DJ Dara

Everyone can testify to DJ Dara's veteran status on the drum & bass music scene, and he is renowned for pulling together the harder grinding, dark junglist rhythms with melodically accessible tracks. The NYC-based Irish DJ arrived in the Big Apple in 1994, and since then has taken drum & bass to new heights of popularity in the United States. Now, with Future Perfect, he presents a DJ mix of searing tracks from the scene's better-known artists, such as Decoder and J-Majik, amongst others. Whether it has become somewhat passé to grace dance floors and decks with the spitting, broken, heart-stopping BPM of jungle or not, when tracks are well-produced and mixed as seamlessly as Dara's efforts demonstrates, the end feeling is undeniable. The movement from JL's "Dust," with its sinister madness, right into Ink and Dylan's "Need You" is brilliant. Not least because the soul-drenched passion ripping out of the vocal sample on "Need You" is a welcome refuge from the depths someone like Universal Project pulls you to. Dara's track selections offer less of the vocal-inundated, MC-oriented forays, but where minimalist vocals do make an appearance, the effect is sweet, such as J-Majik's "Tell Me." What makes this mix brilliant is that the choice of tracks is eclectic, in as much as it probably constitutes scene favourites. That the rhythmic mood shifts so drastically and each track is fairly multi-dimensional means mixing the selections is no easy feat. But Dara achieves this with masterful skill. Two-step revolution aside, there is still something to be said for the mind-bending explosions of a brilliant jungle track and an even better mix.