Dan Guidance: Dan Guidance and Friends

Dan Guidance’s Freedom of Movement is, without question, my album of the year, in a year crammed with classic records.

It truly must be around Christmas then as we get another Dan Guidance album only two months later. This is one of the benefits of being a Dan Guidance fan, no sooner have you marvelled at one release when another has landed.

This time it is an album of Guidance’s collaborations with other artists, called, with great concision, Dan Guidance & Friends. This reflects one of the Liquid Drum & Bass scene’s greatest strengths; the friendship, camaraderie and mutual support that is displayed by its proponents.

These collaborations and the cross pollination they contain create some of the best Liquid DnB releases around, as two or more talents combine to create works of shimmering beauty and bass shaking splendour.

Taking the tracks in Alphabetical order, as I don’t have a finished tracklist yet, Dan Guidance & Friends starts off with Dan Guidance and Alex B’s Walk Away. A plaintive piano starts the track and even with just the one instrument playing, we can somehow just tell that this is going to be a Liquid DnB track. I don’t know how, but there is something in the song’s atmosphere that just feels that way right from the off. As beats and synths kick in, Walk Away keeps the wistful air, feeling almost melancholic at times.

Dan Guidance: Freedom of Movement Review

Several friends have expressed surprise when I tell them that listening to Drum & Bass chills me out, but this really is what Liquid DnB is, a chilled out form of a frantic music. Walk Away sums that up nicely, it is at once laid back and unflustered and yet has an irresistible dancefloor groove and skittering percussion. It’s a neat trick to be able to pull off and massively effective when it’s done right.

Dan Guidance teams up with Blade next for Take Me Somewhere. With the beats higher in the mix, this is a more in your face sound but still has a cool air. Vocal snippets add a human feel to the track and the rolling rhythms make Take Me Somewhere a song it is impossible to stay still to when listening.

Next track Way Back sees Blean join the roster of friends, adding a dubstep-like flavour to the album. A low, low bass line and a disembodied vocal create the foundations, while lush synths and piano build on this to create a glorious song that is infectiously catchy.

The mighty MsDos joins us next for the reggae-tinged Ease Up. A heavy bass line drives the song and busy snare work keeps us on our toes. There are those who would tell us that all this kind of music sounds the same, but already in this album, Dan Guidance and his collaborators are bringing many different flavours to the genre and are proving just how different the songs can sound.

A Place Like This sees Neuron join the cast for another bass heavy track that grows and changes as the song progresses, becoming quite epic with its busy keyboards and background atmospheric swirls and swooshes.

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I must admit to not being familiar with Phat Playaz, but their collaboration It Ain’t Right fits in perfectly here. Starting out quite minimally, with just a repeating keyboard riff, elements are added one by one to build the song into a bass driven yet smooth slice of Drum and Bass. It is the first song on the album with a full vocal, adding a soulful vibe to the list of influences displayed here so far. I need to check out more Phat Playaz tracks, as this is an incredible vocal and a driving dancefloor friendly number.

Sonic Art is up next in our alphabetical list with Vacation, a cool-as-you-like track with a simple keyboard refrain carrying the melody and an almost mechanical voice advising us to “take a vacation from yourself”, something this track is allowing us to do as we drift along on its blissed out rolling rhythms.

The ever reliable Twintone is next on collaboration duties with the enticingly titled Mingle in Midair, with a slow burning intro that changes into a melodic and driving track that combines DnB rhythms with a rolling keyboard line.

Fishy has collaborated with Dan Guidance before, so it is no surprise to see him again here, along with Professor Funk, and his involvement is always welcome. The track is an unusual one, featuring a rap/MC section, presumably by Professor Funk. Some dirty call and response bass notes and odd sound effects add to the oddness and the overall feel does indeed have some funk about it. Another example of how Drum & Bass works so well with its influences.

Fluid Form and innaSelf join in next with Skyfall and another full vocal. This time the effect is less soulful and Skyfall reveals itself to be an epic sweeping track with extra skittering percussion and genuine hands in the air moments.

Dan Guidance & Friends finishes with the wonderful Marvel Cinema and Fishy track In Our Skies. What sounds like film dialogue samples telling us “something’s happening in our skies” provide links to the song’s title and the song itself is as colossal as you would expect when three titans of Liquid Drum & Bass get together, as epic a piece of music as you are likely to hear, with keyboards and bass battling it out with each other.

So what we get on Dan Guidance & Friends is 11 tracks, over an hour’s worth of music that takes in many influences and sounds, as you might expect with an album of collaborations. Every single track is wonderful in its own right, making this an essential album to own.

One thing that is apparent on this album is that Dan Guidance sticks more to the Liquid Drum & Bass template in his collaborations that he does on his own, where he is likely to veer into jazz, electronica, dubstep or any other direction that takes his fancy. On Dan Guidance & Friends we don’t get the same eclectic and impressive genre hopping, but that makes the album perhaps more consistent.

As ever though, the quality control is faultless and does not drop for a second, every song on this album is wonderful, giving us 11 emotive examples of the finest Liquid Drum and Bass, aimed at the head as much as the feet.

Dan Guidance and Friends is out now via Portal Recordings. Purchase from Bandcamp.