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https://preview.redd.it/gd359w2yoaob1.jpg?width=1224&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f7c1fa50332cf4b0f22fb38576cf6ed41fb316f5
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https://preview.redd.it/97bm2x2yoaob1.jpg?width=1224&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e3c950482d3e171a543ff72650424b6b0c3f85d9
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I have no affiliation with Hidizs and I find it odd that I recommended the MS-1 recently in headphoneadvice and headphones and both posts were immediately removed due to "affiliate or guerilla marketing." I was sent these from Hidizs for free and I'll be buying another two pairs. Kinda pissed at that honestly. What do you need, proof? Wack. I have extensively reviewed all of my headphones and IEMs. You can see the plethora of stuff I've posted in Grado under username DJGammaRabbit.
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TL;DR
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Your decision between the MS-1 and Zero Red will come down to whether you want to amplify them. If you only have $16 (price verified) it's a no-brainer, they're not similarly priced. If you're listening unamplified from a phone then buy the MS1 and maybe EQ it, it will respond very well and perform as the Zero Red does just louder by almost 6dB (117.5db vs 123db). If you are going to use an amp or a PC then get the Zero Red, I think the driver separation is worth it at that point. The only similarly priced IEM I have to compare to is a Smile Jamaica and this sounds a lot better. If you require a mic then it's an easy choice: for an extra dollar they include a mic. I haven't used my Zero Red since getting these and I don't see myself using them until I get a Qudelix. For $16 I am so surprised at the value.
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Things I have to compare to: Grado SR80X, Grado MS-1, Zero Red, Marley Smile Jamaica.
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The MS-1 is Harman 2019 target tuned, budget friendly and awesome with or without EQ. These well-tuned IEMs set a reference standard for expected sound quality per dollar and should appeal to average consumers. While they say "Hi-Res certified" they aren't quite audiophile grade even though they are very clear, I would need more detail from them to be classed as mid-fi but they do come close. At times they do show more detail than you'd expect but not as much as a $150 USD headphone offers, they're not like my Grados where I can hear hands moving up and down frets. They're still every bit as clear as you need them to be. Everything from their website description is very accurate. They slam with EQ and can take +15db@31hz with -5db gain without audible distortion - that's a lot! With EQ they so nearly match the Zero Red but are louder and have more impact.
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You'd think the zero red would be as loud being 117.5db sensitive and 17.5 ohms, nearly 10db more sensitive and twice as easy to drive as the MS-1 is 32 ohms but they are not and it was the first thing I noticed - the MS-1 is quite a bit louder making them seem amplified comparably. How the zero red is more sensitive and easier to drive but not as loud I don't know, something isn't adding up. The zero red requires 1V RMS to achieve 100dB while the MS-1 requires 2.2V. I found out this is due to the Zero Red being measured at 1khz, making the comparison 117.5db and 123db on the MS-1.
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Album listened to:
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Mac Miller - Swimming.
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Source:
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Android with AIMP player.
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EQ:
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Flat and my own U or V-shape.
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Initial impressions:
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Translucent and beautiful, solid Harman-y (later saw that it is Harman 2019) and fun tuning, loud, nice braided cable but the longer portion is sheathed in a plastic that still allows it to tangle and that portion isn't braided.
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Fit:
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Three silicone tips. The housing is smaller and fits more flush in my ear than the zero reds. I had some trouble getting a full seal in my left ear even though I'm using the largest tips. I think I prefer the foam tips on the zero red. Comfortable, the driver housing of the zero red actually sticks out at times and feels bulkier while the MS-1 is more flush and has a better sitting position because it isn't nearly-flatly-constructed like the zero red, the MS-1 having a rounded backing which is much appreciated. Although they're similar I prefer the fit of the MS-1. When ear space is limited anyone would. The zero red in my girlfriends ear looks hilarious because it literally does not fit at all. The overall size of the zero reds driver housing is slightly bigger, probably to account for the dual driver but I don't know. Flange the rear of them and they'll fit better, just not on my girlfriend.
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Music:
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The MS-1 surprised me. I had been staring at their box for three days with low expectations, mostly because none of Hidizs products are in popular circles and I can't imagine why. I'm upgrading my budget IEMs pick to these instead of my 10 year old $20 Marley Smile Jamaicas I bought at Shoppers. I'm not sure on the cost but I heard $20, don't quote me, their previous "Galaxy", dubbed the MS-1-Rainbow, being $42.99. They surprised me because I like them more than my Zero Reds as most of the time I use IEMs for walking or biking with my phone and I don't have a portal amp. Although the sub bass (30hz and less) seems more dynamic, detailed and thicker with the Zero Red it has dual drivers, one dedicated below 200hz. I'm nit picking. The 10.2mm single driver on the MS-1 delivers everything I want bass to be (after EQ) minus high-grade audiophile separation, being loud, impactful, balanced and distortion free. You'd have to listen to something in the 20hz range to tell the difference and not much music dips that low, occasionally you'll barely hear around 25hz in a song. The MS-1 has so little distortion, I can't hear any so they come across as smooth and capable. The MS-1 is a few dB louder everywhere and it's very noticeable. It's not missing any information in its sub region either, it hits lows with ease and essentially without distortion - even with +15dB@31hz and +8db@62hz with -5dB gain. They didn't even sound muddy. For reference my mid-fi Grado SR80X headphones with better sound quality distorts at +10db@31hz -5db gain, they're not known for sub bass but I've expected more. Since I don't have a portable amp I prefer the MS-1 for the volume. Overall sound quality/complaint wise I couldn't tell a difference between the Zero Red and MS-1 and I'm hoping there will be with amplification but I doubt it, I couldn't ask for a louder IEM than the MS-1. Without EQ I prefer the MS-1. It is less neutral and more fun than the Zero Red and only noticeably. The Zero Red has forward vocals that layer it above the rest and I don't like that. With EQ they're pretty much the same but the MS-1 is still louder and has a thicker kick around 60hz, it does have a bloaty impact but it's impactful none the less. They both have different sounding drum kicks - the Zero Red seems to be scooped out a touch around 60hz so that it doesn't bloat (I think I remember reading that somewhere). The MS-1 is more punchy with and without EQ when unamped. I didn't find them too bright but they do lean a little bright but enjoyably so.
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Gaming:
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A little bright but not overly, I don't play at full volume, I use -5 clicks on my PS4. I wasn't wincing at gun shots while with the Zero Red I was if the 10-ohm adapter wasn't plugged in. They're both very clear. At one point I was playing COD and thought I heard a knock at my front door so I signalled to my girlfriend to answer it. She said nobody knocked on the door. I realized what I heard was just in-game sounds coming from an industrial plant. The MS-1 fooled me. The same happens with my Grados (with music, you definitely don't want to use them for gaming). I love when that happens because it's a good reference to whether something sounds natural. Imagining is as good as I need it to be - I'll often warn teammates that someone is running behind them when they don't seem to notice. I can tell whether someone is above or below me. I can directionalise where shots at coming from.
I went into DMZ this afternoon to test the mic, imagining and soundstage. I found the mic to be very clear and without scratchy vocals or sibilance. A video of DMZ where people tell me to adjust my mic and then say it sounds good (I am DeathWishkers):
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mic check - YouTube
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I didn't hear sibilance from music even once (even with my crazily boosted EQ) or gaming. The Harman 2019 target is great for that. All it takes is one lick of sibilance to ruin a pair of sound-things forever.
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I love these IEMs and I'm questioning why I spent $75+ CAD on the Zero Red when I didn't really need to (but I do want a portable amp). I can understand that a dual driver has an easier time reproducing low frequency sounds but the 10.2mm single dynamic in the MS-1 is no slouch and in my opinion the increased sub performance in the dual driver is not worth a price increase of 3x if they're not amplified. I didn't even like the Zero Red for gaming without its ohm adapter.
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Amplified testing both from my old PC, keep in mind that windows media player isn't great, my AIMP player on my phone has much better everything: the zero red easily wins here, with or without EQ.
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Zero Red without EQ:
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It's mostly boring, non-sparkly but there is a good amount of sub bass but not much (and not too little), it's all very neutral with clear vocals on top.
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Zero Red With EQ:
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Cranking it with my EQ of +12db@31hz with SRS WOW effect turned on (which is stupid, don't use it) sounds like being in a car with blaring subwoofers that drown out the highs: nice. There wasn't a huge increase in volume, though. It's negligible, meanwhile my Grados see massive volume gains when plugged into this PC. The bass can be ridiculous on the Zero Red but at the expense of drowning everything else out. I prefer just using my EQ without the SRS WOW effect, even though my EQ also drowns out the highs a little.
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I realize I'm biased and a basshead who wants to have his cake and eat it too; but the Zero Red is immaculately tuned even though I say "boring". I'm so accustomed to using my U or V-shaped EQ that if I just gave myself ten minutes to listen to it with the EQ off I think I would appreciate that it is neutral with sub boost. It's not BORING, just more boring than how I applied settings to it. If I had the money I would drive around with 8 18" subwoofers in a T-line behind my front seat. Meanwhile if you're not listening to rap or EDM you'll most likely even prefer the neutral tuning as it is almost mid-focal pointed if it weren't for the sub boost. My EQ does scoop out the mids at the cost of super clear, rich and detailed mids. My problem with a neutral tuning is that everything sounds overly flat, overly close and there is no space. By removing some of the mids you can gain a sense of size and space. It's an illusion but a welcomed one for me. On one song, a 22-35hz rebass of "circles bob - frozen", I can FEEL the bass at 22hz, a pure air fluttering in my ear canals and it is awesome. I think that's why I bought these: they had a "subwoofer". With 8khz at +9db it lets me hear a sense of realism amid the +12db@31hz and [+8db@62hz](mailto:+8db@62hz). Enough of the Zero Reds.
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MS-1 amplified:
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MS-1 without EQ:
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The differences now appear. Without EQ these are not nearly as bassy as the Zero Red and now less so than just using my phone. They're brighter than using them with my phone. They're very clear, more detailed even but not welcomed. Where'd the bass go - my phone delivers more bass with EQ off - maybe that's an electrical difference in tuning? They're still louder than the Zero Red but that might be a difference in tuning, in having brighter highs alone. Some may find this just a touch too bright, I do. I'm not a fan of it when amplified, maybe it's my dusty PC. However, from my phone these things slam and sound great, from my PC not so much.
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MS-1 with EQ:
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Not as bassy as the Zero Red. The difference is greater with and without EQ when amplified. Where the MS-1 loses to dynamics and texture as well as raw oomph the Zero Red delivers with ease. I think these were design principals, that the Zero Red were designed to be amplified.
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Better fit:
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MS-1, however, the nozzle is shorter and I actually had to pull out the left side a little to get a full seal. The Zero Red nozzle can feel too long.
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Tuning king:
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Zero Red.
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Better when unamplified:
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MS-1. Because loud.
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Better without EQ and unamplified:
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MS-1. This is just a tuning preference. They're less neutral than the Zero Red. This is the kind of thing you give your mother as a stocking stuffer and she'd love it; because you know she isn't going to mess with an EQ.
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Better with EQ when unamplified:
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Slight nod to the MS-1 for being able to perform nearly the same as the Zero Red everywhere including sub bass when unamplified - which isn't a great thing - the zero red has a better tuning period - but it's not as appreciable without amplification. I didn't hear much of a difference between these, only that the MS-1 can get a lot louder. You can EQ sub bass into the MS-1 and not really be missing anything; you'd have to be really looking for the lessened sub bass. The added impact on kick drums I preferred more than the extra sub bass from the Zero Red. The MS-1 also seems like it has less distortion when adding +15db@31hz, not that the Zero Red distorts much but I don't go past 10-12db or I'll think I'm hearing the over-1% distortion driver "limit". The MS-1 I'll keep at +15db full time.
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The tonality of the MS-1 isn't perfect, no target is. For short exercise like riding my bike I would take the MS-1. For long road trips I would take the zero red, even with its less volume from my phone without an external amp it would be better because the brightness of the MS-1 amplified would get tiring if listening over an hour and hopefully I'm wrong and that it's amplifier dependent. I just love how loud the MS-1 is everywhere from only my phone. On my phone it doesn't seem overly bright. On my PC if I EQ 4khz down to -3db instead of +6db it removes the annoyance of the brightness - but that's what I'm using on my phone, +6db@4khz, the same as the Zero Red. I'm also assuming that I'll even buy an external amplifier. The brightness isn't a problem, nothing EQ can't solve but it's worthy to note.
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Artists listened to:
Pouya
Nas
Deadmau5
Young Buck
Rick Astley
Mac Miller
Empire Of The Sun
Hugh Masekela
A huge album of Youtube music, mostly EDM and classic rock
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Youtube with Edge browser Youtube EQ extention set to "party": 2 songs tested between my grados and the two IEMs:
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I originally had it set to "headphones" and it were far too bright; I couldn't handle 10 seconds of this between any of my IEMs or headphones except for the Zero Red; they're tuned so well you can use any EQ preset.
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Empire Of The Sun - Walking On A Dream (Sam La More Remix Edit) - an exceptional remix with great mixing:
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q35dZRfhZlY​
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Grado 80x: Slightly weird on the highs on both party and soft rock settings, lacking impact but very revealing.
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Zero Red: Everything is perfect on any EQ settings, EQ is just preference at this point where with the other IEM/headphone it's a matter of being able to stand it.
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MS-1: These slam on party and soft rock EQ. The kicks are so punchy. The highs aren't over-done but do lean bright, the mids have just enough body. The soundstage gives a good go at making everything sound spacious. Leans on being a little bright on "party" and is more forgiving on "soft rock". I can listen indefinitely on soft rock. These sound more natural than my Grados on certain songs which isn't something I'm happy about.
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Second song: Hugh Masekela - Stimela, something different for myself but very welcomed
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dtkv9FYdiLQ​
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My Grados make this song shine. Sounds beautiful and perfect on soft rock or party, mostly party.
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Zero Red: The detail I wanted from them isn't there and less so than the MS-1. The Zero Red flattens everything to a neutrality that isn't enjoyable for me.
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MS-1: Here's where you'll notice that these have natural timbre. Instruments sound natural. Voices sound exciting. Separation is good. You can't listen to something digital like EDM and judge whether there's good separation or timbre.
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Final notes:
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The cable on the Zero Red is slightly longer by 3 inches - I went biking with them, putting my phone in my pocket and it was fine, it didn't pull on the phone, for reference I'm 5'7" on a 26" bike - I needed them to be long enough to not yank my phone out of my pocket. I've been gaming and listening to music on the MS-1 for the past two weeks and not once have I used the Zero Red, there's no point. I'd like to know how to pronounce Hidizs, I keep switching between high-dies, hidies, hidi-zies, etc. I don't like the name. I can't tell how accurate the tuning is to "Harman" but on the graph it looks pretty close.
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Hidizs MS1-Galaxy High-Performance Dual Magnetic Circuit Dynamic Drive
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The first 200 pairs are $9.99.

