Over Ten Years of Drill'n'Bass and the BT Stutter

As with most of the customers who have reviewed Mtv's Amp on Amazon, I first heard of bands like The Prodigy on this compilation CD (1997, pictured at left). At the time, I thought all acid house/breakbeat/electro/freestyle/techno songs were by one hit wonders that never actually recorded full records, so touring electronic groups with music videos were a revelation to me. But even back then, I could do without the 4/4 thump thump thumping of BOOORING club hits by The Crystal Method, The Future Sound of London, and Goldie. It's taken until the last few years for me to even get into The Chemical Brothers, Photek, and Underworld (I learned they used to be Freur of "Doot Doot" fame and I discovered their Vanilla Sky club scene song, "Rez" on another compilation, Machine Soul: An Odyssey into Electronic Dance Music). What impressed me way back when I first got Amp from the Columbia House mail-order CD club was the undanceable stuff like Aphex Twin and Atari Teenage Riot. I wanted rhythm changes, new sounds, and noise if that's what it came down to. I used to want to record an album myself called Dance Music for Sitting Down because that's how against the late '90s, repetitive, Ultimate Dance Party craze I was. Then I heard the term IDM (short for intelligent dance music) and I realized there were others like me out there. Like most musical genres, IDM (which is a subgenre itself of electronic music) is very broad, and includes everything from glitch hop to ambient minimalism. The undanceable but still very rhythmic stuff that I like (which ironically could be considered the most accessible out of the genre) is called drill'n'bass. It's drum'n'bass taken to the Nth degree (whereas drum'n'bass is kinda techno taken to the Nth degree). The word "drill" refers to an "impossibly fast drum roll" called a snare rush (see the Wikipedia definition).

1. "Anirog D9" - Squarepusher, from Hard Normal Daddy
2. "Bucephalus Bouncing Ball" - Aphex Twin, from Come to Daddy
3. "Carpet Muncher" - µ-Ziq, from Royal Astronomy
4. "Cure for the Itch" - Linkin Park, from Hybrid Theory
5. "Fat Controller (G7000 Mix) - Squarepusher, from Vic Acid
6. "Frere Jacques" - Luke Vibert, from Moog Acid
7. "Girl/Boy Song" - Aphex Twin, from Richard D. James Album
8. "Johnny Mastricht" - µ-Ziq, from Bilious Paths
9. "Marine Machines" - Amon Tobin, from Supermodified
10. "Mt Saint Michel Mix + St. Michaels Mount - Aphex Twin, from Drukqs
11. "Mushroom Compost" - µ-Ziq, from Lunatic Harness
12. "My Red Hot Car" - Squarepusher, from Go Plastic
13. "Pitbull" - Jega, from Everything Is Nice: The Matador Records 10th Anniversary Anthology
14. "Spotlight (Aphex Twin Remix)" - Wagon Christ, from Avantgardism, Vol. 1 - Bass'n'Drum
15. "Summer Living" - µ-Ziq, from Brace Yourself
16. "To Cure a Weakling Child" - Aphex Twin, from Richard D. James Album
17. "Twelve" - Venetian Snares, from Infolepsy
18. "Vic Acid (Hard and Normal Mix)" - Squarepusher, from Vic Acid

I've already included BT's "All That Makes Us Human Continues" on another mixtape, but the song has a little bit of drill, plus BT is renowned for his rhythmic, sped-up sampling technique, called the stutter edit.

Want to know the basis for beats on most drill'n'bass songs? Read about the "Amen Break" (or link to an 18min. video).

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