PRE-ORDER: J-Kenzo – Conqueror/LD – Derailment [2nd Drop]

2nd Drop Records are like the tireless beavers in the pack, always working to better their environment. Call it too much early morning Animal 24/7 in my ocular diet, but you can’t not admit that Markle - owner of officially the best banana smile in the business – and associates have been putting out brilliant platters since their inception. Kicking off proper with Ramadanman’s ‘Good Feeling’ their stable has since become home to heaters from Sully, Clouds, 23Hz & Numaestro and the ever present LD.

Their 9th release to date then hides a good few punches with its highly coloured, scrawled artwork, Kent based producer J-Kenzo’s ‘Conqueror’ manages to fuse numerous plusses; the rolling almost paniced percussion of Untold, the spatial awareness and taught bass sensibilities of Skream and the shuddering snare drum delay of Peverelist. There's no real melody to it, its just a fully formed glorious marching kick drum onslaught that gets peppered continually with differing lines of driving woodblocks.

LD’s ‘Derailment’ fixes a more anxious gaze, creating the tension in the minor key horns and breathy atmospherics before letting fly with a rolling snare-on-every-3rd-beat-of-the-bar loop that’s never overshadowed by the bitcrusher soaked bass riff and the array of swelling chords. The second revolution turns things up a notch with the addition of a squealing daggering riff, realising the angst of his drum work perfectly and positively amping the scope for wheel backs tenfold.

Words: Oli Marlow
Out: 14th December 2009

AND, in fine gentlemanly Christmas fashion the 2nd Drop fam have offered up 4 copies of the release to win. 2 lucky entrants will scoop the full 12” with bespoke artwork by UIU UIU, and 2 runners up will get the full digital bundle and quite possibly an email lovingly written by a human.



To win email us the answer to the below question.

Q: When is conker season?

A) Autumn
B) Winter
3) Spring

Winners will be announced in the New Year.

Links:
www.myspace.com/2nddroprecords
www.myspace.com/jkenzo
www.myspace.com/transitionld

DOWNLOAD: LD - Symbiosis Mix

Australian radio show Symbiosis recently featured a mix from Transition Mastering's own LD and just like Snoop, we're dropping it here for you because its hottt...

DOWNLOAD: LD - Symbiosis Mix

Tracklist:

1. LD - Someday We Will Be Free
2. LD - Oh Yeah
3. LD - Woodblock
4. LD vs Cluekid - Not Going To Cry
5. LD vs Kode 9 - Bad
6. LD - Shake It
7. LD - 3 Phase
8. LD vs Benga - Yes Yes
9. LD vs Cluekid - The Intro
10. LD - Day Dreaming (Remix)
11. LD - Summertime Clots (Remix)
12. LD - Do You Mind (L.D Special)
13. LD vs Cluekid - Jupiter 9

Links:
www.myspace.com/transitionld

PRE-ORDER: LD - Traumatic Times/Woodblock [Hyperdub]

One of the major perils of office listening are the informative bleeps and wibbles of the various social networking programs kept constantly open to enable you to be forever contactable. No matter how you flip it, AIM’s sound of a creaking door closing never fits whatever music your playing; although sometimes, in more dub-techno situations the facebook IM blip, can sound almost harmonious... The reason I subject you to this mind wandering is that the whistling in ‘Traumatic Times’ had me alt-tabbing between pages, closing windows and cursing the small UPS Widget puppet that pops up every time you refresh sendspace trying to find the route of the occurrence, when it was quite obviously part of track and not some electronic come on from a dwarfed, uniformed Morph.

LD has a knack of infusing multitudes of sounds and styles into his own productions, and ‘Traumatic Times’ is the essence of that. Smooth lounge pianos, slicing ride cymbals, hyper delayed chord stabs and rolling percussion all meld succulently as he drives onward with his arrangement. ‘Woodblock’ is definitely the ying to ‘Traumatic Times’ yang though; from the off the swelling synth line is more aggressive, splurting out of the blocks rather than reclining across them before the rave synthesizers start arpeggiating across each other in the mid section.

Displaying a varied production bow and taking a leaf from the Kode 9 co-produced ‘Bad EP’ LD rolls out a constant driving rhythm on ‘Woodblock’ burying his percussion into your conscious with each patter of the congas and aptly displaying his ability to smash the dance as well as soundtrack a rainy London bound train journey.

Links:
www.myspace.com/transitionld