Normal rules apply
Great Job Everybody!
7 Likes
Short playlist this time!
Anyway nice tracks, as usual it will be hard to choose the top 3.
3 Likes
Beats 02 and 06 are the same. And how do I vote? First time…
1 Like
The curse of a Christmas/New Years timed battle!
Yeah I realised that after a minute. Thought 3 beats had used the same sample for a second 
We normally vote for a top 3 (not your own haha) and leave comments on them if you want to. #1 gets 3 points, #2 gets 3 points, #3 gets 1 point.
Thanks for putting this together @malus_mons! I wonder if it would be worth doing a top 2 instead of 3 as there’s less entries? This is based on no actual thought out reasoning though 
3 Likes
Yeah sorry the uploading was all messed up. And I ran out of time to fix it
Will do it later after work
4 Likes
awesome playlist again. Short but quality
3 Likes
Made it through a first listen (echoing others about the high quality). Gonna go back through and make notes before I vote. Do we have a deadline for voting?
4 Likes
Hey folks! Lets end the vote on Sunday. And yeah, lets just vote for your top 2
2 pts for 1st, 1 pt for 2nd
4 Likes
So this playlist seemed very cinematic to me. Made me feel like I was in a sci fi film, probably would be about some underground beat makers fighting the system with sound. Like a real beat battle, in the streets!
1 - Story starts off, waking up to get ready for the day. Feeling nervous and anxious like the energy in this track, but then the immortal voice of Guru comes through like an invocation and prayer of protection to keep us safe, making beats in our sercret hideout
2 - Its time to go outside and get supplies, and talk to our friends, the intro is like walking in a grimey, dark, tagged up tunnel and then bam you are on the corner full of life and vibracy, human culture is not dead. Lets go to the bodega and see whats up, but first we’ll dip into the alley an blaze it up …
3 - Uhhhhh somethings not right, you feel that? nah its just the weed, don’t trip… Oh shit! there’s robot system admisistrators coming to get us! RUN!
4 - Montage time - The crew goes into their hideout, grabs their beat machines and bug out bags. Now they are all geared up and ready for battle. this is what they have been training for.
5 - The plan is set on how to defeat the system admins, but that took a lot of energy, we heard about a chill party on the other side of town. So we head out, the world looks different - colors are more vibrant. There’s still evil lurking around every corner, but maybe Guru’s words are working
6- we don’t talk about track 6
7 - See an old friend chillin on the side of the road. He tells us whats been happeing since we had to bail. System admins have been terrorizing our neighborhood, looking for us. We have to go back and face them, can’t keep running awaaaaaaayyyyayy…
8 - Are you ready to lay all on the line? There’s no turning back. The Beat Battlers are walking into cretain death, but the system must be overthrown! Projects are loaded, sample pools are optimzed, envelopes are sharppened, velocity control is OFF. lets go!
Thats all i got
#1 track 2
#2 track 5
4 Likes
My votes are for
#1 Track 2 (AKA Track 6). The groove is great and that vocals that mix with the cello are lovely!
#2 Track 1 Love the intro and the glitchy texture
Thank you all!
6 Likes
#1: Track 02
#2: Track 05
4 Likes
Nice beats everyone and great concept.
Even though there was only a few
(It was always gonna be tough getting the numbers up over the new year period)
It still wasn’t easy, as they’re all great.
I went for
1st- beat 5
2nd-beat 7
Salute
4 Likes
Really liked them all! Great atmosphere overall
I go with
1 - #2
2- #4
Love the bouncy boom bap in track 2, just the style of hip hop I dig the most. Track four has a great dilla or flying lotus swing to it, and reminds a bit of bonobo vibes.
HM to all others, there wasn’t one, I didn’t enjoy
4 Likes
Great work everyone. Always hard to choose and these all have something nice going, and they’re all unique sounding too. Some really nice pro sounding mixing too.
1st - 8 - Great vocal snippet. Dark cinematic driving vibes I really enjoyed. Would love to hear this a bit louder/mastered!
