Blackout Music’s Evolutions series always features the best breakout stars of hard drum and bass but for this cycle they’ve really outdone themselves. Evolutions vol. 8, due out on Monday, features heavy hitting and technically insane bangers from the likes of AKOV, Missin, Disphonia, Cod3x and the danceable yet emotive and experimental “The Breach” from Austrian producer Screamarts.
Screamarts has been releasing for three years now, with Bad Taste and Delta9 picking up pretty much everything he laid down in 2018 and 2019. It wasn’t until a few months ago, however, with his beautifully styled “Rise” and “Empath” tracks on Bad Taste that the international D&B scene really picked up the scent. Said “scent” is a mixture of heavy drum tracks, slick and snappy beat patterns and surprisingly emotional synths and ambient sound work. Each one of Screamarts’s tracks have lots of dancefloor cachet but will catch dancers right in the feels even in the heaviest of sets.
While with this roster on Evolutions vol. 8 it’s impossible to say we’ve saved the best premiere for last, “The Breach” is definitely one we’re happy to higlight here at Your EDM. The track opens with Screamarts’s characteristic clicky snares and what seems like it will be a pretty minimal beat pattern. It quickly launches into a heavy yet quite unique synth that is also structurally minimal but fills up a lot of space in the melodic track.
After the break, “The Breach” switches to a halftime beat and while the synth key is the same, Screamarts uses the extra space to play with that synth line and also with the ambient space in between beat, bass and synth. The emotive element in this track is subtle but definitely there and most noticable in this halftime section. It’s sort of an eerie yet forlorn vibe he creates, again using the ambient space to push these sounds into the track while also taking the synths to a deeper place. It’s yet another example of that dancefloor/emotive fusion Screamarts does so well.
Blackout certainly picked up some insane bangers in this installment of Evolutions, highlighting some of the current best and brightest in neurofunk and beyond. AKOV’s aggressive hammer of a track “The Hunt,” Disphonia’s heavily syncopated grinder “Can’t Hold Back,” Missin’s covetable snares on “Confusion Fields” and Cod3x’s cheeky “Roll Up” all have their own massive vibes along with “The Breach.” As far as hard D&B is concerned, 2020 is not cancelled; the dancefloor skanking just may have to take place on living room floors instead.
Evolutions vol. 8 drops on Monday, May 18 on Blackout Music. Click here to pre-order.