Three days to go… Drum&BassArena Anthology 2 is coming!
Make way for our biggest release of the year… 20 years of history. 60 tracks. 3 CDs. One massive history lesson. Drum&BassArena Anthology 2 is the ideal audio history lesson stretching from the scene’s earliest roots to tracks from the future that you won’t hear anywhere else until next year! Seen the tracklist yet? One of them is Through The Night, a recent summer smasher from Drumsound & Bassline Smith. We thought we’d call them up and get the story behind it. But first, the video…
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S85q2xSpwUI
“It hit the UK top 40!” beams Simon Bassline Smith. “We got support from the underground all the way up. It was a summer anthem at all the festival. We had love from Hype, Friction, all across the board. The love we’ve had has been phenomenal.”
The love is reciprocal: both Simon and Andy Drumsound are more than keen to big up D&B at large…
“It’s important to highlight this at the moment,” says Smith. “There’s a great spectrum of D&B right now! The deeper stuff, the harder stuff, the minimal stuff, the liquid stuff. There’s so much amazing music out there and so many buzzing artist making it. Smooth on Viper label is killing it and The Prototypes are smashing it up with a really big sound. The new Brookes Brothers new single is heavy. And a bit more to the left you’ve got Break, S.P.Y, Audio… The list goes on. Producers are really pushing things in every possible way and the cream’s risen to the top. I can’t think of a better time to be involved in the scene.”
“D&B has got such a futuristic edge,” agrees Andy, one half of Drumsound. “It’s the one thing that hasn’t changed about the scene. Every producer really has to hone their sound until it hurts. This goes for everyone; we all push ourselves on the sound quality. It has to be the best. No argument. The best quality drums, the loudest bass. D&B producers take things very seriously. The quality is always kept high. You find the best producers in all music started in drum & bass.”
There’s no better big up for the scene. And they’re right; both creatively and technically drum & bass producers have driven the extra mile to ensure they’re heard above the rest. It’s what’s kept the scene so healthy for almost two decades – something you can genuinely hear across the three CDs on Anthology 2.
The only question left to ask today is what Drumsound & Bassline Smith are up right now? Last time we spoke there was plenty of chatter about their album…
“It’s too soon to say when the album’s going to be released,” say Simon. “We don’t know where the year’s gone! Winter’s here now and with Christmas just round the corner the timing has to be perfect. So we’ll let you know on that. Since we last spoke we’ve been lucky enough to do an Essential Mix and we’re now doing a monthly D&B mix for Mistajam.”
“The album is ready but we won’t consider it finished until it’s time to send it off to the label,” explains Andy. “We’re always in the studio and we’re always working on new things. If we come up with something amazing that fits on the album then we’ll add it. It’s an on-going process. We’re working on our live show so new ideas and techniques may come about during that.”
Wait, a live show?
“Yeah,” says Simon. “Our first live tour kicks off next week. We’re supporting Fresh on his tour and we’ll be doing our live show for the first time. It kicks off this Friday. In December we’ll be launching our own fully fledged live show with all the bells and whistles. Someone’s building us all these lights and effects at the moment, we’re really excited. We can’t give too much away but we’ll be using laptops, controllers and a lot of the vocalists we’ve worked with like Ayah Marar and Tom Kane. Massive visuals too. We’ll be tweaking and developing it for next year’s festivals.”
Find their tour dates and all Drumsound & Bassline Smith news on their site.
And watch out for Daylight, their next single, released on November 11. Here’s the vid..
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uUmLknIYYE
Drum&BassArena Anthology 2 is out November 4 (download) and November 5 (3xCD). Pre-order it now!