(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkYEeoi6tgg)
DNB United Records In most realms of life, there are two paths; the Mainstream, and the Underground. One of the realms where this division can be noticed in all of its glory is in music. There is music, and then there is Music. When you flip to a local terrestrial radio station while you’re driving, or even let a satellite radio station play a programmed genre for you on a device, you are hearing music. However, on the other hand, you know every place left in your town that sells vinyl, and you make a weekly stop there to listen to what just arrived, or you find and follow an artist online after seeing or hearing them somewhere, or a friend sends you an artist that they found by digging around and investing time in their local scene or deep diving labels online, what you are hearing now is Music. Something created in someone’s personal creative space...a bedroom, a garage, a kitchen table. And then relentlessly, with a lot of time and effort, it is shared by the same person or people that created it, that’s Music. This release is Music. Created in a spare bedroom-turned-studio, mostly late at night when nobody else is awake. Mixed and mastered by fellow creatives, working late at night in far away parts of the world, some of whom have never met in person...they collaborate in the dark and solitude of the night to bring you Music like this. The Underground is the title of this track by DJ BC#9. He comes from the Underground himself, having played guitar in an iconic punk band in the mid-eighties for a decade, until finding himself in London amid the electronic music and rave culture of the early to mid-nineties. He fell naturally in love with the sounds as well as the nature of the Drum and Bass scene, which is an Underground scene within another Underground scene...BC#9 laid down his guitar after over twenty years and bought a Mac, beginning his musical journey into a new Underground, not in a band but on his own, and found his people, his tribe. And he has been releasing and producing electronic music ever since. This release comes at a difficult but powerful time for this artist, as he was diagnosed with cancer last month. As it always has, Music is there to save him. He and his closest group of artists, Music and video, as well as the artists who engineer this sound, have gathered and gone all in on this release. The result is a complex, sophisticated and incredibly textural piece of Music, that will give you a real experience of the power of Music as you listen to the song roll over you. There are what seem like dozens of sounds, musical notes, but also sounds that aren’t exactly musical notes, but when layered skillfully with unique and interesting beats, they create Music that takes you on a true journey through moods and emotions. Between the lyrics and spoken word, and masterful blending of so many elements of sound, that it’s kind of inaccurate to call it just a song. BC#9 himself ended up producing two different pieces of Music from his original creation. The version with the haunting lyric, “there is no past, there is no future, only now...” and the deep, sonorous spoken word piece about the Underground, is one result. To listen to this track, I recommend (as usual) good headphones and closed eyes for your first trip through. The combined elements of the track, dark and light, heavy and lilting, gave me visions of dark, mysterious tunnels winding around under our hard-driving, everyday world. An Underground where beams of light break through and give us glimpses of raw graffiti art, ancient bricks and metal rails leading to who knows where...and then a swarm of fireflies appear in the tunnel, silent and majestic, lighting up the scene with their tiny little absinthe green flares, then disappearing only to reappear in another formation as the seconds pass. Let these sparkling magical creatures guide you over to the instrumental version, where more layers and swirls of sounds mix with totally unique beats to add to your experience of these tracks. Here is BC#9 up to his usual tricks, combining his hard-driving, guitar playing roots with years and years of electronic composing and producing coming together to create Music, the kind which gets inside your heart and becomes part of the soundtrack of your life. Just as his health is driving him to create, to survive, he offers this soundtrack in vocal as well as instrumental forms for us to join him in his fight, and to remind us that only Music can save us.
