Techno + Neuro + Psy Trance = ????
Last time Vedanta featured on this site he’d just dropped his debut album Ponzi Math. Loaded with sharp and critical observations of life and little riddles and puzzles to consider about modern life under the shadow of late stage capitalism and how it affects the creative process, the album hit hard and came courtesy of his brand new label Bindu Recordings, a platform he described as “a place for experimentation where I want other artists to be able to stay true to themselves and their ideas, pushing the envelope of the genre whenever possible.”
Staying true to his own mission statement, another album has very quickly followed – Progressive Freeform.
18 tracks heavy, including collabs with Quellsy, Nphonix, Yabol and remixes from Wonter, Section63, Peter Kurten, Absurd and the one and only neuro pioneer Kemal, Progressive Freeform landed last week with no fanfare or hype whatsover. Just a simple ‘POW – have this!’ type of attitude.
Naturally the Polish artist is firing on myriad cylinders, once again pushing a very distinctive and rare fusion. Taking off where Ponzi Math left us, it’s an almighty alchemy of sounds and styles that haven’t always sat that closely together – psytrance, techno and drum & bass – yet, as he shows on numerous moments on this LP, they definitely complement each other and have a huge amount of explorative potential.
He describes this venn overlap as Psychedelic Techno Drum & Bass, which is a pretty fitting summary. Take a listen to the tracks yourself as we reconnect with the maverick artist who refuses to kowtow to current trends and mainstream techniques.
Two albums in less than six months! Tell us why this has landed so soon after Ponzi Math…
I like to think it’s about “Element of Susprise”. I don’t have a better answer than that.
Haha
It’s all by design though, it felt like the right thing to do. The hardest part was probably biting my lip for the last nine months while preparing both album for release while coordinating everything. Right after finalising Ponzi Math, I put my efforts into finalising the next set of tracks (which were mostly done by then already).
Tell me about the process of this album…
Around 2015 I got into the idea of Psychedelic Techno Drum & Bass, which combines classic Techno influenced DNB structures with elements of Psychedelic Trance and other genres.
The album Progressive Freeform has been in the works for over five years and some of the original sketches go as far back as 2011-2015. The original tracklist has evolved over time along with the sonics. A lot of those songs have been in my secret drawer stash for years, it felt like the right time to let go of holding them for “special occasion”.
I’ve been hinting towards this album for almost a year now with little hashtags etc
Oh wow this goes deep! Tell me more about the inspirations, fusions and explorations between techno, psytrance and drum & bass.
The earliest inspiration I could come up with would probably be old series of Nuborn Mixes from STA & Paul B around 2025. That’s where I had first contact with Trance’Bass. Yabol, one of my first teachers, has also been working with this type of sounds already back in the day. From around 2010 onwards.
Back in the day you could find some track from Anode or Cybernetika, who were the early precursors for those combinations. Exit Civilisation by Telemetrik might be one of the provocateurs of this style too.
Yabol also introduced me to Quellsy’s music who I later got in touch with and we have two tracks together on this album. Quellsy is one of the very few producers who has highly specialised in Psy-DNB, among other genres.
I felt this style is underexplored in the recent years and that’s what the Progressive Freeform LP focuses on. Fun fact, this album contains some of Yabol’s input from the early years of Vedanta (we started the project together, these days he’s doing retrofuturistic electronica at lower tempos).
Oh wow that’s interesting. Tell us about Quellsy too as we’re running a premiere of Recalibration…
I hit him up online around 2018 if I remember correctly, he was the only person I could find working with Psy-Dnb at the time, (he also produces other genres like DubTechno & Techno) We stayed in touch ever since. He’s one of the few people I know who comfortably writes 3-4 drops into a track while keeping it engaging on the musical composition level.
We usually exchange stems or projects, at times we give each other ideas to include, all depends on the song and situation at hand. We’re about to start some working on some new stuff soon.
Great! It’s a very social album isn’t it?
Yes, that is the whole goal with Bindu Recordings, I want it to be socially experimental. Both albums (BNDLP001 & BNDLP002) serve as an introduction. I’m aware we could have slowly dripped those tracks over the course of 1-2 years, but that’s not the goal here. While preparing both releases I wanted to find a quick way to introduce the label and a wide range of sounds from various artists. That’s why 2nd album came without unnecessary delay, we wanted it to be a surprise.
On Progressive Freeform LP I did my best to include even wider and more diverse group of collaborators than the first time. Throughout the years I’ve been getting in touch with various producers, with some of them I have personal stories. This album reaches back to my early influences and people that inspired me along the way. Couple of the remixes have been ready few years back, some of them are more recent, now is the time to share it with the world. I’m really humbled to be working with such a fantastic group of people (many of whom I used to collect and play records back in the day), everybody is encouraged to experiment and bring in their own special flavour and ideas.
For many years I’d imagine how I’d like to hear more of certain stylistic combinations, the goal is to introduce some of that on Bindu Recordings. In the next stage we will be dropping music from artists introduced on the label along a series of collaborations. That’s all we can say for now, stay vigilant… This is just the beginning.
Vedanta – Progressive Freeform is out now
