Drum&BassArena Winter Selection 2013: Out Now!

Released last Monday, Drum&BassArena Winter Selection 2013 is a brand new album series that’s been tailored to complement the most treacherous of seasons.

Uncompromising, balls-out slammers and rich tech-fused grit that is impossible not to get physical to, it features a truly all-star cast including Andy C, Metrik, Mampi Swift, Phace, NickBee, BTK, Emperor, Audio and many, many more.

Don’t take our word for it, check this megamix and prepare to be blown away…

36 tracks deep, like all Drum&BassArena albums it’s boosted with serious exclusive flavour. 14 exclusive flavours to be precise. Tracks you will not get anyway else, one of them is this floor-flattening VIP from The Prototypes…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BJt7PSrlc0

With a brand new signing to the mighty Viper, and talk of an album on the near horizon, they’ve got a lot to discuss. We called them up to find out more.

How long have you had this VIP ace up your sleeves?

We made it about a year ago. It took a while to finish it off because we wanted to make it as different as possible but still have the original elements. We originally wanted to put a new lead line over the top of it but we played it to our manager and he said it was perfect as it was. It went off! Sub Focus asked us for it. Andy C asked us for it. Everyone was asking for it so we thought ‘okay, it’s good to go!’

D&B invented the VIP… what crucial ingredients does a VIP need to be a VIP?

It’s got to be a big tune anyway. People have got to be interested in it in the first place for the VIP to have any real impact or else it’s kind of pointless. VIPs have come about because people hear these big tunes over and over again – often a long time before they’re even released – so having a VIP version keeps the interest from the fans and from the DJs. A good VIP needs to keep what’s great about the original while switching things up in an unexpected way. A slight change to the bassline for example. One thing we’ve learned about VIPs is less is more. You can overwork it and end up with a completely different tune that misses the point of the original. We did one for Habitation and all we did was change a few notes. We didn’t think people would notice the changes but the second it dropped people were asking us for it. Bottom line: people want something fresh.

And no other scene thrives off the freshness more than D&B…

Totally!

Give me some classic examples of VIPs that kill it in your opinion…

Tantrum Desire – Reach VIP

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94T_u_d8HBM

I’ve been playing this since it came out, it barely leaves our sets.

Sigma – El Presidente VIP

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6Vw34QD4p8

This still smashes it!

Audio – Headroom VIP

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK_O6xufF9w

A perfect example of how the original is still kept intact with a few well considered changes

Killer VIPs! So let’s talk about your Viper signing…

Yes! We’re really happy with this, we’ve been massive fans of Viper for a long, long time and we’ve always felt our sound fits their remit really well and they’ve got some amazing artists signed.

I thought you were solid with Shogun?

We still are. They’re really cool with us leaving, we did it purely for musical reasons. Shogun have done a superb job pushing our sound but they push a lot of other sounds as well. Viper pushes our type of sound as the main sound so it makes more sense. From the response we’ve had since announcing this everyone’s been on the same page and respects the reason we moved.

You mention your sound… That’s a pretty wide sound anyway!

Agreed. We can do the techy, dark stuff but it’s not what we set out to do. Me and Chris both come from that background; we’re both original Renegade Hardware ravers, that’s the sound that got us into drum & bass. But ultimately The Prototypes has been dedicated to big dancefloor slammers. Abyss covers both bases; it’s dark but still works on the dancefloor but now we just want to concentrate on the one sound. The sound we came onto the scene with.

Cool. And we can expect load of that on Viper… Including an album?

Yeah! The album’s nearly there. The singles are done, they’re ready to go and you should hopefully hear the first in January. We’re really excited, we feel we’ve reclaimed our original sound, it really feels like our best stuff.

Got a name planned for it yet?

One or two but we’ll keep them to ourselves for now…

What goes behind the science of naming a song for you guys?

Vocal tunes are nice and obvious to name but instrumentals take some thinking. Cascade, for example, is quite trancy and cascade means something beautiful. We do try and think beyond the obvious names that have been rinsed before. It’s got to mean something to us, it’s probably the hardest part of being in The Prototypes to be honest!

What’s best part of being in The Prototypes, then? Give me some highlights of the year…

We’ve done some crazy things this year. Playing the Live Lounge at Radio1 was a really cool moment for sure. Doing an Access All Areas show with Brodinski and Monsta was very special. All the festivals were killer, Exit during sunrise was very special and Tomorrowland was another level; the production is mindblowing. We were playing a big magic mushroom to 10,000 people. Crazy business.

What other crazy business can we look forward to?

We’ve got a SKiSM remix coming out on Never Say Die which we’re really happy with and is sounding very big. Then there’s the first single off the album that comes out in January. That’s the big one for us, we can’t wait to get it out there!