DFQ Agota

It depends on my mood and lunar phases...The very truth of DNB Knowledge march 2007Sounding offIt's a jungle out thereCountdown to oblivion "is drum'n'bass in it's final hour? To all You superstars living in your ivory towers I know we travel far but but somewhere the vibe was devoured Where were we without water before we flowered? Most producers these days, i think you're a coward Scared to push boundaries, your sound is underpoweredThat's why further afield our people have to scour to find a sound that embodies the soul as oursThe same old structures that we have heard before The same old samples, now You're out the door The same old bullshit drives me up the wall What's the point when you don't care no more?"No, this isn't a poem penned by Knowledge. What You're reading are the lyrics to the opening track of MIST:ICAL's "Eleventh Hour" LP. They are strong words, particularly for a scene that;s so tight-knit it's not easy to be brutally honest. But such murmurs have been arround for the last couple of years - you only have to see some of the quotes of someone like Dev paradox aka Alaska. Thanks to MIST:ICAL's album and interviews - such as in our last issue - it's out in the open, and up for discussion.It's a sentiment i agree with: what happened to what was a decade ago, the most exciting, progressive and dynamic dance music on the planet?Drum'n'bass has been reduced to a formula, it's all about the drop for the mash-heads; technology's increasing pervasiveness has had the opposite desired effect and it's directly related to the increase in totally mind-numbing d&b; there's so much throwaway music that woun't be played a month later let alone 12 months down the line; much of d&b is music numbers, with no feeling, heart or soul and much of it isn't even original. That's not to say there isn't interesting, exciting d&b out there, but it's bloody hard to find it. And we can't expect people to trawl through masses f mediocrity to find the sparking diamond in the dirt. This is not an exercise in going down memory lane and harping about good old days, it's a genuine plea. Where is the experimentation, the boundary pushing, the fucking around with tempos , sampling and pushing our beloved music forward? Who are the breakbeat auteurs, the Photek, Goldie's, Doc Scott's and Krust's of today? To quote Marvin Gaye, "what's going on?"