Patience

Maybe this isn’t a legitimate quote or saying but it’s the only thing I can think of that fits the bill for me. I tend to be extremely impulsive, especially when an idea pops into my head, so sometimes I need to tell myself to sit back and relax for a second so I can make some clear-headed decisions.
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https://preview.redd.it/y9rs45piu4gb1.png?width=3300&format=png&auto=webp&s=02b5ce4cada655d642c03e97d88f87b1e95ba44e
For all the people who don’t know yet: who is u/heyzeushimself? Your artist name is Icono, can you explain how you came up with that. That’s right – I go by 3 names so please make sure to remember every single one LOL. My real name is Tanner Ulrich and I am a Canadian based Architectural Designer & Technologist who has worked in the industry for just over a decade. Heyzeus is my username on Reddit, where I have also spent the same number of years consuming millions more reddit posts than you probably ever should in one life time. But look how that turned out! My artist name is taken from the brand I started a few years ago named Icono Studio. This was an avenue for me to work on projects outside of architecture, and I also wanted to separate myself and my identity from the company. I am now 3 weeks away from starting grad school where I will finally get what I need to become a licensed Architect (my dream)! And to eventually open up my own practice!
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Tanner has shared an acedamic architecture project online; Conceptual Piano Centre.
Gen 4 is your first collection of Reddit Collectible Avatars.Where were you when you learned you got into the program? Lol I was at work. I just started a new position after moving across the country so it was a gigantic change in my life all at once. It sure made for a pleasant surprise!!😊
How did you spend the launch moment? Thankfully I took the day off from the office so I really got to enjoy every moment! It was such an interesting and exciting feeling. This entire thing is so new and so much different than anything I’ve ever experienced before so I was trying to appreciate every moment lol. Moments like these are rare.
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We have seen you actively participating in avatar related subreddits as a member. What’s it like to now join all the other artists, going from member to artist? First off - it’s something I definitely do not take for granted. This has consumed me entirely for the past 8 months so it’s such a great feeling to finally be here. The wait before can be a difficult process because you don’t have many people to talk to, but these opportunities are much easier to come-by once you’re on the other side. I still love to be involved with the community as much as I can, and probably even more so now.
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The entry for the Original Avatar Art Competition.
You participate in avatartrading’s Original Avatar Art Competition in January this year. And you won! And your avatar “?” looks familiar.. it looks like you made that idea a reality? That’s correct, yeah! Shout-out to u/dexterrible for making me aware of the competition and suggesting I enter! It definitely gave me a bit of faith for getting into Gen 4. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit upset about not being in Gen 3 lol. I put a lot of time in the original concepts so I wanted to feel like they weren’t going to waste, which ultimately lead me to use what eventually became “?” in this competition. I also ended up posting (now deleted) all 3 of my original concepts which are now all official! I’ll post an image below so people can compare them to what became official.
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Tanner's complete Gen 4 collection.
What inspired you for Alien Concept and Issued for Construction? Because I wanted the first collection to be a good representation of myself, I wanted to bring a little bit of my own world into the RCA world. The three avatars as a set, represent a loose interpretation of the process that’s typically required when designing something to be physically constructed. It all begins with a sketch, putting pen to paper. Developing your concept. We skip much of the design development phase in this collection, and go right into working drawings (in this case, the blueprint). Boring stuff but it gets the job done. And if you want to get abstract about “?”, although you see this beautiful exterior, when you look at Snoo’s shape and form, you can still imagine the framed interior that’s just beyond the façade.
Maybe this means nothing, but you have some interesting mint numbers: 101, 369 and 2147. How did they come about, do they mean anything? Sort of yeah.
101 – Favourite mint number (besides 1) and the alternating aspect of the number can be compared to the colour sequence in the avatar itself and also the ono in icono (lol that sounds hilarious).
369 – Just a visually appealing number to begin with and an easy pattern to understand.
2147 – lol, there is a technical reason for this that I don’t know anything about but it’s the number associated with a max cash stack in Runescape hahahah. I haven’t played this game in sooooo many years but the number for some reason was always intriguing to me. Little side note - I happily minted Alien Concept #126, which is another small Runescape reference to what was the max level in the game during its prime.
When we looked at your Reddit profile, we see a variety of art style. How would you describe your style? My style is for sure heavily influenced by my background in architecture. There’s a certain aesthetic to architectural sketching and typography, and how we depict our ideas and illustrations. Eric Reinholdt of 30x40 Design Workshop, Youtube channel and architectural practice, does an amazing job explaining these principals in detail, in his “Sketch like an Architect” video. But to give you a brief rundown. Understanding perspective is the absolute most important aspect if you want to sketch in a similar manner. Next would be making sure to use an array of line weights, and potentially line styles. This allows you to create depth, and to bring emphasis to the areas of the drawing that require it. Keep a loose grip and don’t worry about making lines straight, in fact, you should learn to almost draw your lines as squiggles. The reason for this is that it allows you to illustrate more of an indication and not something that is necessarily set in stone.
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Nicest House in Town, Ontario
Since you been a member for months, what was the first avatar that you got and why? Besides the free stuff, the first avatar I got was Cone Head #568 (hahahahahaha) and I don’t think I need to explain any further why! I watched it develop this cult-like movement behind it, and I was like this is the one!!!!!! (It still is). Honestly, things just haven’t seemed quite right since getting rid of that beautiful, beautiful thing.
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Work in progress he shared on the sub 7 months ago.
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Did you look at community feedback when you started designing your snoo’s? For this collection, I did not. I wanted my first collection to be an introduction to myself and I think the 3 here speak very clearly to that. I believe I do have a decent understanding of what people like to see, and I hope to combine much of that with my own style as much as I can in any future releases.
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When/where did you learn to draw? And do you have any tips for beginners? I always liked to draw but never really put the time and effort in until I was just graduating secondary school. And that’s what you need to do, you need to just start doing it. It doesn’t even have to be drawing. Just start to get comfortable with a pen or pencil in your hand, try to learn how to write cursive, doodle. There’s so many things that can develop your drawing skills and you might not even think it’s happening. But the most important tip you can give to this question is to respect the time it takes, and to be ready to put in that time. Don’t look at your initial works and let that make you think you can’t draw. Try to find what works best for you, and is something you really enjoy, and the knowledge will follow.
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Did you know that Tanner is also a great photographer?
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What inspires or motivates you to create? If I answered this in full and truthfully, it would be much longer than anyone cares to read so I’ll try to keep it short. Creating gives me the sense and feeling of purpose. I have started to notice that whenever I feel stagnant or I am not making at least some sort of progress in my life, it really begins to eat away at me. This is still very much what I love to do though, so I try to do it as much as I can. Architecture as a profession generally requires your full and undivided attention so when I get to work on other design related projects, it’s like a therapy or meditation for me. It helps to open my mind and avoid tunnel vision.
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What tools do you prefer? Or is there a tool you would love to master? My tools of preference will always be a roll of tracing paper, and a black ink pen. My go-to right now is the Pilot Hi-Tecpoint V5 pens, but you need to find something else if you plan to do watercolour over top. The tool I would love to master is the piano, and yes we’re defining that as a tool for this 😊
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Trinity Bellwoods Park
Can you show us the piece you are most proud of? And tell us why. There are numerous projects I’ve worked on that I take a lot of pride in, but I think the image below is a good answer to this question. This was really the first time I tried to do a “finished” field sketch (Trinity Bellwoods Park, Toronto, ON, Canada), and it completely changed my mindset about so many things, even beyond the art aspect. It took me on a creative crusade.
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https://preview.redd.it/pvvbtztas4gb1.png?width=622&format=png&auto=webp&s=47ebabf19864e43a11a889657211c081936cb649
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Who is on your wishlist to collab with? Avatar artist and non avatar artist! For avatar artist – Jessica Hansen / u/hessicajansen so she can carry me. We’re both new and navigating this space as artists for the first time and have become good friends as a result. I also think Issued for Construction and MUSE follow a similar intention by the portrayal of our traditional mediums in this new digital world.
And probably deadmau5 lol. Not just for the music, but because I think it’s great to see an artist who is so involved with every step & aspect of the entire process/production. You’re not just getting one thing, in this case music, you’re getting an entire stadium production that was for the most part, curated by one individual. Of course it’s a stretch to say that but you know what I mean.
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This question comes from u/bodegacatceo: In 5 sentences or less, tell us your 5-year goals. (Aka in 5 yrs, where do you see yourself?) In 5 years, I hope to finally be a licensed architect, and be working on projects that are fun and impactful. The world is changing as such a fast pace, it’s almost impossible to keep up nowadays. The only thing I care about is eventually owning a large plot of beautifully-forested land, separated from the rest of society, so I can design and build my own little paradise!
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Last but not least: what question do you have for the next artist that we feature? How would you feel about yourself and how you’ve grown as a person & artist, if you could go back 5 years and see who you are in the present day?
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Want to know more about Icono, check out his socials:

