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When Kryptic Minds first came out with music that had a more 140bpm focus, what really stood out about their productions was their use of textures. Tracks sounded like they were pumped through this increasingly gritty monochrome, playing out like miniature film scores set to tough, rigid drum patterns. In a sense the duo haven’t really ever tried to change such a striking formula over the releases that have followed, with their low end loaded productions finding homes on labels like Black Box, early Swamp81 and their own Osiris Music UK, but that staunch dedication to style has only really benefitted them at a time when people around them might’ve been writing more with airplay in mind.

"After completing the 'Lost All Faith' album we felt that a change in direction was needed," explained Si, one half of Kryptic Minds alongside Leon Switch, to Kmag back in 2011. "We'd been making drum and bass for ten years as a partnership, and we'd explored lots of different avenues within the genre. We'd been experimenting with different tempos and styles for a while, but we hadn't previously released anything apart from a few things on 'Lost All Faith."

"For us, age was starting to play a part in our musical tastes," agreed Leon, expanding on the point a bit more to say: "with us not being 18 and wanting to tear out a tune with distorted amen breaks and crazy basses, which we had done for many years and thoroughly enjoyed, the natural progression was to slow down and concentrate more on our sound, and experiment with different grooves."

And that Kryptic Minds trademarked groove experimentation is constantly continuing if this exclusive promo mix is anything to go by. Shunning any kind of defined snare drum, the mix rolls out cloaked with the same kind of ominous tones as their early productions but it wriggles through tracks and on into breakdowns in a much more supple way. In a similar way to how dBridge and Instra:mental opened up the possibilities of the drum & bass tempo with their work as Autonomic, removing the chunk of the snare drum in the early part of the mix opens up the EQ range of the tracks allowing the little trickles of percussion to shine through whilst severely amping up the expectation for any kind of snare drum – which when it does finally come feels like a bit of a spiritual shanking after the listener has invested so much attention in it.

Shunning any kind of defined snare drum...In a similar way to how dBridge and Instra:mental opened up the possibilities of the drum & bass tempo with their work as Autonomic...opens up the EQ range of the tracks allowing the little trickles of percussion to shine through

Hircine wrote:I think the way they are handling reverb and ambience is way more avant garde, this sound usually has cold, short, big room high passed plate reverbs. I love the way they drown the mix just to bring it back with new elements introduced.

hutyluty wrote:yeah tbh doest sound that unique to me- first ten minutes sounds like dub techno, the rest sounds like dungeon without a snare. very well produced and enjoyable to listen to all the same, especially when its chucking it down with snow

wub wrote:

Hircine wrote:I think the way they are handling reverb and ambience is way more avant garde, this sound usually has cold, short, big room high passed plate reverbs. I love the way they drown the mix just to bring it back with new elements introduced.

Feeling that too, had a think about how to achieve that. Am thinking running a long reverb on the key sounds, maybe even some delay in places, then cranking up the wet knob until the damn thing is eating itself. Add new elements not on the long verb send (when it's fully wet), then as the reverb wet decreases slowly increasing the send of the new elements to the reverb bus and fade them up.

Hircine wrote:

wub wrote:

Hircine wrote:I think the way they are handling reverb and ambience is way more avant garde, this sound usually has cold, short, big room high passed plate reverbs. I love the way they drown the mix just to bring it back with new elements introduced.

Feeling that too, had a think about how to achieve that. Am thinking running a long reverb on the key sounds, maybe even some delay in places, then cranking up the wet knob until the damn thing is eating itself. Add new elements not on the long verb send (when it's fully wet), then as the reverb wet decreases slowly increasing the send of the new elements to the reverb bus and fade them up.

I'm working on a song where I send a distorted phasing sine mid range (200hz~1000hz) to a digital delay, around 25% wet, 1/4D, not much feedback followed by a 2~3 sec long superhall reverb, around 20m or so. letting all those frequencies between 100 and 150hz pass through while using a different and dryer reverb sound on the drums. During the second drop, I crossfade both the send volumes on the snare and the percussion so the muddy and dark reverb takes over and creates some sort of evolving atmosphere because of the delay. Not sure if I was able to make myself clear.

Another technic I use is to have a chord stab sidechain its own reverb aux. Then I slowly increase the decay time during the song until it's long enough to turn on the infinite decay button on. After that, slowly decrease the stab volume while increasing the sidechain signal to the compressor in the reverb aux. While you do that, might as well introduce some new elements to the tune, the wall of reverb will act as a filter.

Hircine wrote:Those are dub and dub techno technics applied to dubstep. You gotta have a decent cpu hungry reverb to do it in the box, otherwise automating the decay will sound terrible

hutyluty wrote:yeah tbh doest sound that unique to me- first ten minutes sounds like dub techno, the rest sounds like dungeon without a snare. very well produced and enjoyable to listen to all the same, especially when its chucking it down with snow

wolf89 wrote: it really is the best thing I've heard by them in ages though. They were quickly becoming boring djs and producers.

fragments wrote:I'm selling some gear so I may end up buying an Eventide Space pedal because I *need* to spend 500 dollars on a reverb...

fragments wrote:Re: the mix...I've been enjoying it...but that being said Dubstep accounts for less than 10% of the music I listen too...my enjoyment could well be a lack of listening. I really dug the stuff in the beginning...all those dubby dubs...a lot of it does sound like recycled neurofunk...but that doesn't bother me so much because that kind of drum and bass is probably still my favorite EDM sound o all time. I wish it would have stayed a bit more spacey...the transition into the harder tunes was too sudden, which probably works well in the club, but not so much for me on headphones.

alphacat wrote:So the takeaway is... Wub hates snares.

Hircine wrote:I'm working on a song where I send a distorted phasing sine mid range (200hz~1000hz) to a digital delay, around 25% wet, 1/4D, not much feedback followed by a 2~3 sec long superhall reverb, around 20m or so. letting all those frequencies between 100 and 150hz pass through while using a different and dryer reverb sound on the drums. During the second drop, I crossfade both the send volumes on the snare and the percussion so the muddy and dark reverb takes over and creates some sort of evolving atmosphere because of the delay. Not sure if I was able to make myself clear.

Another technic I use is to have a chord stab sidechain its own reverb aux. Then I slowly increase the decay time during the song until it's long enough to turn on the infinite decay button on. After that, slowly decrease the stab volume while increasing the sidechain signal to the compressor in the reverb aux. While you do that, might as well introduce some new elements to the tune, the wall of reverb will act as a filter.