I recently enjoyed listening to this RA mix from Objekt and also the Barker EP he mentions. I thought this could be an interesting thread to post anything related to ‘no-kick rollers’, be it recommended tracks, ideas, advice and tips.
As soon as I saw the title, Barker came to mind. Even before dropping in to read.
The Koreless LP is ace. Barely any kick drums there, and a couple of tracks that would work in a club:
I don’t know if this is propulsive but here’s a Josh Wink track from 1996:
Damn again I fail to embed a video. How’s it done?
edit: thanks @Grate_expectations
I do enjoy Koreless. I’m pretty sure I remember reading an interview where he said this album was made in the box.
I always just click ‘share’ on the YouTube video and then copy and paste the link.
Barker and Koreless really like that gated sound. Whenever I try that I end up sounding like tarnce circa 1995.
There’s been some good discussion around Barker’s production techniques on here, for example Chord-Arps/-Patterns like "Barker" - HOW?
And yes, I like this style a lot and it’s hard to pull off convincingly!
That’s right! Same here!
Club tracks without kicks is like a roast dinner without gravy, you can but why would you want to?
I listened to a few of the tracks posted and to me they all sounded like they would be better with a kick
I can live without snares, claps, hats etc on some tracks, but for me a kick is fundamental in a club/dance track or else it just always sounds like a breakdown, I guess these tracks might have their place in a mix, but it seems a bit odd to me, like doing something just for the sake of being different, rather than what actually works. But then I’m a grumpy old bastard anyways so FDIK.
Maybe they are meant for mixing with tracks that are all kick. (That should make for an interesting thread too)
…the sonic evolution worx it’s way…everywhere…
here we see, er, hear, the progress of toploops…
from tooltrax to toploops…from toploops to tooltrax again, that can now even make sonic sense all on their own…
Probably not too propulsive but I always liked how the kick is implied by the sidechain compression in this track