Organic Feature: Stickman

Synkro Resident Advisor Mix

Synkro — Look At Yourself featured in Photek’s DJ Kicks

Resident Advisor Review: Mindset009

Troy Gunner Organic Guest Mix

HxDB

HxdB aka hexa­deci­bel is a 33 year old bass music pro­ducer and DJ hail­ing from Van­cou­ver Canada. He was first intro­duced to bass-centric music in the mid 90s, lis­ten­ing to jun­gle and drum & bass, which cap­ti­vated his imag­i­na­tion and inspired him to be more than just a fan of the music. He finally took the plunge into the pro­duc­tion realm some years ago, pur­chas­ing a basic MIDI con­troller and a copy of Fruity Loops and along­side his old pro­duc­tion part­ner, started teach­ing him­self the ways of the bass. Those days were fun and inno­cent and not much came from the ven­ture, besides a solid foun­da­tion of music and a work­ing knowl­edge of the nuts-and bolts of how to make elec­tronic music.

7 years later and many life expe­ri­ences later, he had a musi­cal epiphany after a life-changing music fes­ti­val. It com­pletely changed the way he heard music, and gave him that same euphoric feel­ing he had all those years ago. This was just the thing he needed to launch him­self back in to the foray and unleash his cre­ative ener­gies. His first pro­duc­tions exceeded even his own expec­ta­tions and were hap­pily wel­comed by the bass music com­mu­nity, which gave him the encour­age­ment and inspi­ra­tion to forge for­ward and strive to improve. Now, 2 years later, he has an impres­sive arse­nal of fresh music to his credit, has con­tributed music to sev­eral film projects, scored a doc­u­men­tary and has releases out and forth­com­ing on sev­eral notable record labels, plus a legion of faith­ful fans who just can’t seem to get enough of his sound.

His music is soul­ful and evoca­tive, always sound­ing very lush and well-sculpted, accented by pul­sat­ing bass waves with a healthy sprin­kling of ear candy. Using dub­step as the frame­work, he skill­fully fuses ele­ments of techno, garage, 2-step & jun­gle with inter­est­ing, syn­co­pated rhythms and cre­ative arrange­ments. His sound typ­i­cally has a dance floor sen­si­bil­ity that often times, his peers seem to for­get about. 2009 & 2010 have seen this man prove his met­tle by remix­ing an exhaus­tive list of pro­duc­ers includ­ing: FBOM (Tx), Kwal­ity (AUS), Ill-Ehsa (VAN), Vin­cent Parker (VAN), Grooki (AUS), Tri-Funk (SWE), VVV (Tx), Section8 (ATL), Sephi­rot (UK), Autopi­lot (US), Numbernin6 (US), Don Goliath (DE), B1t Crunch3r (US), Killer­alien (UK/ITA), Alien Pimp (SP), Atma (CAN) KZSS (UK) & Foiled Tor­sos (UK). With the suc­cess of these, along with his incred­i­bly pop­u­lar remake or Robert Miles’ time­less “Chil­dren”, his remix­ing skills are in huge inter­na­tional demand.

The future for this bass archi­tect seems to be very bright and busy, with sev­eral fea­ture Pod­casts under his belt for Elec­tronic Explo­rations, Sonic Router, Sic­knote & Kryp­tic Ele­ments, plus an increas­ingly in-demand DJ sched­ule. He, together with Aufect Record­ings’, DJ Cure, run Press­ing Issues Record­ings, which is cur­rently work­ing on it’s 3rd vinyl release. Be sure to check out his web­page for up-to-date news and tracks. You can also check out his pre­vi­ous mixes, con­sist­ing of exclu­sive and orig­i­nal mate­r­ial. In sum­ma­tion, this guy is show­ing no signs of slow­ing down, with sev­eral remixes, col­lab­o­ra­tions and excit­ing projects cur­rently in the works and sev­eral vinyl and dig­i­tal releases com­ing in 2010 & 2011.

www.hxdb.org
www.soundcloud.com/hexadecibel
www.facebook.com/hxdbbass