What are you listening to right now?

just an utterly joyous banger.

 

Most of this new 'breakcore' stuff, I don't consider worth the time. It's kind of a meme genre, this niche trend almost completely unrelated to what I would've called breakcore back in the day. It's just... not that. But I don't care what you wanna call this, I just hear some good-ass jungle beats. Getting back to basics with staple drum breaks/chops, and heavy atmospheres. All of us 90's kids have a very particular drum break gene that stuff like this activates, I swear. It's a tap into part of a collective subconscious, if you know you know.

I think it's one of those things where you have a few artists that are genuinely experimenting and looking for something back in the classic dnb and jungle zeitgeist, a nostalgic re-distillation. And then there are just a bunch of literal kids putting dirty breaks over a sampled pad of the ps2 OR ps1 startup sound, looping it, limiting it to the point of hard distortion, and slapping an over-saturated and digitally destroyed image of a generic anime girl onnit.

I mean, anybody remember nitecore? It's like that. Take vaporwave sampling sensibilities, add drum breaks, and then nitecore the crap out of it and you've got "new breakcore." A lot of that stuff just gives me brain pain, it all feels so repetitive and meaningless, and just abrasive for the sake of it, purgatory with no free snacks.

You basically have to dig through piles of aesthetically-driven garbage that's already irrelevant to get to the good tracks because superficially they look the same, but the gems are there. A lot of things get put under that breakcore banner for the memes, and I think all it really does is bury the uniqueness... both of the new music, and the original, actual genre that is/was breakcore.

 

Aaaand, tone switch. I have to give these guys their fair time. It's been a joy watching them grow their sound and develop as musicians. I never imagined they would be making such top class, emotionally evocative instrumental music. They were almost more hip-hop than jazz at the start, with more of a loop-oriented approach and a lot of heavy grime that pulled in some jazz and funk elements... and then they slowly grew into this softer, lusher, but more dynamic sound with a lot more jazz in it. It's positively beautiful work, executed with effortless skill.

 

I obeyed the law of youtube thumbnails and clicked.


Not even gonna lie, I think Nujabes himself would be pleased with the sampling work. And it's just out there for free.

Edit: So I've been digging in their catalogue and holy shmoly, they are PROLIFIC. Just mix after mix with each kind of having their own distinct theming and flavor. Like 4 dozen albums that are all at least solid. Some is more classic vaporwave sensibilities with the heavy reliance on sampling whole passages of softer jazz, and lots of production flavor and extra layering on top. But just as much are these pretty modern, wildly esoteric and experimental chops of percussion that really lend well to good headphones and sound super-unique. And then in between is more chillstep and idm-inspired stuff. All of it with bits of microtonal flair. Really just a lot of different areas of sample-based music are covered. I've been kind of lost in it all for hours, just dipping my toes into different mixes and it all sounds so nice and well-curated. This person is some kind of mixtape shaman. I feel like I divined the grandstream and pulled up a one-off catch with the ole dowsing rods. Almost never works out that way, but I've known for at least 10 years that youtube has something woo woo to its function as a music discovery platform, it does serendipity really well, always showing you these rare pockets where interesting stuff is happening.

Not to mention, the cover art is always good, hats off to these artists. I think a lot of them are done by different Chinese artists, though many are composites done by the artist. All of them varied, yet having some things that tie them all together like a collection.

It's nice that they list the samples on their bandcamp, too. There's a whole nother rabbit hole there. It's like a wellspring. I'll be eating well for a while.

ONE LAST EDIT: They code what it is by the image theming. The Koi coded stuff is always very aquatic and ambient. Too bad it looks like they're using some AI, I can't fully tell - lighting and everything actually look right, and it's consistent in the 'skill level' but her left eye is a bit weird and it has that 'shiny' look. It's hard to know anymore, I've seen plenty of stuff like this before AI art, it's not inconceivable to see on pixiv years ago. If it's not AI, it's the kind of stuff that got fed to it. IDK. This shit is still a stunner, pure ambient bliss. It's like, awe-inspiring on the Arya Stealths. Put my heart on a platter.

 

https://tidal.com/browse/album/393714922?u

 

Just some old dude explaining his test tracks:


Actually it's the dude from Pearl Acoustics that I hadn't heard about until now, but they make speakers and amps and a bunch of the other videos are good too

 

there's honestly some (at least to me) interesting history behind this, but yeah it's absolutely something that evolved seperately from what breakcore originally was. not going to write too much about this, but most of the newer stuff you're referring to that folks are calling "breakcore" is really something that evolved out of another music scene that was around on really old 4chan/some other forums and the early myspace days which was making a lot of this stuff sort of self aware ironically and it was taking more inspiration from japanese doujin hardcore music and stuff like the nitecore you mentioned. nobody really called it breakcore at the time and there were a lot of goofy names for it (everyone mostly called it lolicore back then which was a fittingly meme genre name), one or two people from that scene ended up finding some more popularity outside of it later (ex. goreshit) when younger kids picked up on it and started making music like that again and calling it breakcore. back at the time it was at least a novel thing since it was an aesthetic nobody had really done yet, but yeah at this point it's more of a multimedia art project in a lot of cases where the aesthetic is just as or more important than the music itself is.

anyways, enjoying some old breakcore thanks to this post

 

I am absolutely living for this mix right now. Somebody needs to fetch these gentlemen their crowns.

 

One amazing live performer

 

Found this on Tidal. I am enjoying every second. Disco can be very sophisticated...

 

Every now and then this guy puts out exactly one track I like. I don't get it but I'm happy to have it