• Website: www.iconostudio.ca
• Reddit artist page: www.reddit.com/avatashop/artist/heyzeushimseif
• Subreddit: www.reddit.com/icono
• Instagram: u/icono_studio
• Twitter: u/studio_icono

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https://preview.redd.it/8tepw6qpsdza1.jpg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=81c9e95237699656d8943084d87f6e0a27bf61a8

Buy & Stream

• Vinyl / Hoodie / Poster Packages
• Beatport
• Spotify
• YouTube
• YouTube Music
• Soundcloud
• Deezer
• Apple Music

Tracklist

Title	Length
Trip (feat. Metrik)	4:31
Calling For A Sign (feat. Kelli-Leigh)	3:51
Fine Day	3:52
Vibration (feat. ACO)	4:02
It’s Time (feat. Gene Farris)	3:19
Ready To Fly (feat. Dimension)	3:25
Alarm (feat. MC ID)	3:07
Off The Ground	4:02
Waiting (feat. Pola & Bryson & Kelli-Leigh)	3:51
I Found You (feat. Hayla)	2:56
Secrets (feat. CamelPhat, Culture Shock & RHODES)	5:10
Overcome (feat. Frances)	2:56
Don’t Want To Come Down (feat. LOWES)	3:53
Turn Up The Bass (feat. Jonny L)	4:24

Review

Welcome to my sixteenth album write-up! I apologize in advance for the wall of text that is about to follow. Scroll down for a TL;DR on the LP.

Background

Sound the Alarm, activate the Siren, get ready to cause some Trouble! Just a couple weeks before we cross over to Juno, we are coming together in this place now, to celebrate the third solo album of none other than Nicolaas "Nick" Douwma, better known as Sub Focus! As one of my all-time favourite artists, his music has become the Air I Breathe, the invigorating Rays Of Sun I soak up on rainy days, the soundtrack to my Special Place, a steady source of Endorphins to the point one could say I have become a real Subby Druggy. He is not just able to produce tunes that make me want to bust out my finest Flamenco moves in my living room (only after having Turned The Lights Off), he has of course also made an impossible to overstate Splash on the scene at large, Rocking It to its very core and causing a Tidal Wave of new artists inspired to pursue DnB too.
Of course, we never had to endure too long without new Sub Focus goodness, with steady releases and all sorts of club and festival appearances he smoothly avoided the fans' World becoming one Of Hurt, but it's still safe to say that we have been Waiting for this third long player to arrive for quite some time now. First teased in 2016, but then endlessly delayed or overruled by other projects like the admittedly gorgeous collaborative album with Wilkinson, it almost felt like the plans for it were put on ice. Frozen Solid, as it were. Far Out Of Reach, floating about in the Deep Space outside our Solar System, Nobody Knowing any better for a good seven years. One Fine Day, however, something changed. His almost completely cleared social media presence already gave the fans a hunch that something is Coming Closer, confirmed by the quickly following ominous teaser, simply captioned III. It's Time, for the coveted third solo album!
Around a year and a string of incredibly successful singles later, it is now finally released. So let's Turn Back Time and Turn Up The Bass, let us take a step back and Illuminate Nick's path to becoming one of the most successful electronic artists of today. Let The (Back-)Story Begin!

From Metalnicka To Electronick Music (1982 - 2002)

Nicolaas "Nicky D" Douwma, half-Dutch and half-English if you were wondering, started out his expansive musical journey at the ripe old age of 11. Having grown up in London and having attended Westminster, basically the crown jewels of the capital's repository of expensive public schools, you might think he would have a proper posh music taste (whatever that would be), but what really gave him that spark of excitement was the rough-around-the-edges in-your-face energy of Rock. Nirvana, Metallica, Guns N' Roses, the works. His classmates and him were so enamored with the sound and so motivated to create their own stuff, they quickly decided to form a band of their own, letting nothing, not even their inability to play any actual instrument, get in their way. Nick chose the Bass as his weapon of choice, already completing one half of the equation early on. However, either due to becoming disillusioned with the band or because he wanted to create some extra cool sounds for it (the archives are not clear on this), he then became interested in music production.
After having acquired a "crummy" computer from Acorn, the now-defunct British answer to Apple back in the day, he would create fun little tunes in a rather odd piece of software called Notate, in which you had to use actual classical notation to form melodies. While unconvential from today's and, to be honest, even back then's perspective, he was hooked. When Nick was 13, somebody in his class played part of the legendary 1994 Jungle Mania 2 mixtape out loud, with one particular tune especially peaking his interest: General Levy's and M-Beat's Incredible. Not only was this wild Breakbeat-heavy storm of a tune radiating a whole new kind of energy he had never experienced before, Levy's, well, incredibly unique way of performing fascinated him to no end. From there on out the train towards becoming an electronic music fan became unstoppable, with Nick delving deeper into the discography of the likes of The Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy and LTJ Bukem, starting to record tapes off London-based pirate radio station Kool FM and getting into some of the early RAM Records releases.
Inspired by the first LTJ Bukem CD he ever bought, he then made the Logical Progression to DJing at 15, on the best belt drive decks £50 quid could buy. After starting off practicing the art of bedroom DJing, he properly cut his teeth at small nights that his mate, Freddie Dixon aka FD, was throwing at Surrey University. When Nick wasn't performing his own shows, you could also see him at the infamous Metalheadz Sunday Sessions "as soon as he could fake an ID". Yes, the Sunday Sessions!

Subfrequently Focussed (2002 - 2005)

Driven by the at the time very cheeky, but in hindsight not quite unfounded hubris of thinking he could do way better than the producers he was hearing on the radio and with his parents supporting him every step of the way, he also never lost sight of the other side of the musical career coin, production, even submitting a DnB tune for his GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) in music. Around the turn of the millenium, he started "taking it a little more seriously", treating himself to a proper production set up, moving near Shoreditch (i.e. still London) to study Sound Engineering at the London Metropolitan University, later resulting in some actual, properly finished up, ready-to-send-out tunes. One fateful night, one of said mates, Jack, went to a good ol' Andy C rave and decided to stay until the end to give him a CD filled with tunes Nick shared with him, with Nick's contact details written on it. A couple days later, Nick received a call from an unknown number - with Andy on the other line. Another couple days later, Nick found himself signed to the sister label of one of the imprints he was looking up most to, Andy's and Red One's platform for up-and-coming producers, Frequency. Sub Focus was officially born!
Why the name, you ask? Apparently it was basically just a random combination of words that were meant to not carry any particular meaning, so people could make up their own mind. And make up their mind they did! Not about his name though, more so about his first few smashing releases: After calibrating his baseline Frequency with his debut Down The Drain / Hot Line, he built up a whole streak of double singles on the label, including classics like Acid Test and Soundguy, but also worked together with Danny Wheeler on J Majik's label and with Strobe even finally joined Andy's main label, as part of the RAM Raiders Vol. 6. If you thought that was a crazy first year, you better fasten your seatbelts, because it's about to get absolute bonkers.

X-Raising The Bar (2005 - 2008)

In early 2005, during a time when Nick was still sometimes playing for only 25 people in a club in Plymouth, a tune was making the rounds, whose catchy melody and sheer danceability had every DnB DJ clamouring for a copy of it. I'm of course talking about X-Ray! Another couple of months of hype later, it, with Scarecrow on the flipside, actually became his first solo record on the main RAM! Not only did it then go on to become the Single of the Week on Zane Lowe's BBC Radio 1 show at the time, it also reached the top spot on the official UK Dance charts, even breaking through to #60 on the overall charts! This early success probably opened up another massive door for him: Being asked by The Prodigy to remix their classic Smack My Bitch Up and then actually being chosen as the "winning" remix out of around a dozen commissioned ones. Some producers might freeze up in the face of the insurmountable expectations that come with this kind of stuff, but not our boy Nick.
The next few years saw him continue to put out absolute classic singles like Airplane, Flamenco and Druggy, all while putting his own twists on tunes by the likes of Dr. Octagon, Baron and another huge early inspiration, DJ Fresh. Most of these early bangers were dreamt up in his own humble domicile, but around 2008/2009 he was finally able to trade his bedroom with a proper studio space, next door to the likes of Shy FX, Nero, Breakage, Caspa and Chase & Status, who, fun fact, were also on that aforementioned 2005 Plymouth lineup. Now surrounded by all sorts of talented mates who could quickly lend an ear if he was stuck, he could finally break through the perfectionist circle he had been stuck in for a couple of years. While he was able to put together double singles in a reasonable amount of time, there was something bigger that the label had been asking for straight away and that Nick wanted to do for a long time as well: an album!

