The Answer Is In The Beat

Lastboss: Neighbour 13 (Bad Sekta, 2012)

July 29, 2013 at 12:06 am | Posted in Reviews | 1 Comment

I haven’t reviewed any breakcore since I started posting reviews to this blog, and I wish there was more high profile breakcore stuff coming out nowadays that was worth mentioning. Pretty much any new breakcore stuff coming out, if there is any, seems to be amateur netlabel artists doing things I’ve heard people do better. This is one of Bad Sekta’s many free mp3 releases, and it’s been sitting in my “review” folder for a while, so I’m finally getting around to reviewing it. Turns out this is all material recorded from 2004-2007, so it certainly has that era’s sound to it; fast, random jungle breaks, gabber kicks and ragga samples. But there’s also a lot of beatless neo-classical pieces on here. The title track does the fast d’n’b-with-noise-bursts thing, but with a bit of space behind it, before it gets more intense and overloaded later on. “That Old Piano Tune From Years Ago” is, in fact, a downtempo piano tune, and quite sad and pretty at that. “Salmonella Pudding Semolina Poison” unexpectedly ends up being another sad piano tune, and “ASIO Trouble” is a mysterious guitar and chiming-synth piece. After a while, it seems like this is pretty far removed from anything breakcore-related, at least after the opening track on the release. “The Distinctly Pungent Return Of Xiao Fan Pei” marks a return to distorted beats, and somewhat random sounds, and it goes into what you think is just a breakdown before it gets crazy, but it doesn’t get more intense, only more forlorn and introspective. “The Undeniable Link Between 14 and 0.restored” has soft acoustic guitars and drums that fade in, and some sort of spoken sample that I can’t quite make out. So overall, while there’s some breakcore on this release, it’s clear that this artist has (had? is he still around?) a much wider scope and is capable of doing many different things.