An early experiment with jungle, using a well-known Redman sample. I love the big bass hits in here, and the keyboard gives a really old-school feel. Lots of complex amen breaks, from a time when I thought it was important to make them that complex.
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Looking back, “Afraid of What You’ll Say” is another favorite of mine that is easily overlooked. This track is pretty representative of a period where I was really growing into the dark trip-hop that I think is most representative of my style as a whole.
The lead melody was originally concocted with lyrics in mind; however, they’ve never left the confines of my brain. About half were since forgotten anyway.
Karl D – Afraid of What You’ll Say
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Today’s journey into the archives is one that I had forgotten how much I liked. “Love Theme” is certainly one of the more melodic songs I’ve ever composed.
“Love Theme”, like several songs I’ve produced, was inspired by what I imagine I might have written for a film score.
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12/26/09 – Whoops, forgot the download link. -KD
I sense a depression in the amount of material I will release in the next several weeks. I will instead fill you in on some other old tracks I still have in my cache.
This first track is from about 6 years ago, I suppose. You may not think I might be crazy enough to do hardhouse covers of Sevendust songs, but you’d be wrong.
Sevendust has been for a long time one of my favorite metal bands, and Black has always been one of my favorite songs. I’ve always been surprised to hear how much people liked this song. Even people not really into electronic music or Sevendust have reported really enjoying this song.
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12/26/09 – Whoops, forgot the download link. -KD
“Rock the House” was a song I made in about 2003 that was characteristic of the hard house I was listening to at the time. Although I had been interested in American(NY, LA, and Chicago style) hardhouse for a while, I had just become familiar with UK hardhouse around 2001-2002.
At the time I created this track, I wanted to “prove to myself” I could conjure a competent, contemporary hardhouse track. I’d immersed myself in lots of the Tidy Trax catalog during that time, and the song mirrors that influence with the presence of the famous Hoover sound, the klubby bass, and the hard, fast sampling and scratching.
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Through my adolescence I became fascinated with the works of Dante Aligheri. I read the Inferno a couple times in high school out of my own interest, and I continued to read it in my college years. I have read multiple translations and have become somewhat of an Inferno scholar by doing so.
Spending as much time as I did reading the book, it became a natural source of inspiration for me. Unfortunately, this inspiration came about in the form of terrible recurring nightmares about Hell, damnation, and the Devil. A day came in about 2001, when I was just getting into music production, that I was able to focus all of this emotion into a song that I called “Why I Hate Dante”. I finished the song in an afternoon, and I don’t remember doing much of it. Looking back, creating the song was somewhat of a mystical experience for me.
This song remains to be some of my best work. It has a strong trip-hop groove that evolves throughout the song until it finally reaches critical mass and turns into a thrilling drill and bass monster. This is one of my longer works but I guarantee the tension justifies the entire length of the track.
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Today, I dig into the archives to bring you a song that is very different in contrast to the body of work presented thus far. I expect, that because of this, it might be more appealing and maybe more mainstream to those familiar with nu-breaks artists like Hyper and Evil Nine.
This was a focused and uncharacteristically angry song. Like most songs, this comes with a story:
I remember writing this shortly after the US invaded Iraq in 2003. I remember seeing Bush on TV repeating that God was on our side and that He told him that invading Iraq was the right thing to do. I don’t want to get into politics too much on this site, but I remember thinking that if that’s what America considered sound moral judgment and embracing what was considered “the light”, then I would rather embrace the darkness.
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Today, I’m resurrecting an old track from the archives that’s been a secret favorite of mine. “Turbulence” is somewhat different from the majority of sounds I produce – I think it fits in with contemporary American drum and bass a little better than some other work(i.e. “Things You’ll Need to Know“).
When I made it, I wanted the focus of “Turbulence” to be the keyboards in the background. The bassline that rolls through the whole track holds the whole track together, and the keyboards add tension until the big grinding synth comes in in the middle.
The name “Turbulence” came from the helicopter and airplane sound FX laced throughout the track, which add an incredible amount of atmosphere. Generally I don’t use a lot of sound effects in production, but in this case, I knew they belonged from the beginning. I think it was one of the first elements I put in.
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