Review Summary: RIYL: listening to drum & bass in 2015.
There’s no small irony in a fresh-faced drum & bass producer immediately establishing himself by producing immaculate tunage and jungle chop-ups that are nevertheless the kind of by-the-book genre standards that might be expected from somebody more experienced and therefore stuck in their old ways. No matter how good
Perspective is - and, believe me, it really sounds excellent - it still sounds just a smidge like a rehash of the kinds of ideas producers have been tossing around for the better part of the last 10 years or so. There’s the ghostly MC DRS-captained roller (“City Of Injustice”), understated piano and melancholy bass completing the picture. There’s the rude low-end smasher (“Between The Sides”), the kind of tune you’d expect Skankandbass to post to his Facebook with an accompanying description of “Straight merkage” or “WOISON DUCK.” There’s the shuffling, piano-driven liquid soul (“Inside My Head”), warm and enveloping and staticky and, unfortunately, done to death.
That being said, Anile’s still left some room to breathe here. There’s a lot of looking backwards here, sure, but he’s left some opportunities to look forward as well. Anile has made his name by mixing pristine harmonies and spectral chords with splashy jungle breaks and unforgiving bass, and
Perspective is at its best when he’s in his element. “Not The Way (To Run),” by far the best not-already-released track on the album, derives its excellence from its sense of melancholy. Taelimb, one of the most exciting young DnB producers today, lends his signature crunch to a grungy chordal backdrop, and the end result is a wistful masterpiece of sedate low-end and gliding drums.
“Not The Way (To Run)” is so good in part because of its exemplary collision of bass and subdued mid-range, of course, but it’s also so good because it’s a break from the retreading that happens a bit too often here. Some of the songs here - “Seventh Sound” and “Losing My Mind” chief among them - are brilliant in the way they collide pained soul with rowdy jungle, but they only make up part of the album. The rest, while good, tightrope a little too closely to the stuff that only really works in small doses - straight-ahead rollers and straight-ahead liquid just aren’t exciting enough anymore to fill a whole hour’s worth of recording time.
Perspective, in some respects, is a tasteful balance of looking forward while keeping an eye on the past - but it could have afforded to look forward just a bit more.
s
