Castles in the Mind
As I finished putting together my first Drum & Bass mix at the end of 2023, I started reflecting on how strange it is that our love of certain kinds of music comes in ebbs and flows. The last time I’d really been into DnB was around the age of 20, loitering as often as possible at a dangerously low-ceilinged club in Oxford called The Cellar. I can only guess at why my recent Google search displayed it as ‘permanently closed.’
Until the last couple of years, I always seemed to be wondering through the musical cosmos in one of two ways. I was either swimming – drowning almost – in new rivers of abundance, with songs, artists and record labels coming out of my ears, unearthing hidden gems by the minute. Or I was in a sonic Sahara, as if the entire world’s creativity had dried up and no amount of Spotify searching or Soundcloud scouring could bring anything I truly resonated with.
But like any good story, the inertia is just as important as the action. And like any good piece of music, the silence is just as important as the sound. I was in just such a space of down-beaten doldrumitis a year ago, feeling a little nauseated by what I was listening to, and seemingly unable to drag myself out of the rut. It was as if any avenues I explored just looped back to the same place, and I noticed that the frequency and pleasure with which I listened to music were dwindling.
What sparked the new period of musical discovery wasn’t brute force or relentless searching, but actually a friend’s obiter dicta. We were enjoying a drink on my balcony as the sun was setting and I was bemoaning the lack of DnB in Switzerland, reminiscing about a recent visit to Bristol where I’d danced to my heart’s content, and of course ‘the good old days’ back at The Cellar. She raised an eyebrow and scoffed at the suggestion: of course there was DnB in Switzerland. Nonsense, I told her, I’d lived here for five years and never heard of such a thing. Fine, she told me, believe what you want. And so the game was on.
What a moment ago seemed like a yawning – and boring – chasm of audio apocalypse to my cynical mind, now started to surge with the thrill of the chase. I began to warm to the hunt as I started to follow up leads, discover events, find artists, and trace the development of music I loved so much over the years I’d stopped listening to it. I needed the drought to produce the thirst that would drag me, dry-tongued, towards what turned out to be an immense river of human innovation in the genre. I was gobsmacked by what existed, and equally shocked by how ready I had been to wave all of it away with a lazy, “Oh, it probably doesn’t exist…” I felt foolish and delighted in equal measure.
I’d built an empty castle in my mind around the past, locking past pleasures away and consigning them to history. Yet in dwelling nostalgically on that single structure, I hadn’t for a moment considered lifting my eyes to look around me. As the trickle of new music turned first into a stream, then a torrent, I reflected that if there was anything the internet had taught me, it’s that if you can imagine it, it exists, and then some. (And no, I’m not just referring to Rule 34, though the principle is instructive.)
It’s been a great pleasure to enjoy the ride of musical discovery since the balcony spat with my friend, and an even greater one to realise that the feeling of inertia, or tamas, in life – its discomfort, its noisomeness, and agitation – is nothing to begrudge. In fact, it’s often the tickle we need to get moving, the itch to make us scratch the surface and find what’s hidden in plain sight.
So, if you’ve read this far, I hope you enjoy the mix as well.