The Soundboard: Bang and Thump

For those not into what is commonly called “Electronica” or my least favorite word for it, “Techno”, you’re missing out.

The genre of music has more diversity than any other style of music and even though it is so underground, it has so many artists/musicians/DJ’s supplying tunage that you stand a damn good chance of hearing something you’ll like in at least one of the genres. An added bonus to having so many contributors is that if you don’t like something, you’ll probably never have to listen to it again.

One thing I would like to point anyone brave enough to wander through some possibly completely new music should scroll down the blogroll to near the bottom. There is a button there marked ‘DI’, which stands for “Digitally Imported”. DI has at least a dozen channels of Electro-Box music playing at all times. I tend to hang out in the Hardcore area (we may get into some of that next week) while I’m at work and then cool off in the Drum and Bass section.

Just click your way through there this weekend and if you like, keep clicking because it is completely free. I have a subscription because every couple hours or so they toss in a completely inane commercial and I got tired of listening to them, but at work or at other people’s places, I don’t even bother signing in and listen to the free stuff. 

Today, for the uninitiated, I would like to introduce you to the style called ‘Drum and Bass’ (and not the striped kind of bass that Headmistress Sondra K likes so much).

As you can probably guess by the name, it consists of mostly percussion sounds and bass variations with little to no sampling,  vocals or keyboards and can seem, at times, very minimalistic. That was the reason I asked my Pre-Soundboard question yesterday, because to get the full effect of this, you’ll need a decent set of speakers, hopefully with a low frequency register.

Don’t get me wrong, it still sounds great without them, but some things you just need to experience since listneing doesn’t do the trick. BTW, if you are listening on your computer with a sub, step about 10 feet back and listen because the 8ohm subs toss the sound out and you might not hear everything if you’re right on top of it.

Now, this isn’t the tune I was wanting to toss out today. I decided not to take the chance of ruining people’s equipment with multichannel bass (Dolby 5.1 can sometimes handle it, but it cooks most others).

Not to downplay today’s selection which, after the two minutes of baby-stepping, really gets up and rocks.

And that is enough from me for now. Give it a right-click and save and let me know what you think.

Orion – Dark Dreams