Netti Khan reviews the debut album of a certain Icicle - aka Jeroen Snik - Dutch drum & bass prodigy and all round nice chap.
'Under The Ice' – the second album dropped by drum 'n' bass dreadnaught Icicle, aka Jeroen Snik – is exactly what the drum 'n' bass world has been waiting for, taking the listener on an auditory journey far from the genre's conventional comfort. Although an established resident in dnb, Snik has always owned a second home in techno – setting his production apart from other, more limited producers.
The album is a drum-fuelled voyage writhing with a sense of experimental exploration, but lightened by airy melodies which send the listener weightlessly gliding though a desolate electronic landscape. Snik’s production is intelligent and versatile – orbiting a galaxy of percussive sounds that swim through pools of deep techno, drum 'n' bass, minimal and ambient. The spit-witted storyteller SPMC tells the tale of the 'Dreadnaught’ – a futuristic adventure that featured on the trailer EP to the album.
There’s sense of loneliness recurrent throughout that’s enhanced by the desolate tones of Robert Owen's haunting vocals. In the track 'Redemption', Owen’s earthly voice tugs the explorer with a nostalgia that’s shattered by unsympathetic techno. It’s a consistent theme in the album’s compostition – the battle between melancholy and adventure, fierce drums against weightless melodies – and perhaps a reflection of Snik’s personal journey moving from his home in Holland to London to pursue his production.
It is this which allows for the beautiful black holes that suck the listener momentarily from the album's pounding reality. Below the icy chat of DRS, that sprawls across 'Bitter Taste', a swelling bassline rises, pushing through the beat with a volcanic intensity that erupts into a moment of weightless bliss. Reincarnated on this drifting current, you’re 'Breathing Again', resuscitated by the airy vocals of Proxima.
Entranced, the listener drifts further, floating through the LP’s weightless atmosphere and landing on the album peninsular 'Europa' - the penultimate track and sixth moon of Jupiter, whose glowing skin hides a bacteria of microbial beats and melodies. The warm composition of the final beat aptly provides the finale to this space Odyssey. The hidden track buried at the end of 'Europa' reminds you that this adventure is very much to be continued...
'Under The Ice' is an album that lives up to its pounding acclaim and will set dancefloors trembling as it rolls out of systems all over the world.
Click here to watch our interview with Icicle.
Add an event
Bigger, better, tons more music: East End Film Festival Q&A
The East End Film Festival has established itself as one of the biggest and brightest film festivals...