#dubtrot

I think I've got a pretty good foundation.  May need to adjust levels a bit - I turned the sub bass down which seems to have been a mistake, and some of that drum machine is just piercing.

Track 45: Makkon - Dregs (ArtAttack Remix)  (Glitchy Dirty Dubtrot)

Makkon and ArtAttack come back a third time each on this track, and Makkon's Dregs of a Bitter Cup returns in all its intense glory, this time reworked into something almost entirely other by ArtAttack's… well, artistic attack.

It starts off even more intense than the original, with a warbling low-end guitar (not a bass, low for a guitar), and the vocals are now crystal clear on top of the track.  ArtAttack has broken the original track down by instrumentation, and taken time to showcase each layer of the original, punctuated by some of the nastiest, dirtiest drops this cyberpony has ever had the overwhelming joy to hear.

It clocks in at double the length of the original, if only because even without the drops (which are masterful, growly, and stuttery), there is just so much to play with in the original track.

This remix is both higher in energy and darker than the original, no mean feat.  Kudos to ArtAttack for (and within the production time of the album) figuring out all the parts of Dregs that made it such a work of art in the first place, and turning them around to build this out of them.

The drops are not only masterful, they are distinct from each other to a stellar degree, while still echoing each other enough to keep the track cohesive as a whole.  When one artist takes the work of another artist to play with, the end result can be something beyond what either of them can do alone, and each of these two is capable of stunning things on their own.

Track 42: Silva Hound and ArtAttack - How Far We've Come (Dirty Dubtrot)

We have come pretty far.  Just four tracks to go, including this thumping collab from Silva and ArtAttack, both of whom have tracks earlier in the album. (In fact, Art was the first artist we heard from! No pun intended.) 

This tune starts off every bit as intense as Disco Lights was at the end, then goes all trance-y at the break.  A few false starts to build in intensity and the melody itself is worked into the drop in a way that can only be considered masterful…  It's not often you get a good solid mid-range drop-break (at least in my thus-far limited experience), but that's what we get with How Far We've Come… until the heavy blow that is the big bass drop built up from 2:40 to when it hits at 2:46, which kicks your teeth out the back of your skull.

From that point, while the melody is never lost, there is no doubt in anyone's mind we have a tightly wound bit of dirty dubtrot that should keep ponies bouncing for the full six and a half minutes this track takes up without ever overstaying its welcome.

The second big bass drop is even bigger than the first, and a fantastic way to blow out your eardrums.  It's sexy and low and stuttered and modulated all to Tartarus and back.  This is how you mix a track, ponies - keep the basics of your track recognizable but mutable.

The two artists mix a fade-out with a big blowout at the end of their track, and you're left with the feeling that you've just been hit by this track as it was passing by on its way to somewhere awesomer than you could ever go.  It's almost unfair to put this track on the same album as other tracks, because it does everything and does it well.