Summer Selection 2012: release today, Rudimental and seven hours of drum&bass carnage!

Drum&BassArena Summer Selection 2012 is out today!

40 tracks, 10 exclusives, 2 CDs…. Featuring the likes of Spectrasoul, Brookes Brothers, Cyantific, Logistics, Hyrbrid Minds, Original Sin, Harvest, Alix Perez, Utah Jazz, Level 2, Bcee and many many, many more, it’s the ultimate summer soundtrack for all discerning drum&bass heads… Regardless of the rather turgid weather we’ve been experiencing this season.

It certainly didn’t stop us celebrating the launch yesterday at Ministry Of Sound. The Risky insisted we put the sun down on the guestlist and, thankfully, he turned up, blessing us with his shiny presence for the entire day. As did the likes of Snige, Xtrah, Foreign Concept, Spectrasoul, Rockwell, Jubei, AMC, The Prototypes, Bailey, Basher, Mind Vortex, Hamilton and Stanza. Each one of them slamming several shade of summer out of the 3,000 strong crowd.

Burgers, bikinis and beats a-gogo – plus a cameo role from a cool breakdancing kid in window of the flat next door to the club! – needless to say the launch was one of our best events in a long time… And this blog has been written under the cloud of a rather mean hangover. You can check out the entire seven hours on the video at the bottom of this very feature.

To celebrate the release today we’ve also checked in with Rudimental who gave us their barn storming summer track Feel The Love. Like us they know all about hangovers… Especially when they’re celebrating hitting number one in the charts!

“It was amazing!” says Piers, one third of the act who hit the top spot earlier this year with Feel The Love. “It was really weird at first; we didn’t know how to feel about it. It was just really surreal! Knowing we were up against people like Gary Barlow and these all proper popstars was a bit too much, you know! It finally sunk in by the end of the weekend. It was really inspiring actually; quite hard to describe. Of course we had a bit of a party: we were in my flat on champagnes from one o’clock! But we were in the middle of a DJ tour that weekend so we had to go to Warrington that night. Not the most obvious place you’d think to celebrate having a number one! It was an intimate little uni gig; those 150 students didn’t know what hit them! We brought all our mates up with us and had a massive party – Warrington experienced a unique Rudimental set!”

From numbers ones to opening the first CD of our Summer Selection album, Rudimental are unavoidable right now. We thought we’d ask Piers for a tale of a slightly less mental stage of his life, before they became a chart sensation.

Rudimental’s Ultimate Summer Mission:

“I’ve had loads of great summer missions and I’m sure I’ve got a lot coming up! Ibiza’s always a mental one for starters. I went out there for the first time four years ago when I was 21, which was a massive eye-opener. I was back out there for a week with my mates just as ravers… We nailed it! DC10, Pacha, Amnesia, we saw Dizzee Rascal at Ibiza Rocks. We barely slept! But now next weekend I’ll be going out to DJ in Ibiza Rocks which will be an amazing feeling. I’ve never done it on a working one but trust me; I’ll still be having lots of fun!”

Rudimental’s essential summertime tip-off: “If you’re having an all dayer make sure you have lots of carbs in the morning. A full English breakfast will sort you out for the rest of the day!”

Drum&BassArena Summer Selection 2012 is out now. Find it here (digital) and here (physical)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-0q-7V79N4