This review covers the liquid drum n bass track Aether & Sizzlebird – Raccoon City (ft. Veela).
This track was released in 2015 on the compilation album Alchemy. We previously reviewed the tracks Maxim – That We Say and T & Sugah feat. Ayve – Unreal. We continue our exploration of this album to see what else is on there.
For video gamers who are familiar with games in the late 90’s to 2000’s, the title may ring a bell. You are definitely not mistaken on the reference. The lyrics confirm that this is in reference to the Resident Evil series.
The track starts off with vocal elements and plucked synth. From there, some string elements come in before the track picks up into a more drum n bass sound. With the lighter elements and soft rolling bassline, the track is a generally light and gentle track.
The drop almost completely pulls the track into silence. The vocal elements then gradually brings the track back. While lighter tracks have a harder time giving a nice contrasting sound during the drop, this isn’t really a problem in this track. The amount the track has to pull back is significant, but it pulls the drop off nicely.
The track then gradually pulls out, leaving the listener with the vocal elements. The end tops the track off with a delayed pluck effect.
Considering the gory and grotesque nature this track draws inspiration from, it is a bit of a surprise how borderline ambient this track is. Still, this track is also very lyric heavy and this element does appear almost from beginning to end. This winds up being a strength given how in-depth and full of analogies the lyrics are. That, in and of itself, manages to give the track just enough needed power to be fitting for the implied themes.
While I cannot say this is a track that impresses me enough to want to listen to it over and over again, I can say this track is definitely worth listening to. It’s one of those track that you can throw in a playlist to add a fair bit of variety and depth to an overall listening experience. This might be especially true if you have some more hard and heavy tracks in your playlist and you want to add in something a little lighter to break the listening experience up a bit. The contrast would certainly be very effective.
Overall, this is a pretty good track. It is definitely a recommendation if you enjoy the earlier Resident Evil game series. The lyrics are a huge strength in this track and the producers clearly had no problem showing this strength off as it is present practically from beginning to end. The laid back nature of the track is surprising given the themes this track draws inspiration from, but the lyrics work out well enough to give this track a fitting enough power. Even if you aren’t a fan of the mentioned game series, this track is certainly worth listening to from time to time in a playlist. A pretty solid track in my view.
Score
7/10
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Google+.