2nd - 5 - Great sound and sample choices and atmosphere. Big fan of that perc knock(?!) throughout and dope bassline.
Thanks again for hosting @malus_mons 
4 Likes
Votes:
1st: 5
2nd: 1
Notes:
1: Takes a moment to wind up, but gets appropriately dark and anxious when it does. Love the crispy off-beat hat layer, the demonic vocal repitching of the second quote, and that synth lead 2/3rds of the way in. I also really like the moments where the ratchets don’t stop, morphing from typical trap hats into snake hisses
2: Hook is lovely, and a great use of that vocal sample! Very east-coast rhythm section mixed just right, with a strong string harmony bed. Classic
3: Another good style match to the subject with its dark, mechanical beat. I smiled at the lampshade of “nothing makes any sense” over the brief intrusion of the funk drums, and also really liked the high pinging lead(?). I wish there were a touch more groove to this one, not enough to ruin the militaristic vibe, just enough to make it sway
4: Marvellously thick and heavy. Love the wide bass and pads, love the fast-panned pings, really love those loose drums and the subtle rattle of the hats underneath. My one knock against it is that, without an emcee, it feels too long.
5: I love how this beat plays with space: big echoed pianos and ceramic plates against intimate snaps and wood clicks. Just like the mix of percussion and found sounds here generally. Bass is perfect. Mysterious and melancholy.
6: There is no Miss Zarves. There is no sixth beat. Sorry
7: Cyberpunk vibes with this one. Love the East European-style hook, really like the synth tom fill and the crunchy tremolo pad. My main knocks are the kick (a bit too heavy in the mix) and the ways the layers clash in the repeat of the hook
8: Bleak and glitchy, an android unable to get the freedom wished for in that opening quote. Love that persistent echoing thump; the interspersed retrigs, warps, and machinery honks; the choir; and the secondary piano licks that duck in and out. Low-end is just a touch too heavy for my taste, and again a bit long (without an emcee)
Introspective one this time, appropriate both for Curtis and for the aftermath of holiday stress for many of us.
I did end up watching all of Hypernormalisation, interrupted only once at the very end when my wife woke up from nap and asked “Is that Bill Clinton on our tv?”
5 Likes
Is that everyone’s vote? Seven beats, seven votes
4 Likes
Surprise surprise… we have a winner and its @Yabba!
With @Unifono close behind in second!
Great job @everyone!
I will update the playlist with your handle Looking forward to the breakdowns of your process
7 Likes
I’ll go first. I am not really into the deep listening finding the perfect sample right now, so I was struggling. My setup is a DN into a OT into a SP404mk2. I have 4 flex machines linked up to various sample chains and 4 playing back the buffers, that’s how I like to make music. So eventually I just grabbed random samples from a playlist and made the track. I have no idea what songs they were. It’s also a one take recording of a performance, no overdubs. I couldn’t help but play a solo ontop of it because I’m a jazzman forever and always. The ratchety hh are retrigs activated by the crossfader, so that gave them that almost natural feel because I was just flipping that thing like as if I was actually playing the drums
Also this track is dedicated to @JonMakesBeats, thanks for the motivation by saying I probably don’t make good music because I said hip hop is simple.
Wanted say that even tho this is the best place on the internet, there’s a bunch boring noise and endless gear talk, so its awesome when we come together and put ourselves out there with our creative works. Each one of you are a true artist and thank you for all your efforts, this playlist really sounds good, not one bad track!
Notes on the outro
edit: as for the last track, if you didn’t watch all 6 episodes of “Can’t keep you out of my head” then maybe you wouldn’t know why Tupac Shakur rapping about his mother is important to the Adam Curtis theme. The woman in the photo of the playlist is Afeni Shakur. Her story was a big part of the doc series. Outside of the USA I’m not sure if people realize what a folk-hero Tupac was. On this forum he seems to be dismissed but the hip hop heads here are pretty biased toward the alternative and “boom bap” stuff {mf doom & j dilla ad nauseam). I hope we get another Tupac in the world
6 Likes