Evolution

(LIQUID DRUM'N'BASS)

Music is constantly changing and evolving. When one genre grows stagnant, another genre will rise from it's ashes and innovate itself as a new sound. Sometimes the musical purists of the 'old' genre will take elements from the new progressions and attach them to the music they know, love and are familiar with, and that will bring both styles to new levels.

By having new evolutions, music constantly grows. We saw it with Pink Floyd incorporating jazz to make a new style of rock music. We saw the resurrection of funk in hip hop (quick, tell me how many James Brown samples have ever been used). We saw disco become house... Alright, maybe it ain't all good. Regardless, jazz, funk, and disco haven't died. In some cases they've expanded and become much stronger and more versatile. Also, by adding to the evolution of music, they continue to play a part in the worldwide cultural phenomenon that music is.

I was afraid to admit to myself that this stagnation was occurring within the DnB world over the last decade. Drum'n'Bass and Hip Hop were the 2 styles that could bring anything together in my eyes - Jazz, Funk, Rock, Reggae, Blues, Soul, Samba, even Country. And while hip hop is always pushing borders where noone sees it, DnB is a much more penetrable genre and displays all its new progressions for it's DJs to play. It was stagnating though. The innovation was damn near gone. Then along came dubstep, and after the initial scare of drawing away some of DnB's brightest stars, it added to it. Dubstep was like the little kid that always wanted to be like it's pop DnB, and now that Dubsteps a big star, ol papa is back in his early twenties again, all limber and spry... well kids, the family is stronger then ever, and they are fucking JAMMING.

Nothing exemplifies this sentiment quite like the sounds of contemporary liquid drum'n'bass. And nothing exemplifies the new liquid sounds quite as well as newcomer Netsky (net-SKAI). With his first release coming out in 2009 on Hospital records (the DnB powerhouse repping names like Danny Byrd, High Contrast, London Elektricity and Nu:Tone), Netsky caught everyones attention real quick. He's got a signature sound that provokes the soul out of the listener in a way that DnB hasn't quite done in a long time. I welcome in the new era.

Today, I got the essential mix that the Belgian sensation recorded on October 10th. Download, listen, love...

Netsky - Essential Mix
(tracklisting in comments section)

*Thanks go out to Dubplate Digest for supplying the link