Eponickmous (2008 - 2009)

The first offering of his debut longplayer would be the one and only Timewarp, for which he was thoroughly inspired by the minimal Techno he soaked up on visits to legendary Ibizan clubs Cocoon and DC10, with Join The Dots on the B-Side. After some serious Radio 1 support, this instant classic was then followed up by the deconstruction of Daft Punk's Robot Rock and one of my very first introductions to DnB, Rock It, packaged up with unofficial TC collaboration Follow the Light. Not only was Rock It one of the first uploads ever to the then-new UKF Drum & Bass channel, it also reached #38 on the UK charts, smashing through his previous personal record. In September 2009, it was finally time to unleash the rest of his self-titled debut album, Sub Focus, (in hindsight) cRAMmed with an insane amount of instant classics.
Of course, we've got all sorts of DnB anthems on here, from World Of Hurt to Last Jungle, but Nick didn't just want to create an album full of wall-to-wall DnB slappers, there needed to be some sort of dynamic to it, which he eventually found in the form of other genres like Dubstep, Electro, House and Breakbeat, mirroring his musical mission statement: "Create multiple different styles of dance music at a super high standard". It doesn't come as much of a surprise then, that he would cite the likes of Vangelis and Giorgio Moroder as big influences for this package, with Vangelis' Spiral even being sampled in album opener. With features like Takura and Culture Shock, whomst he first met at a house party back in 2006, the simple yet iconic circular rainbow artwork that would set the tone for all Sub Focus cover arts from then on, follow-up single releases for Could This Be Real, with a remix by Dubstep legend Joker, and a new vocal version of Splash with Coco from I Blame Coco, and it reaching #51 on the UK album charts, it's safe to say it was a resounding success on all fronts.

The Art Of Re-nick-sing (2009 - 2011)

So much success, in fact, that it's hard to even mention, let alone elaborate on it all! For example, during the year of his debut album's release, he also put out remixes for Empire Of The Sun, deadmau5, The Prodigy again, Basement Jaxx and Dizzee Rascal. What a list! The following years he pumped the breaks a little bit, "only" putting out legendary remixes for Rusko and I Blame Coco, collaborating with Chase & Status for their album No More Idols and producing Example's chart-smashing hit Kickstarts, which peaked at #3 on the charts. Even outside of that, he was ticking off one milestone after the other, like supporting Pendulum on their Immersion tour in 2010 and receiving the honour of a 10-page feature and a frontpage cover in Mixmag in 2012. Probably the coolest new development in this "in-between albums" phase has got to be his live show though.
Unlike similar endeavours by his contemporaries at the time, the Sub Focus Live Show was decidedly not going to include a band, as Nick didn't want to lose out on "those fat quantised beats", instead opting for something more akin to what the likes of Daft Punk and Jean-Michel Jarre were doing. A one-man show! Not only could he control each sound individually with his two iPads running the custom-developed Liine Lemur app, his team and him also developed a motion-tracked glove with which he could apply filters and sounds just by moving his hands, like a digital Theremin. He loved doing this live show so much that just a year later he would spend "a cool 200k quid" to overhaul it from the ground up for his big show at Electric Brixton. Big, bespoke machines, hiring Giani Fabricio to design an even more intricate on-stage circular stage build consisting of a cool 25k LEDs and even working with "Minority Report"-like motion sensors. It was madness!

Today's Toruscope: Sub Folkus (2011 - 2016)

Towards the tail end of 2011, Subby started ramping up to another rather big project with his Dubstep free download Falling Down, which received so much play on Radio 1 and crossed the 100k downloads mark so quickly that none other than Skrillex ended up signing it for his label OWSLA. Nothing could prepare him for the successes of the following 2012 singles though, with Out The Blue's #23 unexpectedly establishing a brand new chart record for him, before it got absolutely destroyed by Tidal Wave's immense #12 just a couple months later, eventually becoming his first gold certification. In the middle of his Ibiza residency and headline appearances at Reading and Leeds, Dour, Bestival among many others, he somehow managed to top himself even further, with both (!) Endorphins and Turn Back Time landing at #10 and Turn It Around also reaching #14. All throughout this tidal wave of success, he never lost touch with the scene at large, allowing his favourite producers like KillSonik, Flosstradamus, a young Metrik, Fred V & Grafix, Ivy Lab, Special Request and many more to remix these absolutely massive chart stormers.
Late September it all finally came together to form Nick's second long player: Torus! Not only did he keep his multi-genre ethos all the way up, resulting in Dubstep support from Skrillex, DnB support from Andy C and the usual suspects, all the way to his House tunes being played by Avicii, he actually added another dimension to his circle of influences, now also including groups from the electronic indie scene, like Friendly Fires and The XX. Speaking of: As you can probably tell from the album title, he also added another dimension to his overall design aesthetic, with the Torus replacing the circle as the central theme for all of the artworks. As a 2001 Space Odyssey-esque unexplainable monolith, with the title track even sampling a recording from an UFO site, the Torus wasn't even just limited to artworks, Nick also did a fun promotional campaign in which mini Torussi were spread across a series of meaningful locations on the digital Google Maps globe, each containing an audio preview of the album. All this, plus the move to a major label, plus features by the likes of Foxes, Alpines and Bloc Party's Kele Okereke gave it such a boost that it ended up peaking at #11 of the overall UK album charts.
What do you even do after all this success? Move into a brand new, bigger studio space and enjoy some time off, apparently!

Back To The Sub Fo-Clubs (2016 - 2019)

During these two years of absence from the release circus, Nick turned inward, to recalibrate and discover what he wants to do in music. The answer? Club music! By delving deep into the history of electronic music, exploring the mechanisms behind all his favourite classic tunes growing up and trying to fuse his modern sound with old hardware like the Akai samplers and Emu Emulator keyboards, he was able to ignite his passion for the dance once more. He even went back to some of those Kool FM tapes he recorded in his childhood to look for samples! The first result of this trip down memory lane (douw(n)-ma-mory lane? oh god) came in the form of his 2016 single Nobody Knows, kicking off a series of singles "in advance of his next album project in 2017". With a premiere on Friction's BBC Radio 1 show and the follow-up Love Divine being crowned Hottest Record by Annie Mac, it seemed like hadn't lost a step in his subbatical (intended).
2017 saw the likes of Lingua with Stylo G, Trouble with the Rudimental boys, Maverick Sabre and Chronixx, a remix for Major Lazer and a slightly-older Metrik polishing up the slightly long in the tooth X-Ray to modern standards, but the tune that defined the year for him would be Don't You Feel It, with Finnish "flavour of the moment" ALMA. Radio support from Annie Mac, Mistajam, Danny Howard, Target and Friction, breaking through the million stream barriers like it's nothing, another Hottest Record, all topped off with a remix package from fresh up-and-comer 1991 (and Nick himself), salute and Kideko. While that "bigger project" was still a bit on hold, 2018 would still become a very memorable time for him. Not only would it be the year he finally collaborates with fellow Dancefloor behemoth Wilkinson on Take It Up, he would also add a whole 'nother Dimension to his reportoire of collaborators with the DnB anthem to end all anthems, Desire. With a solid #51 in the charts, gold certifications, all sorts of Hottest Record titles and a (Nico-)laasting impact on the Dancefloor scene at large that you can still feel today, it's safe to say that this fulfilled all of his commercial desires.

Churchular Sound (2019 - Now)

You might have recognised a thorny pattern weaving itself through these last few divine collaborations: A lot of them are Worship artists! As you surely remember from my Dimension and 1991 LP deep dives, Worship is a collective of artists managed by Sebastian Weingartshofer from Skankandbass, including the two aforementioned fashion-wise polar opposites, long-time friend and collaborator Culture Shock, MANT and Oliver Winters. Since he had been working together with them so much already lately anyway, Nick decided to join the ominous cult of the sunglasses himself in 2019! Joining this world-class group of friends and exquisite producers wasn't the only thing the year had going for it though, it also brought us a horizon-expanding remix of Bring Me The Horizon, the most double-able tune ever and the anthem of that year's Let It Roll, Solar System, and of course its flipside Siren.
All throughout this, however, he was already knee-deep in the production of the next big thing™️. No, still not quite that coveted third album, but close. After initially linking up with the razor-sharp Wilkinson back in 2018, they kept in touch, getting on so well creatively that the idea of a bigger collaborative project was born. In an effort to transport the uniquely serene electronic soundscapes by the likes of Jon Hopkins and Bonobo they share a deep love for into the realm of drums and basses, they locked themselves into Peter Gabriel's infamous Real World Studios, which had previously already hosted the likes of Coldplay, Björk, Sigma collaborators Take That and many, many more. During their weeks-long stay, they tried out a ton of new instruments, played around will all sorts of synths and had a whole slew of visitors like Tom Varrall, John Calvert and Tom Havelock joining them every now and then, creating the foundation for a whole album of wonderfulness and one of my absolute favourite LPs ever, Portals.
With a peak at #68 (so close to greatness) in the album charts, it might not have been the most commercially successful record, but that was never their intention anyway. While production of it began way before any of us could have predicted what happened in 2020, the breath-taking beauty of the end result was the perfect antidote to the same-y slog of our day-to-day lifes, in a time of doubt, uncertainty and just a general lack of available floors to dance on. Aside from that, Nick was also working together with Machinedrum and Netsky, commissioning Portals remixes from Pola & Bryson and High Contrast, plus a whole new package of Sub Focus classic Reworks from the likes of Data 3, DnB's newest boyband Camo & Krooked & Mefjus, his boys Culture Shock, Dimension and Wilkinson and the scene at large via his Stomp remix competition, with Nick himself also rewiring both CamelPhat's Easier and one of the biggest tunes of the early 2020s, ACRAZE's Do It To It.
That's not even all though! After seeing his inspirations The Chemical Brothers live in 2019, Nick got inspired to pursue the live show angle once more, once again rethinking the whole thing, now under the Circular Sound brand. Instead of keeping the big LED Torus statically positioned behind him, it would now be hoisted on ropes, allowing it to be moved and tilted almost completely freely, with some more huge LED walls behind him to complete the picture. First debuted in 2021 at the late and great Printworks in London, it was then toured in DnB paradise aka New Zealand the following year, before once more coming back to the UK capital, or more specifically the OVO Wembley Arena, almost 10 years after opening for Pendulum there. If that's not a full circle moment, I don't know what is!
At the 2021 edition of Circular Sound, Nick premiered a new tune, which was only supposed to be a one-off for the show, but went down so well that it became the first single of the album we are here to talk about! Remember that? That's right, a solid 7 years after the initial big things coming announcement, we have finally arrived at our destination, the release of Sub Focus' third solo and fourth in total album, Evolve!

Track Breakdown

Congrats, you've made it to the Track Breakdown!

