Friday 10 August 2012

Breaking The Bits


Breakbit Music is home to a great variety of electronic artists. I should know because I visit the site a lot and download albums from that variety of artists. I've downloaded albums and EPs such as "Lucid", "Ode To Glenn", "super kawaii", "Hyperglide 1.5" among many others. Recently though, I've been coming across a bunch of albums and EPs that I've missed, and some of the newer works. For convenience though, I will talk about three new releases that I've been listening to over and over and over. So yeah, let's just hop to it now.



Album
Genre: Breakbeat, Experimental, Funky House
Number of Songs: 22
Cost: $5 (or more)
Personal Top 5:
1. Facebook Is What It Is
2. Oops A Song
3. Cigaweed
4. Autism and Recipes
5. Anti Drug P.S.A

DR777 has always struck me as a person who constantly experiments when he makes any of his content. Whether he's making a video for his channel or releasing another song to Breakbit, he tinkers with anything and everything and makes the best of what he's got. It's also interesting to note that he manages to establish his own style a lot when he really gets experimental. Such songs like "Y.D.L.M", "Forgotten 2" and "Alternate Perception Fifth" are great examples of this. One of the songs in the album really surprised me was "Children Don't Get Weary" for the mellow feel that goes about. That's not to say that DR777's style can't be less energetic and frantic, "Cigaweed" and "Complimentary" kind of prove me wrong. It just has a very different sound to it that I didn't expect from him. That doesn't make the song any less good, it's still a great track.

It's interesting seeing the contrast of the songs in the album, like how he can go from upbeat and adventure-game like with "The Chronicles of RA" to fast paced and pseudo-surreal with "3200 Mhz" to laid-back and mysterious with "Facebook Is What It Is" to country mixed with breakbeat with "*BONUS x2 POWER UP!!* Autism and Recipes [Cuntree-Core REMIX 2012 REAL]". It's just impressive seeing someone not only attempt a variety of different styles but to also make it work wonderfully. My one tiny nitpick would be that I would have liked more added onto "Thunder Man" or a whole new track entirely replacing it just to have more of the experimental goodness. Although I can forgive that because it was a very nice touch adding a Notepad file with recipes if you bought the album. Plus I still love all the other songs a lot.



Album
Genre: Breakbeat, Chiptune, House, Glitch, Trip-hop, Funky House
Number of Songs: 10
Cost: $0
Personal Top 5:
1. Sines Point To Yes
2. Destiny Avenue
3. Coral Fumes
4. Peripheral Forces
5. Good Food Syndrome

Glue70 has two styles to him that usually are present in his albums. He's either remixing a popular track in a manner that sounds different but works or he's doing his own style with the occasional sample coming out in a way that blends magnificently with the song. Usually I've heard more of his remixing side, but in this album I'm hearing more of his own style. Sure, he still samples in this album, no doubt about it, but it's hardly the focus (save for "Peniclean" and "Like These Vibes") of the song. No, the focus is how he forms the beats, the melody and everything else. Whenever the sample does come up, it would transmit well with the mood that glue70 would want to create with the song. Take for example "Sines Point To Yes", whenever you hear the wise old man, he'll fade it out so you hear what he says and then fade in once it's over. Then he'd make everything quiet and then go with a more hip-hop feel around the end.

His sample-heavy side is still there as it's apparent in "Like These Vibes" and "Peniclean" but he takes a rather different approach to it by making a tune and then chopping bits and pieces into it so that it works well with the new tune he's created. Most of the songs in the album though are directed to him heading away from that and there are two songs where he just does his own thing with very very little to practically no sampling at all. Those being "Nu Disco Ballad" and "Peripheral Forces". Whether I'm right on this or not, is hard to say, but there's a greater sense of his own groove in those songs that doesn't have to interfere greatly with samples. And it works quite well with those songs if I do say so myself. No matter which style glue70 goes with, this album is packed with a great selection of groovy tunes.



Album
Genre: Big Beat, Breakbeat, Downtempo, Garage, Progressive, Remix, Trip-hop
Number of Songs: 19
Cost: $0 (or more)
Personal Top 5:
1. Fine Day For Science
2. Past The Bolted Door
3. The Fanciful Unicorn
4. Ion Flip
5. Constant (Album Mix)

mrSimon is one of the bigger artists on Breakbit, and seems to have dabbled in a lot of experimentation from all the years that he's messed around with music. He also has made some incredibly bombastic and intense tracks that could fuel thousands of raves. In 2011, he had teased to make a whole album dedicated to tribute Dexter's Lab in the best way he knew how. He released Constant as a single with remixes by other artists just to tempt us even further. Finally, after waiting, he releases this album and it's everything that you could ask for and then some. All the songs from the album transition seemlessly into each other, which is interesting considering we get tracks such as crazy DnB "Past The Bolted Door", quasi-dubstep "Drop That Monkey", solemn-sounding "Fine Day For Science" and techno "Disruptor".  All of the samples are placed precisely in each of the songs, "Ion Flip" being the greatest proof of how well they're weaved into the song. "Quadrant 4" manages to use samples but at some points, it's incredibly subtle about it which makes the song all the more relaxing.

Each song has it's own theme that is trying to encompass a certain factor of the show and it works well. You can feel what part of the show he tries to portray with the song by how the mood is made and the choice of samples which is just astonishing. The other artists in the album also do a great job with their song. glue70 remixes Fanciful Unicorn in his own way that keeps that sense of upbeatness the original had, Dainumo's "Optimum Efficiency" sounds very chill and flows with fine finesse and Jeesh's "Electrochemistry" is a terrific trip-hop track. It's evident that I really enjoy this album (hell, I was quoted with my Twitter after exclaiming that it is "Absolutely beautiful" on the Breakbit page of it), not just because it's a wonderful tribute to a childhood memory but also because it is a well-crafted album with a wide variety of wonderful songs.

So yeah, go get all of these albums right now!

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