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How I Got
Into Drum and Bass/Electronic Music
by Backstab
A lot of people have asked
me how I got into drum and bass, why I like it so much, and
why I listen to pretty much nothing but electronic music etc.
and my answer is usually "long story". Well, if
you can bear through the long story, here it is. This article
can also be titled "My History with Electronic Music"
as it covers that too.
Long
Time Ago...
To be honest, even when I was
a kid, I liked electronic music. I was mostly exposed to classical
music at that time, and was 'forced' to play the piano. I'd
always get "bored" of classical music and enjoyed
listening to mostly music from video games... mainly because
I never really listened to much pop music at that time except
Beatles and whatever my dad listens to, and plus the fact
that Chinese pop music iis the worst music ever (and always
will be). So that was that.
Then a whole bunch of insignficant
attempts of trying to appreciate different genres of pop music,
and trying to find what I like the best. I tried listening
to that pop dance stuff in 94-95. It was somewhat lame. I
didn't like Rap because it just isn't me, something tells
it's just rhymes + a horribly produced beat and I just couldn't
listen to it... then tried listening to rock/alternative.
Bought Offspring's Smash. The album sounded sorta bleh and
way too punkish for my liking, even though it wasn't bad.
From Game
Music, to Electronic Music
When I got to high school,
nothing really happened until I was playing a demo of Command
& Conquer. I was playing the game and I was extremely
impressed by its music. I was like DAMN, what is this?? The
music sounded sort of like industrial rock/techno, very very
cool stuff. I liked it a lot and eventually bought the game,
then went on to buy the soundtrack! (I'm not joking about
this one) Anyhow, I remember people like Liston thought I
was weird when I told him the C&C soundtrack was the best
shit I've ever heard!! I knew Etheral liked that stuff too
but he wasn't really obssessed with it.
Then I picked up FIFA '98 by
EA Sports in Grade 10. I was impressed by its game music,
especially the techno stuff. In fact I was so impressed that
I went on to look at the instruction manual to see who did
those tracks. I found out that four of the tracks were done
by an artist called "Crystal Method". I said cool...
tried to look online for them, didn't find much except I know
they made an album called "Vegas" and at that time
I still didn't wanna turn into a "freak" as no one
really liked techno. Later on however, I think it was Grade
11, during lunch. I went into the library to look for somebody,
and found this guy Roger... dont' know why but I started to
look at his CDs and bingo! Crystal Method's first album "Vegas"
was there! I listened to one song on it, and I was like holy
shit I have to buy this album... so I did, no regrets.
Hooked on
MP3s
In the middle of Grade 11,
I finally ditched my phoneline internet connection for cable.
That meant that I could download mp3s. I remember Dave's FTP
was the shit for MP3s then and I requested a few songs that
I wanted, and I got some other Crystal Method stuff. Then
one day me and Etheral were walking past either EB or Compucentre,
checking out FIFA'99. We watched the opening scene, and we
both thought the intro song was cool. Somehow, we found out
that the song's name is "Rockafeller Skank" by Fatboy
Slim. Etheral then got the MP3 that night and sent it to me.
THen after watching the "Praise You" video on much
I was like OH SHIT I MUST GET THIS ALBUM! So boom, I went
to the store and bought "You've Come a Long Way Baby"
and loved the album. Damn... tons of memories.
I got a bit more serious and
finally decided that I like electronic music, and that this
is THE genre. So I did a project on electronic music in english
class. Quite a lot of research was done, and I was able to
define different genres of music. I began to go on oth.net
(old skool FTP styles) and search for different songs and
downloaded MP3s like a whore. I downloaded songs by Massive
Attack, Chemical Brothers, Portishead, Roni Size, Moby, Air,
Propellerheads etc. I was quite proud of myself because I
was the person who told everyone "Spybreak" was
a cool song before it got totally overplayed (that was when
the Matrix soundtrack JUST popped out in stores and no one
knows the tune:P) By downloading tons of tunes I knew quite
a lot about electronic music. The only drum and bass stuff
I know about at that time, was stuff by Aprhodite, Roni Size,
LTJ Bukem and I thought it was quite a boring genre.
