Mindstorm

Certain electronic music genres lend themselves better to enjoyably cohesive albums than others. I'm no Simon Reynolds, but I've observed it tends to skew towards how home listening-oriented they are. For example, ex-IDM-aka-Braindance (and its many, many splintered substyles) has a seemingly boundless breadth of wonderful long-players. Ah, but that's because these are for when you gloss out on the couch, as the seminal Artificial Intelligence series forecasted so rightly with its cover art years ago.

Meanwhile, I've wasted a lot of time wading through mediocre house, trance, and… drum 'n' bass albums. You know, the ones with a couple hit singles amidst a sea of… uh, other tracks that either sound too much like those singles, or try to be "experimental" and fail because it's like putting a tux on a penguin. Few listening experiences can rank highly both on the dancefloor and the living room in the way that, say, BT's albums can (and he's done this consistently). It is difficult to weave a unified theme across diversified moods. However, and I'll repeat this point often and well, it isn't rocket science to come up with a memorable melody.

Those of you familiar with my musical tastes know that I'm not particularly hard to please: a little melody goes a long way. Drum 'n' bass (I generalize) is nefariously piss-poor in this aspect, partially because at higher tempos, loops get repeated a lot more in the relative space of several minutes, and variation — often out of the producer's laziness — happens less. (What, is it so hard to pepper down a new line of hi-hats there, copy-and-paste a synth stab here? Or even eschew the studio surgery and play some fresh lines, live?) Another failing also happens to be that there's a large degree of DnB which prides itself on being "dark", "menacing", and other "not Mr. Rogers" adjectives, and in that jungle (jungle, geddit, hee hee?), even mildly catchy riffs get forgotten about. You can archetype the memorable clatter of tramens, and funky beats do matter, but most people just don't relate to that. But witness the successes within, say, industrial and heavy metal, and that points to luminaries like Concord Dawn's "Raining Blood" doing the right thing and including guitars, and on other tracks, vocals in their DnB. (Why the longtime aversion? It's even more disjointedly embarrassing than the opposition to Bob Dylan going electric.)

I'll throw out a not-so-wild theory, and state that anthropomorphized drum 'n' bass is kind of afraid of itself: anally retentive and in fear of laughing in the mirror too. It's no coincidence that some of my fave DnB does have a a sense of humor, and like a physician with a good bedside manner, you can most certainly smile AND do serious work. But the stagnant DnB, and it's shameful how much I stumble across while getting to the good stuff, sounds largely the same, perhaps timidly putting in stuttered vox samples but afraid to grow with them, disappointingly adding so much distortion to what was a guitar that not only is it unrecognizable, it sucks the dynamic range and life out of the "music".

And if you want to disagree, point to every single song on the Billboard charts today. They have something in common: melody. Sure, "popular" doesn't equate "good" in some people's minds, and we might argue that "a lot of people might like underground music a lot more if they were exposed to it instead of being blinded by saccharine American Idol crap", but that's missing the point, because even if you take all those away, and heck — turn to classical music's greatest hits, they're hummable and easily inserted into episodes of Looney Tunes and Tom & Jerry.

Thus, past and presently — and definitely carrying into the future — we just can't get away from it: humans love a catchy melody. Even those who claim they're looking for something more "challenging" will have an easier time humming something they can, well, hum.

All of that leads me to this: I created my first Amazon.com list called "Drum 'n' bass not for technosnobs (e.g., has catchy melodies)". This is certainly an affront to purists, and cheerfully so. But I'm disappointed, because off the top of my head (and I intend to  add to the list as other memories resurface and new discoveries get made), I could only come up with… FIVE ALBUMS.

And these albums aren't just cobbled-up collections of singles (I'm looking at you, Form & Function II), but incredibly aural journeys that work from start-to-finish. Like a good narrative, they have pacing and arc. Like good movies, they have character development, at least insofar as tracks evolving and unfolding through layers (as opposed to monotonously droning on for the worse part of 5, 6 minutes). And like good music, they have melodies.

Which is, apparently harder to do than it seems, like Mozart finding it incomprehensible to play "Twinkle Little Star". Yet I've said it before, and repeat it here for emphasis: if you want to have a successful drum 'n' bass album that crosses over into more broadly-appealing territory, just lay down some catchy melodies. It's not hard, and it's good for the soul*. * = or insert equivalent here

I gladly make exceptions from melody for more "abstract" works involving lots of changes, too. Rawtekk's "Hunter"

is a masterpiece of twisted, descending bass with gloomy paranoia and globs of progression. (I sense an Aphex Twin influence, which makes sense in line with what I said about home listening earlier.) And while I savage F&FII, Photek's "Ni Ten Ichi Ryu" is an apex of the form with its meticulously-crafted samurai math beats, and must be studied by all who take drum 'n' bass seriously.

Music is meant to be heard. Why bother otherwise? (Selfish artists who "only create for themselves" can stay out of this.) To prospective junglists, be an ambassador for positive progress — and that's at the root of why I'm sick of seeing DnB self-destruct, or if that's too dramatic, I'll assess that it's strangling itself when it could be so much more. DnB need not be afraid of the silk bathrobe with the fuzzy slippers. It can still have attitude, edge, and aggression. But first, it needs to be more earnest, and not make fun of clowns so cruelly.

There are some DnB acts that do superb singles which I didn't include because they either (1) haven't released a full album yet or (2) their albums had too many weaknesses for me to be comfy with. Sub Focus fits in the former (just about everything I've listened to of his has been ace, especially his "Aliens" remix, which is the future of hip-hop

), and Roni Size & Reprazent's New Forms is in the latter. Wait, I know, it won a Mercury Music Prize. But, as a double CD, it had way too much repetition for me to care about — a key example being the condensed version of "Brown Paper Bag" compared to the bloated album one. I could've trimmed both discs into a single, potent punch. But as it stands, that's not how history played out, so I didn't include it. I feel similarly about Goldie's Timeless, because as much of a sacred cow as it is to some, it too, has tracks that could've been edited in half and had the same vigor and scope. (Again, I don't dispute the sheer beauty of "Inner City Life".) So I'm sure it makes some people's lists, but not mine, and that's alright.

"Mainstream" drum 'n' bass (relatively speaking) could stand a lot to learn from the eloquent brevity of their drill 'n' bass/breakcore siblings (like the Flashbulb

or Venetian Snares

tho I'm aware they dabble in many more styles too) — strip some of the hyperactive ADD, and leave the power of ideas intact.

It's like there's this gold, out in the open, waiting to be mined. But somehow, it keeps getting missed. There's hope for drum 'n' bass yet, and along the way, I'll continue to highlight my faves. Check my list out and let me know if you have any recommendations!