FACT mix 232 has been getting us all hot under the collar here at FACT HQ. It’s the work of one Thomas Rockwell.

It’s a name that won’t be familiar to all of you, but those who like to keep abreast of the more exploratory end of drum ‘n bass and next-level beat-craft in general will doubtless already count Rockwell among the most interesting producers on your radar. When he first emerged as a recording artiste in 2010, his fanatically detailed but assuredly ruff, rugged take on dnb – not to mention a willingness to explore different tempos – instantly impressed us, prompting comparisons with Instra:mental, dBridge, ASC, Data and their ilk. We elected to keep our collective eye on him. Then, towards the end of year, came probably the most striking conceptual statement of jungle’s recent years (there’s not a great deal of competition, granted): Reverse Engineering.

Two Rockwell productions constructed entirely out of reversed samples, pressed on a 12″ that plays in reverse (from the run-out groove outwards), housed in a reversed sleeve and released in a limited edition by Darkestral, Reverse Engineering announced Rockwell’s arrival in style, and showed him to have ambition and verve way beyond the norm. Crucially, conceptualism aside, the tracks packed a hefty dancefloor punch. We’re not talking about experimentalism for its own sake.

If there was any lingering doubt that Rockwell wasn’t one to watch, then the release earlier this year of the four-track Aria EP extinguished it. As with the majority of his works, the musical basis is in lean, minimalist drum ‘n bass, heavily informed (to our ears) not just by 90s synapse-friers like Source Direct, Alex Reece and Photek, but also the razorblade swing of Horsepower and El-B’s dark garage, the avant-rollage of Monolake and T++’s techno, the back-breaking velocity of Chicago juke, the ‘shroom-addled prolixity of Rephlex/Warp braindance. Aside from the Autonomic crew, who anyway seem increasingly drawn to bolshy electro styles, the only dnb-rooted producer who’s in the same class as Rockwell for us right now is probably Germany’s Felix K (Hidden Hawaii, QNS).

With so many producers content to repeat themselves, Rockwell seems always to be pulling from far and wide to make his music special: ‘Aria’ finds him strapping a yearning vocal lift from This Mortal Coil to a fiendishly scuttling drum pattern, mellow synth ambience and grimey subs, alll arranged in a dynamic alignment that stretches your brain’s ability to process sonic information while resoundingly smacking its pleasure-centres.’Rehoku Sunrise’, a remix-cum-collaboration with erstwhile junglist Untold, is perhaps best described as footworking tribal techno which manages, remarkably, to be as hypnotic as it is hectic.

Rockwell’s FACT mix proves him to be a DJ of considerable class too. As well as including the aforementioned ‘Aria’ and ‘Rehoku Sunrise’, and a cut from Reverse Engineering, he peppers his selection with a number of exclusive edits and specials, and flits effortlessly between tempos and styles, with well-judged drops into low-slung house and dubstep, without ever losing sight of what he knows, and does, best: sleek d’n'b rollers with well-oiled subs and drum programming to die for.

“Basically I wanted the mix to be a snapshot of both where I’m at now,” says the man himself, “And also include some of the tunes I’ve done over the past few years that I’m most proud of. There’s a lot of new stuff on there that isn’t even named yet, and I also went in on a few mixes and did a few VIPs especially for the mix to make it flow through genres.

“I’m not one for tracklists, but there are tunes included from myself, Icicle, Spectrasoul, Untold, dBridge and Instra:mental, and Alix Perez. There is a lot of stuff at drum and bass speed on there, but there’s very little that I think sounds like the preconceived notion of drum and bass.”

The whole thing is beautifully sequenced and sculpted, the kind of immersive and endlessly rewarding mix you’d have happily paid ÂŁ15 to own on CD if, you know, people still did that kind of thing.

Download and stream it below, and see over the page for a short Q&A with Rockwell about life, rhythm and everything. You can catch him DJing b2b with Alix Perez on Saturday 9 April, as part of Shogun Audio’s party at Cable, London. More info here.

(Available for three weeks)

This entry was posted on Monday, March 21st, 2011 at 11:04 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.