The Invasion
of Drum and Bass
Then one day... must be November
1999, I was on someone's FTP and came across an album called
"The Prototype Years" by Grooverider. I've heard
of Grooverider being a drum and bass DJ so I downloaded a
few songs just to see what it's like. I listened to it right
away, I was like OMFG and I was extremely impressed. I thought
the tracks sounded really dark, and was nothing like the other
drum and bass tunes I heard before. I only downloaded the
first 3 tracks, and it was "Grey Odyssey" by Optical,
"Subway" by Ed Rush and "Mute" by Matrix.
I loved how Grooverider mixed the 3 tracks together. I couldn't
wait to listen to the rest of the tracks so I decided to download
the entire album (actually it took me a whole month to find
the entire album, because it was so hard to find back then
since there was no napster). Anyway, this was my first real
drum and bass album. I played this during at New Years' at
Steph Yau's house. HAHAHA, Liston was messed up and the music
was giving him the biggest headache!!
It was during that time that
I decided to try something different, and that was to take
the next step and produce some electronic tunes. I chose the
drum and bass genre for a few reasons, one because it seemed
really interesting as I was just getting into it, and two
because it would be the easiest to produce (totally wrong
as I figured out later, in fact DnB is one of the HARDEST
genre to produce)! To further explore the depths of drum and
bass, I went online and did a search on the artists Optical
and Ed Rush because of the two tracks I liked on that Grooverider
album. I didn't find too much, but I did found a site on them,
and says that they released an album, called "Wormhole"
together in late 1998. After listening to the realaudio clips
on the album, it just totally blew my mind. My goodness. This
is indeed DARK SHIT! The term "dark" drum and bass
was in fact thrown into the scene when Ed Rush & Optical's
record label, Virus, released tunes that were nothing by darkness
- twisted basslines, and scary scary soundscapes. Even though
I thought their tunes sounded a bit "samey", I was
so obssessed by that sound that I decided to buy it on hmv.co.uk
(can't find this album in canada). But the album was out of
stock for like the longest time... so I just downloaded the
whole album on MP3. I played this album in Blue Mountain,
got Liston hooked on the tune "Splinter".
I was still very much into
big beat/breakbeat at that time (Fatboy Slim, Groove Armada,
etc), but there was one more "significant" event
which caused me to change completely into a drum and bass
head. This was during very early 2000, when I found the site
"Drum and Bass Arena". And while reading the news
section, I read about that there was a group called "Bad
Company" and that they were making awesome tunes and
a new album, "Inside The Machine" was coming out
in March. I listened to a few tunes, and wow... extremely
good as their basslines were so addicitive and their stabs
make everything interesting. Think the tunes were "Sentient"
and "Deadside" that I thought, SHIT, I'd like to
have that tune on my hard drive. So in the next month I managed
to download the entire album.
Conclusion
From then on, I listened to
strictly drum and bass... I continued to look on the net and
listen to samples of tracks. If I like a track, I'll look
for it and download it. It's that simple. Hence I got addicted
to drum and bass, and followed the scene closely.
Drum and bass has nonetheless
changed my life. It has defined what I am. Maybe it's the
basslines, maybe it's the breaks, maybe it's the stabs, maybe
it's the synth lines... I don't know, but I am addicted, and
can never get bored of it. When I feel good, I pump some hard
drum and bass in my room. When I want to relax, I put on some
chilling drum and bass. When I'm pissed, I (ALSO) pump some
drum and bass, and it helps! I hope more and more people would
grow to love this genre.... it really is that good, all you
gotta do is give it a try. =] And to all you people out there
who are saying "my god you're a moron Backstab and you
have no taste in music", you sux =[
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