1. Trip (feat. Metrik)

We kick this 14-track personal ode to D&B and Breakbeats from Nick off with the aptly-titled Trip, featuring the one and only Metrik. A long overdue collaboration, in my absolutely non-biased, non-crab-emote-spamming opinion. After an immaculate recreation of what drifting through the vast nothingness of space must feel like, with only the transcendental, meditative vocal sample keeping us company among the stars, our interstellar destination finally appears on our visors, the sun glistening in our eyes. We hop into our futuristic pilot seats, revving up the boosters and we are off! With a truly heavy bass ratatata-ing us to our very core and an almost whimsical synth lead bouncing between the planets, parts of it emphasized by some extra gnarly oomphs, it truly feels like a collaboration between the two, in all the best ways. The synth work is immaculate too, smoothly going from its rather alarm-y first iteration to a lightweight version of it, fluently transitioning over to the breakdown.

2. Calling For A Sign (feat. Kelli-Leigh)

Right away, our next stop on this trip to the futuristic past, Calling For A Sign, lets us know that it means business with some aggressively looping Sub Focus signature synths, each note reverberating in the deepest of depths. That is, until Kelli-Leigh, our Grammy-nominated featured artist for today with credits on tunes from Tiësto, Hardwell and even the anthem Cry (Just a Little), makes a seriously unforgettable entrance, which was actually originally written for Solar System, but later reworked into its own track.
If only you knew how utterly obsessed I was and still am with these vocals. As soon as she starts flawlessly hitting the long notes, the synths start breaking out of their little box, expanding their range further and further, building up the drama more and more, until we switch 'em out for a dangerously catchy synth lead that sits at just the right frequency to still be perfectly crisp even on the potatoest of sound system. Which is perfect, because it gives Nick so much extra room to play with all sorts of other layers, like the distorted yet incredibly clean guitar bassline, the regularly exploding subtle synth bombs or the wandering synth melody from the intro, resulting in an incredibly satisfying headphones experience.

3. Fine Day

We're keeping the earworm potential all the way up, with Nick's spin on the 1983 poem It's A Fine Day, his version being called Fine Day. With only a few warm synth chords and distant sirens quietly going on about their fine day in the background, the vocals are free to lalala-lee-lalala themselves straight into my brain, which they very easily do. In the drop we jump on a river of broken beats, with a subtle bass rumbling underneath and all sorts of synthy bits and bops rounding it all off to a wonderfully vibey liquid tune.

4. Vibration (feat. ACO)

There are quite a few candidates out there, but absolutely nothing deserves the title of "festival anthem" more than set closer Vibration (One More Time). It might start serene enough, with some of Nick's signature synths blipsing and blupsing around like the twinkling stars in the night sky, but as soon as Leo Stannard & Mali-Koa alias ACO come into the mix, you'll know what I mean. The London-based duo have (a)come up with a rather unique vocal technique, in which they layer up a couple dozen takes of them singing into one shared mic until it feels like a whole festival crowd is singing along to it at the same time. Over time, the levels of anthem-ticity rise to sheer ridiculous heights, with an extra clap urging the crowd to put their hands together already, while a bed of pads keeps us warm inside.
With a heartily adlibbed whoo-whoop, ACO switch over to a more aggressive part of the verse. Not only are the EYO EYO, SING IT ONE MORE TIME's supremely catchy and scream-alongable, every EYO EYO also brings in more elements into the arrangement, one by one raising the dramatic stakes to intergalactic levels, before unleashing it all into a big whirlwind of catchiness. Of course, there's the incredible lead melody Nick has been teasing in the buildup, but the earcandy doesn't stop there, from the chug-it-chug-it every 4 hits giving the drums some extra oomph to the all-encompassing embrace of the bassline to all the synths floating through space. It's a whole buffet really.

5. It’s Time (feat. Gene Farris)

It’s Time to finally talk some more about the tune that kicked it all off. With House legend, founder of Farris Wheel Recordings (yes) and star of "Body Rock" Gene Farris on the spoken word vocals, we keep the crowd hype vocal streak going, but this one isn't a hyped-up Dancefloor number, this one's a homage to the "special brain melting energy" of The Chemical Brothers! Other than the sweet, sweet Bass voice, we basically only got a minimal yet quite interesting drum beat, bouncy, constantly pumping basses and the star of the show, the funky synth lead. I still can't quite decide whether it's stupid or brilliant, but one thing's for sure: that damn thing sticks in your head forever. What elevates the track from a curiosity to a proper banger for me is the second half. Over a solid minute, Nick keeps working that lead with an anxiety-inducing, ever-rising high-pitched synth on top, while Gene starts to lose his mind repeating This is what we do over and over again, until we finally reach that drop. You ready? Instead of the previous lead, we now just keep falling down the stairs, while the digital crowd applauds us in a rather pleasing rhythm, with the basses pumping underneath. What a trip.

6. Ready To Fly (feat. Dimension)

Four years after Desire, it is now finally time for a second rodeo. Let's get Ready To Fly, together with our boi Dimension. With tons of radio play, a #29 peak in the charts, a Hardcore VIP and remixes by NGHTMRE and Spencer Ramsay, this one definitely has had a good amount of hype behind it, and for good reason.
To recreate the feel of the old UK Hardcore tunes Nick has grown up on and that Dimension also shares a deep love for, they not only pumped the buildup full of ample rave pianos and breakbeats, they also went the extra mile and created the absolutely stunning vocal by taking an originally very slow topline recording from Jo Hill and speeding it all the way up. The main attraction of the drop is of course the two leads, a Trip-y alarm synth and a screechy stabby bit, seemlessly interwoven to become one intensely catchy back-and-forth, but the powerful flow created by a combination of supremely stompy drums and a subtle fast-paced break loop is also a major key why it works as well as it does. As if that wasn't already enough, the duo makes things even more nostalgic, by literally dropping into UK Hardcore-y 4x4 for the second half, preceded by the best vocal sample ever.

7. Alarm (feat. MC ID)

After a decade (!) of enjoying his MC ID's talent for when to keep his mouth shut, Nick decided it was now time for his long-time friend to do the talking for once, on the rave weapon that is Alarm. Tribal drums, intensely bass-y, wonderfully vibey Reggae-inspired vocals and lyrics, I can almost taste the Chase & Status influence. Without wasting any further time, we are then swiftly thrown right into the pits of the relatively minimal yet very much still bassface-inducing drop, presumably inspired by Nick falling asleep on the phone dial. In a good way! My personal highlight of this particular wobbler has got to be the little chopped-up eh's from ID in the second drop though, giving the whole thing a uniquely fun flow.

8. Off The Ground

From the deep pits of delightful disgust we now rise up, Off The Ground so to speak. With an uncredited, unbelievably beautiful vocal from none other than Poppy Baskcomb, we slowly float into the skies to the backdrop of dramatic pianos and heavenly choirs. Once the titular squence of words is uttered, however, Nick throws in these little stabby stabs, pulling us into the powerful vortex of carnage that is the drop, where we are launched all over the place by rather intense sirens, surprisingly heavy-hitting wobbly wobs and the most addictive sequence of claps known to man. Not only does this sound like you are being abducted by extraterrestial beings, at Circular Sound the Torus also actually transforms into a tractor-beam-firing UFO for this one. Fun fact: did you know that the Torus is supposed to be the ideal space ship design? Coincidence? I think not!

9. Waiting (feat. Pola & Bryson & Kelli-Leigh)

Seems like Kelli-Leigh really was tired of waiting, already making a stunning return just a couple tunes later! To be fair, I would too if the other feature guest is Pola & Bryson! That's right, on Waiting we are not only treated to an even more soulful performance by Kelli, elevated to perfection by that little I-I-I-I-I right before she kicks off her performance, but also an effortless instrumental fusion of both Nick and Pola & Bryson's styles. While leaning a bit more towards the latter's usual vibe, with their snappy signature drums making an appearance and an early 2010s Dancefloor wobble that feels right up their alley, Nick's influence can also be heard everywhere, from the atmospheric arps in the buildup to the now soft, but still slightly screechy Ready To Fly-esque oomphs.
I am most definitely not tired of Waiting, and probably never will be.

10. I Found You (feat. Hayla)

Now slowly powering down from the whirlwind that was the first half of the album, we open our hearts as wide as humanly possible with the absolutely breath-taking I Found You. We start off with an arrangement of stupendously lovely, deadmau5-esque synth chords, on which the star of the show, Hayley Philippa Williams aka Hayla from John Summit, MANT and, oh hey, Wilkinson, fame, shows off her oh-so-wonderful vocal talents, performing the beautiful lyrics written by Becky Hill. I lack the words to describe the intense feeling I get when she jumps into the higher octaves and her voice becomes so pristinely multi-layered, effortlessly piercing through any sceptic's walls of defense. Simultaneously, the synths charge up further and further, eventually unleashing an explosion of loveliness onto us, the unsuspecting listener. When I first heard this at Circular Sound, all I could do was smile like an idiot and rock left to right. And that's basically how I still feel now.

11. Secrets (feat. CamelPhat, Culture Shock & RHODES)

From a secretly hidden feature with long-time friend and regular Sub Focus album collaborator Culture Shock we now move over to an actual, public one: Secrets! As usual, the two, with British duo CamelPhat in tow, pursue a path completely different from the one you might have built up from the expectations in your head, taking a break from all the DnB with a dreamy Breakbeat type of tune. With all sorts of charming synth melodies peppered all throughout, some extremely vibey breaks and droning basses underneath it all, the quartet goes as far down the well of old-school vibes as possible, while still retaining the modern production, all tied together by London-based singer-songwriter Rhodes' absolutely wonderful heartfelt performance.

12. Overcome (feat. Frances)

With a lovely, almost cute subdued atmosphere with the littlest of pianos, we ease into our 12th stop on this journey, Overcome. Soon enough, British Pop/Indie Pop/Folk/Soul darling Frances makes an already quite gorgeous entrance, but as soon the You turn the shade into light lyric hits, it makes the jump all the way to heavenly. I melt, every time. I have listened to this tune a hundred times at this point, still, I melt. After this very deserved full spotlight on the vocal performance, we drop into a sublime assortment of nostalgic synth leads that make you want to wave your whole body around, minimal yet piercing drums and the warmest of basses. Superb.

13. Don’t Want To Come Down (feat. LOWES)

Yes, album, I Don’t Want To Come Down from the high you induce in me either, but as you and I both know we are sadly almost at the end already. In this penultimate, Breaks-y vibe of a tune, Nick is joined by Electronic Pop Trio LOWES, who you might remember from his Easier remix or their work with High Contrast, Sigma or the recently solo The Prototypes. Every single part of vocalist Evie's performance here is just outstanding, from the larger-than-life choir-y parts to her deeply soulful titular vocal performance to her chopped- and pitched-up vocals going crazy, with all those tingly bops bouncing behind it! As usual, Nick does his part too, delivering a perfectly fitting instrumental blanket made out of pure vibes.

