are less about being a complete package, and more about kicking off franchises and flogging downloadable content. With development costs spiralling into the trillions of pounds these days, its not surprising that publishers and developers are looking at generating the most income possible out of their products. However, at times I feel that their games are suffering because of this. The most obvious example I can think of here is Mirror's Edge. I really fell in love with this game because of the art direction, but it was nice to see an FPS doing something different by barely concentrating on combat and making it all about movement and escape (took me back to Jet Set Radio on the Dreamcast). However, fun as it was, this game was short. Really short. The ending clearly paved the way for a sequel (development of which seems to be in question after the first game failed to sell as well as expected), and it's kinda annoying to be sold the first episode of something, rather than the complete project.

No doubt if Mirror's Edge had been much longer, I'd be whining about how I got bored of it towards the end, but I really wish developers would focus on producing a good game first, and kicking off a money-spinning franchise after. In fact, this is what Irrational seem to have done with BioShock after it proved a surprise hit. The first game really has no need for a sequel plot-wise, but I'm very much looking forward to a chance to return to Rapture.

As for DLC, don't get me fucking started. That's a whole post full of ranting and bad language right there. It is pretty frustrating to finish a game, uninstall it and stick it back on the shelf, only for the dev team release a new level a couple of months later. I'm usually keen for new content, but it's unlikely that I'll be bothered to reinstall a game and try and get back into it for a couple of extra hours fun, especially not when the DLC pack costs £5 to download. I just don't like the idea of content being deliberately held back for release as DLC, and it seems that this will increasingly be the case.

So what am I trying to say here? That games these days aren't any good? Pfft! Rubbish. I've just finished Mass Effect 2, and this was a game that left me feeling completely content. Despite the fact that it commits all the crimes I've listed above (part of a franchise, open-ended, DLC on the way) BioWare have created such a finely detailed universe that it feels sad to leave it, whilst at the same time, this chapter in the Mass Effect story seems complete. I'm actually looking forward to the DLC (although that will probably change once the prices are announced), and I can't wait for Part 3, which is apparently due out early 2011. With Mass Effect 2, Bioware have created a rich, detailed universe and set out a well-told story in it. Just like Mafia and Planescape: Torment, you're sad to close the book on these worlds, but also glad to have enjoyed the ride.


*I feel I should just point out here that BioShock is indeed thoroughly enjoyable and well worth your time and money. Although it might sound like I'm moaning about it, this was a fairly minor complaint, and one that I feel applies to games in general rather than BioShock specifically. Go play it!