Spectrasoul has made a name for themselves through deep but minimal drum & bass rollers on labels like Friction's Shogun Audio and Kasra's imprint Critical. Funky via the almost complete absence of funk, the twosome craft functional floor fillers that stretch beyond pure dance floor fodder through the attention to detail and subtle sound manipulations.
"Taken," on their newest for Critical, is an ice-cold but grabbing minimal drum & bass roller. Over a steppy but steady backbeat, an oscillating and lively bassline battles for your attention with harder and colder bass stabs. It's all about the details, though, as the small fills, alterations, patterns and nuances keep you searching for a hook until you realize that the groove has long since seized you and the details themselves are the hook.
The flip side sees dubstep (and more recently funky) wizard Ramadanman turn in a drum & bass refix of "Organizer," proving his skills are easily transferable between genres and BPMs. Starting off as a minimal bleepy drum & bass number, things slowly turn more hectic as skippy drum breaks and descending synth loops naturally weave their way into the track, culminating in a constrained but energetic junglistic workout over a rumbling sub. Basically, it's dubstep meets jungle, in a very good way. Precise and ice cold drum & bass that leaves the listener far from cold.
Buy Spectrasoul - Taken at
  
Tracklist: Spectrasoul - Taken
 A Taken
AA Organiser (Ramadanman Refix)
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