14. Turn Up The Bass (feat. Jonny L)

Remember way back in 2016, when Nick wanted to incorporate more of what he grew up with into his sound? One of the artists he specifically cited as an inspiration that he would love to work together with was British Drum & Bass pioneer John Lisners, better known as Jonny L. It took a couple of years, but with the album closer Turn Up The Bass, a reimagining of Jonny's 2005 original (under the Mr L moniker), Nick finally fulfilled that promise. Built on the iconic vocal of the original and the melodies spread all throughout it, he created a tranquil garden full of blooming synths, snuggly, turnt-up basses and additional soulful vocals. The pinnacle of the "oldschool but with modernized production" theme. Especially in the second half, when Nick unleashes his inner Jungle demon and chops up the drums into the all sorts of shapes and rhythms. Incredibly fitting, emotionally resonant finale.

Conclusion

Sure, everyone is "inspired by the 90s" lately, so it might as well have been an empty phrase when the album was first announced, but, as we have found out over these 14 stunning tracks, Sub Focus actually meant it. Production techniques you don't hear often anymore, hardware of the olden days, vibes directly inspired by Nick's youth, it's all there, just polished all the way up to some of the shiniest diamonds the scene has seen in a while. Seriously though, Sub Focus' production is unmatched on this album. Not only did he manage to work a ton of different styles and influences into the mix, the end results are also so spotlessly clean in their mixdowns, it's almost unfair. One big part that this especially benefits from is the vocal work. It doesn't even matter whether it's a grimy minimalistic track or a huge anthem tugging at your heartstrings, it always sounds as crisp as a fresh pack of Walkers. Google says those are good crisps, so I'm rolling with that.
Not just all that, it's also all somehow just so ridiculously catchy and danceable that I can't imagine a festival without any of these being played! It's honestly hard to pick, but the ones I want to hear live the most, i.e. my favourites, are probably Calling For A Sign, for the sheer drama in Kelli's vocals and the incredibly fun lead melody, Vibration (One More Time), because while I have heard it quite a bit during last year's festival season, I just want to hear it... one more time, and a tie between I Found You and Overcome, since both are so unbelievably wonderful and heartbreakingly beautiful that I'm glad they are in my life now.
TL;DR: The most precise production in the whole genre, used to create a most marvellous collection of 14 completely different yet entirely cohesive and supremely catchy tunes. Most definitely up there as one of my favourite albums of the year.

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Tracklist

Title	Length
Here You Are (feat. Sam M & Laura Brehm)	5:20
Lesson Learned	4:30
Remedy (feat. RIENK)	4:23
Nothing Hurts	4:52
Status	4:35
Turn Back (feat. flowanastasia)	4:57
Underwater	4:32
Closer	4:10
Free (feat. Karina Ramage)	5:14
Rumbler	4:20
Night Echoes (feat. Voicians)	5:00
From The Sidelines	4:39

Review

Welcome to my fourteenth album write-up! I apologize in advance for the wall of text that is about to follow. Scroll down for a TL;DR on the LP.

Background

I know, I know, it looked like I had Withdrawn from writing these long-form Pieces. For five long months, my Absence from this format left my beloved wall-of-text enjoyers, my fellow Time Wasters, all Alone. Sure, the regular reviews still going strong each week were a bit of a Silver Lining, but their Limited length and generally short notice will always mean that I can't go as in-(Too Late)Depth as some of the artists might deserve. Don't you worry though, after so much Anticipation, there is a ton of new goodness on the Horizon, starting with something that I have usually off-loaded to other members of the team: Liquid! It's not like I don't like Liquid, I actually love it! There's nothing better than listening to some lush vibes at Home, letting the Window Light hit your face until you are entirely Disconnected from the stressful world out there.
I was simply waiting for the right artist to come along. So when British producer Elliot Berger, here better known as Telomic, recently announced that he decided to focus his insanely productive energy into one, cohesive 12-tracker, I knew I had to jump on it immediately. After all, tracks like Gravity Within or Window Light have been the soundtrack to many moody Sundays over here in the Hoffmann household. Lush liquid bangers with incredible vocal performances on top of them are my Weakness, one could even say. So much so, that I already featured him on here for his Window Light EP two years ago! While I usually refrain from writing a full-length album piece about someone I wrote about already, I have to admit I left out quite a bit the first time around. Since I only did a very shallow dive for that one, some dates I mentioned in there are also just plain wrong. So, let's finally right my wrongs and take a proper deep dive into the man behind the bangers. Let's talk about Elliot Berger!

Earlliot Berginnings (1993 - 2010)

As many of his peers, Elliot comes from quite the musical family, with his mum being proficient at piano and his dad sporting the guitar. However, while his dad still occasionally played his instrument of choice at home, there was barely any piano to be heard, but none of that concerned little Elliot much. Inspired by a lady showing off her violin talents at a performance in his school, 6(-ish)-year-old Elliot came running to his parents and basically begged them to allow him to play it too. Over the years, he enjoyed a lot of theory and classical music training and by the time he was 12(-ish), he made his pop proud and picked up the guitar. Shaped by his parents' musical tastes and record collection, his own tastes drifted more and more into the metal and pop punk direction. Trying to emulate the greats like Jimi Hendrix, he got together with a couple of mates to form a band of his own, one of which being The Breakaway.
If I understood his very quiet 2012 Skype interview correctly, one of the first steps towards more electronic sounds happened at a concert of one of his favourite bands growing up, Bring Me The Horizon. He obviously already loved their sound before, otherwise he wouldn't have gone to a concert of theirs after all, but actually hearing the basses permeate through the venue, feeling the weight of it all in his chest, being a part of the crowd, all of it changed how he felt about bass in general. Next, the vibes at home were starting to switch up a bit. His parents had always enjoyed playing out tunes by the likes of Fatboy Slim and The Prodigy, but soon enough they also pushed more purely electronic artists like deadmau5 and even Sub Focus into the rotation, slowly but steadily chipping away at Elliot's typical teenager wall of strongly held negative opinions about genres he doesn't listen to. It's not real music, they're just pressing buttons! It was the experience with his own band at the time that delivered the killing blow in the end though. In typical teenager fashion, his bandmates not only kept randomly blowing off practice jamming sessions, they were also not very cooperative when it came to working on tunes together.
You know who would never say "nah, I don't like this idea that you spent hours developing" to him though? Elliot himself!

Can beat the System (2010 - 2012)

Inspired by legendary UKF uploads like the Gemini remix of Hadouken - Oxygen and further pushed by the general hype around the genre at the time, Elliot was of course interested in producing Dubstep at first. He would first need a great name to release these masterpieces under though! And so he sat down, thought hard and long, and (in his words) picked the first half-good name that popped into his head: System! After announcing his new production venture to the world in 2010, it didn't take long for the first few tunes to drop: Not only did he bless us with a wobbly bootleg of Rihanna's Only Girl (In The World, of course) in 2011, he also quickly followed it up with his very first DnB tune, Broken Glass. This genre diversity didn't matter that much to the public though, because what happened next would massively shape what people would come to expect from his future music. Early 2012, Elliot put up a huge Dubstep bootleg of Coldplay - Paradise. Okay, that in itself might not be too noteworthy, but the fact that Coldplay themselves thought it was "dirrty" enough to share it on their actual multi-million follower social pages, yeah, okay, that is quite something. Garnering around 16 thousand likes on the Facebook post alone, he was suddenly exposed to an entirely new kind of audience. One that catapulted him to the number 1 spot on the Most Popular Dubstep Track Of All Time chart on Dubstep.net!
While most of his new fans expected him to continue pumping out Dubstep bangers left and right, he was not quite as jazzed about that prospect. For the time being, he would keep switching back and forth between it and DnB, with Stan SB and Feint making up the majority of his influences for the faster stuff. Nothing exemplifies this more than his 2012 Prologue EP, which didn't just combine heavy-hitting Dubstep anthems with some great early 2010s power liquid, it even features a couple of vocalists like Holly Drummond and a few remixes! One of the tunes off this debut EP, What You Want, was even played out on BBC Introducing in Kent! Before he could start fully exploiting this solid foundation of fame, however, he stumbled upon a problem. The artist name System wasn't really unique in the world of electronic music. Beatport couldn't handle more than one System in their system, iTunes bundled his music together with a group of dutch producers using the same name, it was just a mess all-around. A systematic problem, one might even say. Either way, a new name was needed. After a thorough and very serious online poll, he had found a new name. Narrowly surpassing the very promising option "Son Of Pippa Berger", the actual winner was his real life name, Elliot Berger!

Elliot Berger (2012 - 2014)

While one might think that such a move would set his career back due to missing name recognition, basically nothing of the sort happened. In the same year, Annie Nightingale shouted him out as one of the top 3 underground artists, he had his very first gig in Antwerpen with his very own early inspirations Stan SB and Feint, and he put out another 8 tunes, 6 (!) of which were remixes! If you think that's ridiculous, wait until you hear how much he put out in 2013: A whopping 18 tunes! That's just way too (Telo-)much. Obviously he didn't just put out 26 Dubstep and DnB bangers back to back though, he tried his hand at basically any genre you can think of, from Glitch Hop to Trap, from 140 to what he calls "Chilled", a lot of which brought to the world via Squirrel Records. Victims of his uncontrollable urge to bootleg and remix things include the likes of Veela and Holly Drummond, but also deadmau5 and recent DnB convert Tiesto. Fun fact, this batch of tunes also includes his first-ever collaboration with singer-songwriter Laura Brehm! Another fun fact, his surname Berger includes the german word "Berg", which when translated means "mountain". Which is very fitting, since he releases so much you could make a whole life-sized Mount Rushmore out of it.
As if he wasn't already doing enough, he also started getting into mastering, with clients including Sean Mackey, Fuse and Aether, and he won the prestigous "Most Photoshopped" title in phantomofedm.com's annual award ceromony. While that was obviously a clear high point for his career, he was not yet at a point where he is chart-breaking all the time or selling out stadiums. Shocking, I know! To give fans another way of supporting this dream of that sweet, sweet full-time musician life, and since this wasn't the 2020s when you could just open a Patreon, he instead did he 2014 equivalent of that: creating a Kickstarter! As with most of these super niche fundraising projects, not much came out of it, but it's just too much of a fun early-2010s anecdote to not mention it. In fact, in the grand scheme of thing, that little hiccup didn't mean anything at all, as he would keep releasing tune after tune, with his 2014 tally reaching a modest 10 tunes. He might not have had as many tunes out as in previous years, but since two of them, The Nameless and Hold On, were released on streaming behemoth NoCopyrightSounds, his career experienced yet another jump in listener numbers.
While successful, he was not getting a whole lot of creative fulfilment out of this EDM rat race, leading to the birth of a cheeky little side project. As a little bit of fun, you know.

