I’ve taken a few years off from EDM because it got to a point where everywhere I went, I was hearing the same few songs with a handful of permutations which lead to a samey feeling every time I would go out. It didn’t matter if it was a headliner or a local. Indie dance had kind of failed because it was content to pull out all of the elements of rave culture and fashion while actively distancing themselves from the raves and ravers themselves.

Though with what you find on the internet when you run a google search for “raver” it’s totally understandable why you don’t want to associate with someone with a Pokemon backpack whose arms are covered in plastic beads.

Indie dance culture tries to maintain a distanced cool in a lot of cases, I guess because enthusiasm betrays a lack of control which shows weakness. I don’t know.

I was kind of affected by this and when I got burnt out, and had no desire to go along with the flow into dubstep because I felt it was just to slow for my tastes and was predicated on taking things down a notch. That’s just not something that really interested me.

I can appreciate that others enjoy it, but despite repeated attempts to get into it from Burial to Skream have had no results. I don’t much like dub either, though I love all other forms of Jamaican music with a huge place in my heart for Ska and Rocksteady.

So recently, I decided to go back into dance and see what had changed. See if anything really exciting had come along. I did this just in time for Felix The Housecat to launch Boppernation, which looks like a great clearing house for news and tracks from that spectrum of house. Today their track of the week (I suppose their first), was Felix Cartal’s Drone from his forthcoming album. That wasn’t available for download so I went and bought the Skeleton EP and Juno Download suggested I try Heavyfeet’s Sasquatch EP, I listened to a few bars of a track and liked what I heard, so I bought that as well.

After a few listens I love it. It’s got the heavy clean bass of Speed Garage, a high pitched siren melody, classic breakbeat samples, but it’s also got that monster roar of sawtooth bass you get from acts like Vitalic. It’s not the most original of pairings, granted, but it’s a damn fun one rather well done.

The duo released a Spring Mix which is well worth checking out. I found a copy through Trash Menagerie (though a quick mediafiresearch will also turn it up) and you can find the track listing on their myspace page. It’s an hour and a half of rave retooled goodness to house to electrobass to drum and bass. It’s well worth your time.

Category : heavy feet