The Groove Thief

Secret Archives of the Vatican produce mystical breakbeat electronic music.  With Middle Eastern melodies and nuanced high-tempo drums, this is engaging and unique.  Maybe if Beats Antique were sped up, that would be close, but this has more focus: a honed instrumental force designed to crush unsuspecting dancefloors.  Dubstep is no foe, and other funk, reggae, and drumstep influences creep in on tracks as well.  Here are their latest two albums, available courtesy of Broken Drum Records, for download or stream.  Barbary Lion is a bit more rugged and dubby, the gritty desert journey before Panjandrum’s heavy oasis party.  Cool tunes, awesome band name, this is ‘Transglobal Breakbeat Dub Science’ indeed:

Vancouver’s The Funk Hunters have taken the essence of funk and applied it across the musical spectrum, creating a potent bass stew clearly steeped in the breakbeat tradition, but equally influenced by the rhythms of glitch-hop, the elasticity of mashups, and the party vibes of house music.  This is a nice vision of future bass music that puts the ‘fun’ in funky.  Find your own cheesy pun after giving these a listen:

Representing DUBlin, Dirty Dubsters turn reggae into bass-heavy dance-floor music.  Their last few tracks have been horn-laden as well, creating a potent blend of melodies and beats that still incorporates dub style, albeit in a future-forward manner.  I first heard a DD remix on Blend Mishkin’s Mama Proud Riddim Remixes album and likewise their Outlook Festival 2012 Competition Entry is simply a banger.  A well-chosen vocal, those crucial horns, and the balance between light and heavy make this a winner.  Less than a day old is a remix of “Unity,” by Mikkim featuring Coyote, which is more digital and features nice techno (not dubstep) buildups and drops.  Plenty of other solid tracks, as in over 100, are featured on Soundcloud as well.

Krafty Kuts returns with the 5th installment of his relentless floor-funk mix series Fresh Kuts.  All are available as free Soundcloud downloads, and this latest session doesn’t disappoint.  Krafty continues to blend together samples from classic house, early hip-hop, and all shades of funk and then pummel them with pounding beats that never quit.  This is great party music, or in my case mid-afternoon housework music, since all this energy is motivating and infectious.

From MountBlood comes what can only be described as cheerleader-death-techno.  Yes, this is dark music with light vocals, but the blend of the two is quite unique, needing to be heard to be believed.  At times poppy, at times angry, but then also energetic, haunting and just pounding, this music is definitely blurring genre lines - is this techno, dubstep, trance… all, or none?  Here are the first two installments of the Blood Sessions Mix series via Soundcloud, go ahead and bombard some speakers with bass and leave those silly genres alone:

Backbeat Sound System feature remixed grooves aplenty on their latest EP, One Step Forward.  The first two tracks are laid-back originals, and sound great, but the gems here are the drum n bass and funky techno beats that make up the latter half of the album.  The harder beats and smooth drops fit the vocal stylings well, creating a nice sense of urgency.  This is music that want to be danced to, while still having a light sound from the nice horns with a slight ska influence.

Jay Robinson assembled a thoroughly enjoyable and diverse bass mix for BBC Radio 1 (Jen Long show).  A personal and reasonably insightful interview precedes the mix - he actually sounds like a decent and humble guy.  The mix itself is full of bleeps, bumping bass, quick vocal samples, and everything else that keeps an electro party moving.  This is 15 minutes of upbeat booty-shaking floor-funk, seamless and relentless.  This is tough to sit still to, current without feeling like it has a date stamped on it, and a perfect upbeat throbbing mix that’s not afraid to give you a momentary breather before slamming the beat on full-force again.

Tracklisting available via the BBC, download available via Mediafire.

Brodinski’s remix of Yuksek’s “Off The Wall” is solid techno music.  Filtered (and minimal) vocals, taught bass with a clap, plus sufficient beat switches and breakdowns, and then a nice buildup that melds acid and electro with just a hint of trance.  Perhaps this is a textbook remix, but it’s done well, something that can’t be said of many a household-name DJs’ inevitable remix EP.

DOWNLOAD via Rcrdlbl