Half Half Light, Half Telomic (2014 - 2017)

Towards the end of 2014, Elliot's Facebook feed started consisting of more and more cryptic "big things coming" type posts, eventually revealing that he is starting a new DnB project: Half Light! Hah, didn't expect that name, did ya? Neither did I! Equipped with a liquid bootleg of Raise Your Weapon and some more energetic bangers like Running, and having debuted the new artist name at MrSuicideSheep's streaming event, he was fully ready to commit to this new identity. However, since all of life is more often than not just a series of endlessly repeating events, he faced a familiar problem: There already was a producer by the name of Half Light. Luckily he didn't invest too much into this new name yet, so he was able to avert this particular crisis pretty smoothly by just switching to another name in mid-2015. And that is how Telomic was born!
As you now know, Drum and Bass has basically always been a part of Elliot's musical journey, but for the most part he was more into the Dancefloor-y, early 2010s Sub-Focus-slash-Netsky style. Just like his Dubstep beats evolved to become more and more Chill, his taste in DnB gradually changed to be more favourable to the Liquid side of things, as evidenced by his first ever Telomic release in 2016, the quite appropriately named Reset EP on Excell's Breach Audio, the full circle moment that was his remix for Bustre's final album in 2016 or his 2017 Compelled EP on Fokuz. There was already something else a-brewing though. Some time before these first few steps were taken, he got dragged to a Critical night by his friends. He immediately fell in love with the more minimal, steppy sound that the legendary label is known for, setting in motion a separate lane of deep and dark DnB development for the Telomic project, leading him to become a regular fixture on Terra Firma by the time 2017 rolled around. All that, plus a whole string of wonderful guest mixes on Equinox Music, Ninja Ninja Drum & Bass, Goldfat, where he also ended up releasing a couple tunes, among many others, plus another few live shows for Terra Firma and Indivision, plus a signing to Whitepark Music and you can see this project was starting to take off more than maybe first expected.
Anyway, let's check back in with his EDM project again!

Elliot Berger 2: Elliot Bergaloo (2015 - 2021)

So, what did we miss in these couple years? A surprisingly large amount of stuff, to be honest with you! Not only did he graduate with first class honours in his Creative Music Technology studies in 2015, with his experimental ambient Graduation EP once again seeing radio suport on BBC Introducing, he also experimented with all sorts of 110, 150 and euphoric 140 BPM vibes. While the 150s trend continued on into 2016, that year would probably be best described as "that year Elliot Berger tried out Future Bass", with his Track In A Day tune and his various Remissum Records releases being the best examples. From then on, most of his future work went towards remixes and various production projects for and with long-time collaborator Laura Brehmn on her very own label Electric Bird Records.
While his releases on this alias were still going strong, with one of his earliest hits, Diamond Sky, even being played at a major Dota tournament in 2017, his priorities were obviously shifting to Telomic. Aside from a couple self-releases and remixes here and there, there is not much more to report, until he was announced to become a part of FiXT's Evolution initiative in 2021, but even that only resulted in one more double single so far. Before we jump straight back to Telomic again though, I have to mention his work in the industry. As an integral part of the Black Octopus group, he not only created a vast assortment of sounds for everyone to use, with his Breathtaking Future Bass pack even managing to garner a number one spot on Loop Masters, he even joined the A&R team of the anthracite mollusc's label, helping shape the soundbyte designers of tomorrow.
While all this is still technically part of his story, we're obviously here for something else though, so let's jump right back to the drums and the basses!

Entering The Galacy Of Dreams (2018 - 2019)

So, where did we leave off again? Right, the Telomic project was picking up more and more steam! I did leave you with a bit of a cliffhanger there, didn't I? Hah!
2018 saw his alliance with Terra Firma still going strong, as part of their second compilation album and as a volunteevictim of some sick remixes, and his debut on the very much underrated Lost Recordings, but there was one thing that really elevated the year from "pretty good" to "career turning point". After shopping his tunas Horizon and Home (not the Elliot Berger one) around for nearly 2 years and no one biting for unknown reasons, none other than Liquicity's liquid-focused sister planet Galacy jumped into the pond and grabbed them by their fins! Almost 6 years after starting to send demos their way (yes, this goes back to as early as 2012!), he had finally fulfilled this personal dream of his and became a part of the Galaxy Of Dreams. As if that wasn't enough of a milestone, his increased focus on DJing was starting to pay off in spades, starting with gigs for Rough Tempo, Terra Firma and Under The Counter, supporting the likes of Alix Perez, Hybrid Minds and High Contrast and providing guest mixes for Fokuz and Hoxton Radio, and ending with him making his Liquicity event debut, first at Liquicity London and right after also at Liquicity Winterfestival! Fun fact: his bootleg of Raise Your Weapon, back when he was still Half Light, was actually played out by Champion at Liquicity London in 2015, so this was another huge full circle moment for Elliot!
This debut release and these first couple shows for the Dutch Liquid and Dancefloor behemoth would basically usher in a new era for Elliot. Sure, he continued to be a part of the solid foundation that is Terra Firma, both with a tune for Terra Firma Vol. 3 and with his solo double single Einde / Mire, but he also debuted on main label Liquicity with his remix for Pola & Bryson's Whisper To Me, contributed to Galacy's Identities compilation album and dropped his first full-length EP, the Alone EP, on the vibey sister label. This growing label connection also lead to a whole lot more DJing gigs with them, from a guest spot for the Galacy Sessions mix series to appearances on Liquicity Winter Family Day, the one and only Summer Festival and of course the Winter Festival again. Since he joined the Compass Agency in the same year, however, his music could also be heard in all sorts of other places like Leeds, supporting Keeno, Newcastle, supporting Technimatic and LSB, and the legendary Ministry Of Sound, not to mention in his new guest mixes for SINE, Kiss FM and Shine Shack.

The pande(lo)mic (2020 - Now)

I feel like I need to explain that one. It's because his music is so infectiously catchy that it spread out all over the planet. Also this chapter starts in 2020, so, you know. You get it!
I've made a couple remarks about just how much music Elliot put out for the world to hear. Since transitioning over from Elliot Berger to Telomic, the flow of releases, while still strong and full of excellent gems of course, never quite reached the same speeds as in 2012. I mean, who puts out that many tunes in a year nowadays? Well, then 2020 rolled around and the world was once again reminded why Telomic is an anagram for "metric ton of releases" (just trust me on that, no need to double check). We've had (long inhale): the gorgeous Gravity Within EP, which also marks the first EP of his on the main label, a collaboration with Monrroe for the Identities 002 compilation, another one with fellow Black Octopi V O E for Liquicity Alchemy 3 and a third one with William Keeno for his album, his wildly successful remix for Empaths' Hope (Rise Up), plus another two for Dustkey & Petroll on Differential and for Manikin on Terra Firma, a charity single in memory of Conor Steel and, last but definitely not least, his Window Light EP. That's 15 tracks, plus another 5 instrumentals if you wanna count those, some of which were even played on BBC Radio 1! While 2020 was obviously not the greatest time for playing a lot of shows, with Elliot only managing to play Differential’s London show, he, like many others at the time, successfully pivoted over to the online world, where he not only put out guest mixes for Data Transmission, Good Cause Good Crowd and Keeno's Bristol Mix Sessions, but also could be seen live at various online streaming events organised by the likes of Wonky Goose, In The Lab, Differential, Goat Shed and, of course, the Liquicity Discord community.
As we got to 2021, and his agency merged with MBArtists, more and more opportunities for normal(ish) gigs came back in again, with Elliot appearing at Liquicity Prague and Rotterdam, Stand Together, Bristol Mix Sessions, SUNNY MOVES and Crash Comet's EP launch showcase event. Compared to the previous year, he obviously slowed down on the releases front, but still managed to squeeze in his debut on Matrix's Metro Recordings, musical charity work for Pray for Afghanistan and HEADSBASS and yet another full circle moment in the midst of it all: He collaborated with one of the people who were a massive help when Elliot was first embarking on the Telomic journey in the first place, Emba! Wait, you don't know who Emba is? Oh don't worry, no need to be emba-rassed about it. Emba is the new-ish alias of one half of Dexcell, who, remember, signed and released the very first Telomic release to their label! However, Elliot wasn't just playing a major part of the Formations Galacy compilation album, providing both his Emba collab and Rewired for it, he also had the incredible honour of being chosen as the selectah for the first-ever and so far all of the following Galacy Records Year Mixes!
While 2022 also saw quite a few wonderful Telomic tunes dropping, from his remix for Low:r to his Come With Me EP on Liquicity, it was also the year of a very special collab. After months of hard work from the both of them, he and his collaborator announced it to the world in mid 2022 and in late November it was finally time: his son was born! Both this little side thing and the fact that he was starting to ramp up to the biggest project of his career meant that there was not much happening musically speaking, but, considering this was the first "normal" year in a while, you can bet your sweet, sweet Galacheeks that he still found the time to mash up any and all dancefloors out there, playing not just his home turf at the first UK edition of Maduk & Friends, but also travelling the continent for Liquicity Bratislava, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Heidelberg, Spring Festival and, of course, Summer Festival.
After all this time, after all these shows, after going through this sheer endless list of releases, full of EPs but especially singles and remixes, after a whole baby even, we've now finally arrived at our destination. Elliot's most ambitious project yet (sorry baby Elliot). Telomic's debut album, Arrivals.
Before we break it all down though, have some fun facts I didn't manage to fit into it:

• Both on the Raw Frequency Skype interview in 2012 and Last Week Liquid's 2020 interview he was asked "would you rather want to fly or be invisible".
  • LWL's host Millstreet even throws in a "It seems you've thought about this before"!
  • Elliot chose "flying" in 2012, but chose "invisibility" in 2020, since he feared that people would instantly be able to see him flying around and would immediately want to ask questions and/or perform tests on him. I too like to avoid people annoying me, so I very much understand this change of heart.
• He used to (maybe still does) have a pack of magnets on his rider!

Track Breakdown

Congrats, you've made it to the Track Breakdown!

1. Here You Are (feat. Sam M & Laura Brehm)

Here we are indeed. On the album opener Here You Are we ease into this lush 12-tracker with not just a vibe of the highest order, but also a spiritual continuation of one of Elliot's, in my opinion, most special tunes so far, Gravity Within, and the return of his dear friend and most regularest of vocal collaborators. Of course I'm speaking of musician, vocalist, songwriter and recently-69-collaborations-reacher Laura Brehm. And just like on Gravity Within, her already ethereal vocals are layered and harmonized into blissful oblivion by Beloved In Love's very own Sam M, setting the bar for vocal performances on this album unreachably high from the get-go. In this multi-layered back-and-forth, the pendulum smoothly swings between focusing on Laura's and Sam's voice, while the lyrics take us on a lovely journey of romantic self discovery.
As if this combination wouldn't already be gorgeous enough, Elliot decided to take things to the next level with an instrumental that is as melancholically heartfelt as it is huge. The warmest of basses emotionally preparing your heart for the beautiful lyrical contents, the synth theme wandering throughout the whole of the auditory space, getting closer and closer until it eventually all erupts into an explosion with so much oomph behind it that you can't help but melt away. Put these amazing pieces all together and what you get is a vibe unlike any other. Honestly, every single time the tune crescendos into one of the big oomphs, I get goosebumps all over. Seriously stunning.

