As semi-regular as clockwork comes our feature – which has properly been copied by other websites/ magazines – that attempts to pinpoint music that basically kicks arse in its own unique way. We aim to push some of the shit music in your brain out of your head and allow the good stuff in.
While we can’t perform miracles, like Christ, and make you totally musically hip, we’ll try our best. Today we focus on a genre of music that we have never reviewed. No, it's not one of our more bizarre genres that could possibly involve an octopus, a phone book and a violin. Instead, it’s something you’ve all properly heard an annoying neighbour play very loud at 3am, the day before you take that important exam. Everyone secretly loves Drum & Bass, they just need prodding in the right direction. So we’ll proud you in the direction of Melly.
In the last year or so, Drum & Bass did manage to pick up a legion of new fans when it made a wobbly comeback. The Australian threesome Pendulum made Drum & Bass slightly cool again, and proved that you can listen to it on the radio during the daytime, moving away from the usual image that everyone who listens to it in a small, packed, sweat-drenched nightclub full of kids chewing their own faces off through excessive ecstasy consumption. Having successful singles, a high-profile album and remixing a few tracks from punk ravers The Prodigy, the band made dance music cool again, mainly by moving away from the stereotype that sampling bad songs from the eighties and putting a crap beat underneath works. However, the arsewipe of a magazine called NME came along and invented a pile of toss called 'Nu Rave' which saw the interest in Drum & Bass fizzle out as quickly as it started.
So in our quest to hopefully find the next big thing in Drum & Bass who’ll hopefully push it into the public’s ears and to save us all from the horrible ear-splitting muck that is Europe Bubblegum Trance, we discovered this fine young musicmaker called Melly. Though, to be fair, trying to get most Americans to appreciate most electronic music would be like us trying to tear them away from their 60oz super-sized burgers.
Based around Leicester and Newcastle, Melly has been experimenting with music in some form or another since an early age. We can’t help but notice he was once a mobile DJ and, in his own words, “surpassed the aged classics he was forced to play.” Oh how he must have loved playing the hits of The Bangles and Blondie to the cheers and woops of delight of pissed old men and women at many a social function.
Thankfully, the cheesy DJ route was abandoned and instead hard Drum & Bass tracks like X Killer have been produced. Beginning with a menacing and gritty piece of speech before turning in to a dark and evil bassline and exploding into a frenzy of hard drum beats this track will surely rip up any dance floor. Or, as the Daily Mail would probably describe it, any “drug frenzied illegal rave party.”
With styles ranging from progressive to dark and menacing Drum & Bass Melly demonstrates a wide variety of styles that will only open him up a wider variety of audiences which is never a bad thing.
And in another first for this feature, everyone who reads this site will have the opportunity to hear Melly’s mixing abilities. No, he’s not a constant touring machine, but instead uses the power of the internet to get himself out there, each Tuesday between 5pm – 7pm, on the radio station which is bluntly called DnBradio.
Go on, have a listen – you can rave away in your own room without having to pay silly amounts to get in to a nightclub and extortionate prices for drinks.
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