‘#Back Of The Stack’, catching up with artists in the scene every couple of weeks reminiscing on some of their favourite tracks from back in the day. No real rules, just sharing some musical knowledge and reflecting on the past.
We thought it was long overdue that we caught up with breakbeat connoisseur, ‘Fanu’. The Finnish based producer has been making music since way back 1992, and finally had his first release 10 years later in 2002. Fast forward 16 years, we have seen him appear on a long list of highly regarded labels from the likes of Subtitles, Darkestral, Warm Communications & Commercial Suicide. We also got the news of a debut Metalheadz 12″ due imminently too!
Janne Hatula AKA Fanu runs his own label – ‘Lightless Recordings’, established in 2006, which has seen 8 solo albums of his music released. When he’s not busy making music he also offers mastering and mixing which is available directly through his website. (highly recommended) See what tracks Fanu picked this week when we asked him to select 3 records to reflect on…
This one is so lush, and it has not aged one day!I’d say it does not have any specific “era timestamps” or features on it, and that’s why. Many tunes from this period sampled deep house or were influenced by it, and I just loved all the lush synth works of mid-90s. This could almost be house if you replaced the breakbeat by a kick drum. This is almost genreless in a way.
Photek – Consciousness
One of DNB’s absolute masterpieces in terms of drums and just everything. Love the smooth filtered sustaining synth and vox that carry the intro forward and then you get these drum sounds thru the delay…but you really have no idea of what’s going to happen once it drops. And once it drops, it’s just an amazing drumfest done with great taste. It’s intense and I think it samples several breaks… Photek was the true master of that, and no-one did it like him. DNB of this era more often than not had different sections in songs and it wasn’t just one loop or them for 5 mins…things kept evolving.
Intensity – Generations
A lesser known Source Direct tune. Very supple intro breaks and that synth sound in the intro build up the suspense, leading to the drop, and the Amen takes you for a ride. It was a big influence to me how a lot of this stuff wasn’t necessary melodic, but they were very lush, and the break-works were crafted so dang well, you could listen to them forever and not get bored. And let me point this out! We did not have crazy buildups and kick-rolls during this era…it was all about groove that carried on and on and on – as opposed to maximum buildup and instant release of a few seconds. That’s what this era taught me, and I’m grateful for having learned that.
