I love drum & bass. I confess to often not knowing who is who in the dnb world as my main experience with it has been when I've been on a big night out and soaking up the sounds and the lights rather than in a situation where I'm actually paying attention to who exactly it is I've been listening to, but I think it's one of the most exciting and transcendent genres of music out there, so I was excited when I put this track on and heard that oh-so-familiar bmm-tsh -bmmtsh drum beat.
Questions is a track by Versiv featuring poet David Whyte, and it's clear not just from the Bandcamp page but also from the music itself that Versiv is a great admirer of Whyte, and it's easy to see why. Not only are the words beautiful, but the delivery has a weight to it that gives the track an ethereal quality. Whyte's voice is not dissimilar to the late Maxi Jazz from Faithless and it carries a similar urgency.
After the poem has been recited, the drop comes and it doesn't disappoint. The chopped up beats are punchy, the synths are abrasive to an almost dubsteppy degree, and the cut up vocal sample gives everything an exciting energy.
The track takes things down a bit and we hear the poem again. It's here that I wonder if the reverence for Whyte gets in the way of the track a little bit. As much as I enjoy the poem, at this point of the track it serves more of an aesthetic function in my view than a meaningful one, and because the poem is a little long I found myself a little impatient for the drop. It's a very minor complaint and on repeat listened it became less and less of an issue, but that was my only small gripe upon first listen.
The track is great though, I loved it, and I wonder if there's a 12" mix floating around out there somewhere because I'd love to hear a version that isn't over so quickly.