- Tinkling piano is not something I expected to hear on the follow-up to last year's most punishing drum & bass record, but here we are. "Blood Drops" opens Ice Cold with a hybrid of liquid funk and Des McGouran's steely, no-nonsense pummelling. With snatches of melody—laced with dub effects, of course—lush reverb and an epic scale, it lives up to anything on Secrets.
They are are big shoes to fill, and to his credit, McGouran almost outdoes himself on the two other slabs of mayhem. "Darkness," with nimble drum programming and a trippy bassline that ghosts across the stereo spectrum, is the standout, while "Ice Cold Blood On The Drums" is pure techstep worship. But where McGouran's best tracks feel unpredictable, its over-the-top speech samples make it feel slightly dated. Like Secrets, Ice Cold comes with two digital bonus tracks, this time at Detboi's old stomping ground of around 130 BPM. You should check them out for "Beast" and its jack-hammering breakbeat, which sounds like a CD skipping during a brutal drum & bass track.
トラックリストA1 Blood Drops
B1 Ice Cold (Blood On The Drums)
B1 Welcome To The Darkness
Digital: Groovedigger
Digital: Beast