Featured Mixes: Drew Blood 2010 (Minimal-Style Drum and Bass)

Not sure who this mix is penned by, but the selection on it caught my attention! Many former drum and bass fans are endlessly (paper)chasing dubstep music right now. While I argue that to each their own, they are missing out on a lot of the back-to-basics style drum and bass that has been coming out of the woodwork in 2010. After several years of stagnation, the return to the minimal sound (first visited in the pre-techstep mid-to-late 1990s) is in full force again, as evidenced in this mix entitled “Drew Blood”. I showcased several mixes of this style last year on here, including ones by Blu Mar Ten, Kapsil, and TeeBee. This block of tunage follows in their footsteps.

While the minimal sound was a proof-of-concept last year, in the Drew Blood mix we are starting to see its maturity. The edits are getting more precise, the creative usage of white noise and more non-percussive sounds to compliment the rhythm, and, in the opening piece, edits of amens and other more involved sounds chopped in to act as contrast. Overall this is a well put-together mix that toggles between deeper and more techstep-influenced iterations of the minimal sound. This is not without closing out on several straight-up techstep joints from years gone by, which essentially serve as the full on meat-and-potatoes from which the reduction sauce the remainder of this session were flavored and seasoned by. Download link below!

Drew Blood- 2010 Drum and Bass Mix