2. Lesson Learned

After establishing that he is capable of producing the biggest liquid vibe imaginable, Elliot decided to go for maximum contrast by transitioning over to the heaviest tune of probably his whole career so far, Lesson Learned! While the intro's atmosphere is already quite eerie, the spookiness levels rise exponentially once the track starts telling us sumthin', with a mini-snippet of a rave-y siren sample haunting you in your dreams, a wob-wob-wobbly bass melody oscillating menacingly in our direction and an absolutely ridiculously large kickdrum creeping up towards us. Once the tension becomes unbearable, a gunshot pierces through it all, kicking off the drop in all its glory. Not only are the kicks now so large I keep having to double-check it's not actually someone knocking on my (quite far away) front door while I'm writing this, Elliot also both continuously shakes us to our core with a vicious wall of bass and keeps us on our toes with the aforementioned wobbly bass melody crashing all over us every now and then. That's still not even all the progression we've got in store though. While it may have started off with a two-step drum flow, it doesn't take very long for them to switch over into a more rolling rhythm. Even the vocal sample goes from already quite short loops to an even shorter, staccato blip tick-tack-tocking away at our sanity. Massive tune.

3. Remedy (feat. RIENK)

Phew, I don't know about you, but I could use some uplifting vibes after all this deep and darkness. Good thing Elliot feels the same and promptly supplied us with the perfect Remedy, featuring Liquicity's latest certified hit machine Rienk "RIENK" Speelman on the vocals, who you might also know as vocalist for Abbad + Freimann or key player for the band Wytiki. As is tradition with him, RIENK's wonderful performance is once again so elegantly worded, displays so much range and is just so damn catchy that it could bring back even the worst instrumental from the brienk of ruin. Of course, it also elevates great instrumentals just as much, as is the case here. With some help from Andreas "Dualistic" Ort, Elliot crafted something that not only gives RIENK a lot of auditory room to flex his vocals on, with his safety net in the intro basically only consisting of a smooth atmospheric layer of warmness and a couple piano chords, but also gives the crowd a whole lot to dance to. As already teased towards the end of the anthemic intro, we're getting an incredibly catchy Dancefloor-y yet also very thought-provokingly Telomic-y synth lead, complemented by some proper forward-pushing drum loops and a backdrop of rhythm-setting synthy bass bops, pushing you to dance while still also being a beautiful liquid banger at its core.

4. Nothing Hurts

Alright, we've got a rather hype album introduction behind us now, it's time to vibe a little, which is made very easy with our fourth stop, Nothing Hurts. With an extra thick atmosphere, full of the heaviest of reverberations echoing all throughout the track, the cushiest of pads and the occasional visit by the piano man, and a warm blanket of bass underneath it all, it really does make you feel like nothing hurts anymore. The titular vocal sample is so simple in its essence, but processed in such a lovely way and woven into the fabric of the instrumental so seamlessly that the end result is just, well, incredibly vibey.

5. Status

Speaking of: Let's dive even deeper into the sea of vibes Elliot has prepared so nicely for us. Let's enter the stratosphere of vibes. Let's listen to Status. Abandoning the stressful rush of the drums and basses but keeping the breaks, Elliot takes us on trip down UK Garage lane instead. With pianos fading in and out of their looping existence, synths that go from subtle background fuzziness to goosebump-inducing vibrations and a little vocal sample to top it all off, this tune sports a lo-fi aesthetic that a certain girl, who should honestly just be done studying by this point, could not even achieve in her dreams. The longer we drift in this orbit of loveliness, the harder the stellar synths come at us and at its peak, we are even sucked into a little 4x4 detour, before going back to our established drifting breakbeat style. In other words, an incredibly well done stylistic fusion of both Elliot Berger and Telomic.

6. Turn Back (feat. flowanastasia)

Next, another past collaborator steps up for a triumphant re-Turn Back to the spotlight. You know her, you love her, let's give it up for our friendly neighbourhood vocalist from Toronto and famed Window Light voice, Anastasia Klyushin, better known and more easily pronounceable as flowanastasia! Smack in the middle of the album, she tackles the motivational challenges of the middle parts of any journey, when the boring routine has already set in, but you also haven't quite reached your goal yet. Smart positioning, Mister Berger. This wonderfully unique theme, performed as soulfully as ever, is infused with even more emotion by an instrumental that knows exactly which buttons to push to trigger those serotonin receptors.
Similarly to Remedy, we've got all sorts of fast-paced shuffly drums and beautiful synth action going on, but this time we're not being elated at finding our cure from sadness and stress, we're still actively experiencing it and trying to push ourselves through. Not only are the synths way more melancholic than we've heard so far, the shuffly drums are also more continouosly rolling and the bass more menacingly rumbling underneath it all. Every now and then, our doubts about where this is all going break out from their prison, overwhelming your senses and thus clouding your judgement, but as the stunning vocals keep telling you and as the drums keep on doing, you just gotta keep rolling through the mess to get to the finish line. No turning back allowed!

7. Underwater (feat. Susan H)

We're keeping the spectacular vocal train going with the off-the-charts gorge anthem Underwater, featuring Dutch Pop singer and recent Blooom-collaborator Susan H. While its predecessor was already sporting quite the melancholic energy, Underwater goes all in on the sadcore vibe. Dramatically emotional pianos already do a whole lot to set the scene, but it is ultimately just a backdrop to the highlight that is Susan's incredible performance. As she majestically glides through the mysteriously sorrowful lyrics, only a quickly firing mini snare is keeping the various piano melodies company, but once the vocals reach their thematic crescendo, we're instead treated to this huge ear-massaging bass. After another around 25 seconds of trembling anticipation, a larger-than-life OOMPH kicks off the well-oiled vibe machine, consisting of steppy drums swinging us back and forth, Susan's vocals flowing on the beat like (above) water and a bass that is so large, so overwhelming and yet also so satisfying that you get dragged into its vortex in no time.

8. Closer

As if said nefarious vortex was talking to us, we are now being urged to just get a little Closer already. Instantly kicking off with a pounding kick, a powerful drum loop and some atmospheric bleeps and bloops, Closer wastes literally no time at all. Once said vocal sample comes in, however, things really get going, with a bassline that's just vibey like hell. That's basically all I can say about this one. Slightly weird structure, but overall an uncomplicated, cleanly produced tune that would fit right in in any deep and dark set.

9. Free (feat. Karina Ramage)

Since we're wallowing in quite the well of sadness throughout the last few tracks, Elliot decided to throw in a little number for own mental health, with track numero nove Free. With one of my absolute favourite vocalists in DnB, Karina Ramage, effortlessly showing off a whole range of emotions, Free is about how it is both okay and healthy to let your surpressed feelings flow outside sometimes. How else are you going to learn from this particular experience if you're just going to swallow it all down? Karina's emotional crawl out of the deep well of sadness she's finding herself in is further emphasised by an acoustic atmosphere that makes you feel like you're in an actual cave, hidden deep inside of your mind. Sounds so muffled it feels like you're held underwater, piano notes softly dropping inside like the most beautiful of water droplets, Karina's poignant lyrics echoing heavily throughout the space, it's all quite dire.
As Karina ramps up to her epiphany, however, we're starting to be pulled back out of it. While still muffled, fast-paced rolling drums and some Bou-ncy synth melodies seem to be coming closer and closer, and before we know it, we open our eyes and find ourselves on a beach, sipping margaritas and dancing in the sand. Seriously, while not necessarily in-your-face happy, the vibes are still so UK summer-y that I half expected Bru-C to jump onto the beat and see some young people jumping off boats in the music video or something. Somehow, Free manages to skirt the line between introspective emotionality and carefree summer attitude, making for quite the unique experience.

10. Rumbler

Since we're now out dancing again, we need more filthy grooves to step to! With Rumbler, Elliot provides us exactly that. Combining a set of really honking stabs with some truly, well, rumbling bass is already quite the winning formula, but it's the progression of said honkers that really makes this one for me. While the bass keeps on earning the track its title, more and more honkin' is happening, with the occasional wau piping up in between, resulting in a real bassface-worthy back and forth. Watch out for that pause before the second drop though! It might make you think your audio has given out, prompting you to turn up the volume some more and then, bam, the return of the truly heavy bass throws you out of your chair. Definitely not speaking from experience here.

11. Night Echoes (feat. Voicians)

One last collaboration before the grand finale: Night Echoes! Apparently the story went: One day, fellow Liquicity and FiXT family member and vocalist/produceDJ/radio jingle writer Daniel Voicians sent over a little piano progression and right away, Elliot knew exactly how this could work as a full track and just a few months later, their baby Night Echoes was born! Said piano melody is also the very first thing you hear in the final version, with only minimal drums, to keep the pace, and a little lovely vocal sample keeping it company. It's not just something neat to build up to something completely different though, all throughout it stays an integral part of the composition, even when the piano itself cannot be heard anymore! For instance, you might think it's gone once the heavy bass and fast-paced slappin' drums roll in for the drop, but if you listen closely, you'll notice that the bass follows the same rhythmic patterns of the progression. Over time, the bass is temporarily relieved from its rhythmic duties by a simply delightful synth melody extrapolated from the very same source, before they are united for the drop's conclusion.

12. From The Sidelines

Sure, we have been treated to a whole bunch of lovely sound combinations on our journey so far, but trust me, we're in for a way more intricate treat on the album closer, From The Sidelines. While the drummer is idly hitting his hi-hats, a straight-up ethereal vibraphone melody makes its way to us, shortly followed by a dramatic set of strings starting to make its presence known. Everything fades out, unveiling a little vibey vocal sample and just like that, the drummer returns with an intricate arrangement of various chopped up breaks. Laced with a couple more sound effects, like that Reggae eh eh eh that I don't know the name of, this oldschool flair is the foundation for the drop, where everything comes together to form a truly fantastic multi-layered melodic symphony. And that's coming from me, oldschool/jungle/breakbeat hater numero uno!

Conclusion

While I would definitely classify Telomic as a Liquid artist, there is also a certain deeper melancholy to his style that makes it extra special. On this debut album, he not only doubles down on this special combination, to spectacular effect, he also branches out further than he has ever done before. Sometimes in the form of a straight-up slapping S.P.Y-esque stepper, sometimes in the form of an uplifting Dancefloor-Liquid fusion and sometimes even embracing the non-DnB that's deeply sown into his history as an artist, but always executed in the most incredible fashion. However, even throughout all the tunes that you could categorize as "his usual style", it is packed with all sorts of different ideas on how to execute a (Deep) Liquid tune. Not to mention the sensational vocal performances across the board, all sorts of lovely progressions and an extraordinary amount of straight goosebumps moments.
This is another one of those albums that make it really hard for me to pick favourites, but I'll just bite the bullet and go with Here You Are, due to its astounding ability to regularly make my hair stand up from frisson, Lesson Learned, because of its sheer massiveness, Status, because of its sheer vibeyness, and Underwater, since its simply an amazing piece of music.

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