Pure Drum & Bass - Various Artists

Author's product rating:   

Originality
Lyrics
Quality and consistency of tracks
How does it rate alongside the competition
Value for Money

Advantages:	A pack with good songs throughout, and at an almost comical price
Disadvantages:	Big drum& # 8217;n& # 8217;bass packs have a reputation of being big boxes of crud

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Ok, I know there are hoards of these 'outstanding value' drum and bass collections on offer. 2, 4, even 6 cd’s packed full of, erm… the fiercest of cuts that you’ve never actually heard of and probably don’t ever want to hear. They fill the front of the pack with the names of the true legends, Hype, Zinc, SS, Bukem, Peshay, Shy fx, etc.. but you then find that out of the dozens of tracks, only a handful of them are from the people they're using to advertise the collection. To be honest, in my opinion they suck. I have bought a few of them, being a bit of a drum’n’bass fan, and they were offensive to me, some daft corporation thinks they can con true fans into buying their rubbish, or tempting those new to the scene with a huge box of big named players. It gives the genre a bad name, disheartens good fans, and puts off new ones after hearing the rubbish on offer.

So, you may be thinking that I am going to slate the very fibre of this drum'n'bass 4 pack, the Pure Drum&Bass collection? Haha, you're wrong!

Out of the many packs I've bought, this is the only one I've not taken back to the shop fuming at the ears demanding a refund because 'I bought it for my sister and it turns out it was the wrong one, you know they all look so similar don't they'.

I will admit, this pack isn’t much different from the others in appearance, on the front is boasts 'LTJ Bukem, Kenny Ken, Peshay, DJ SS, John B, SHY FX, DJ Hype, DJ Phantasy & many more' And yes, only a quarter of the 40 tracks in this collection are by these people, but the other 30 or so tracks are what separate this from the rest of the rabble.

Containing some brilliant pieces of proper drum'n'bass, some of the beautiful ambient stuff for 'the laydees', and bits that could put most normal dance music to shame, this collection has the kind of quality you would hope for in every track, not just in the first two tracks of each cd.

What is kind of surprising is that I have heard of more than just the names on the front, artists such as Unda Pressure, Conspiracy Theory and the Omni-Trio are probably known by a good few people. The pieces by these semi-well-known artists is easily on a par with the tracks from the big boys, not to say that the headline songs aren't quality! SS's Lost In New York being one of my all time favourite tracks, and a couple of the others like Music and 19.5 by Bukem (and peshay) standing out as excellent tracks in their own right.

This leaves the total unknowners, people that I have never come across before, and tracks that are totally new to me. These are normally the ones that are used to stodge out the pack, put a bit of meat on the bones, making it a 4 pack rather than just a single disc. Here however they have done a bit of work in picking the songs rather than get some pimply kid to pick names out of a hat. I can honestly say there isn't a single track that I feel needs to be skipped when listening to the pack, there aren't any that are disappointing enough to not listen to. That doesn't sound too positive, saying this is good because there aren’t any bits that are hideously poor, but if you've heard the kind of stuff that is normally in a pack, anything other than pure cr@p comes as a nice surprise.

Each of the 40 tracks are good in their own right, as in if I bought it on a single or found it on *ahem* Napster I would be pleased. This makes the four cd’s great to just put on the stereo and listen to, you get around 5 hours of decent song after decent song. I value this ‘commercial’ collection alongside the far more respected mix albums by artists such as Hype. That means a lot I think.

And to think, at the price I got this in HMV, it works out at £2 a cd, 20p for each song, you can’t exactly go far wrong can you! (well yes, most other packs will make you think flushing coins down the toilet is more worthy)

If you like drum'n'bass proper, if you like the less hardcore, more mainstream stuff like Roni Size, or if you like normal dance music and want to hear something a bit different, I would definitely recommend this drum’n’bass collection as a great source of good songs to get you interested in this under appreciated form of music.