Warmth on the low end
Ease off the pressure and let the Rhodes breathe. "Soulful" is the loose label for drum & bass that draws on soul, jazz and funk, and heads will tell you it overlaps heavily with liquid funk. The label names tell the story: Signature is the one for soulful d'n'b, Soul:R built a soul-leaning sound at its core, and Hospital Records is home to some of the most melodic liquid going.
What it sounds like
Liquid drum & bass runs on playful melodies, samples, synth work and vocals sitting over rolling amen breaks, and the soulful end of it keeps the vibes up front and the low end smooth. The reference points are wide. Redeyes' "Let It Shine" is built on Rhodes and wah guitar. Lenzman's early "The Blues" mixes jazziness with wobbly bass and scattering percussion. Alix Perez's "Crooklyn" pairs dusty breaks and a jazz riff with the MPC-style sound of vintage east coast hip hop. Makoto came to the liquid camp with 1970s jazz and soul in his ears, and "Togetherness", a collaboration between DJ Marky and Makoto, is peak energy and vibes.
Vocals keep coming back. Think of High Contrast's "If We Ever" (2007), with vocals by the late Diane Charlemagne, Netsky's "Moving With You" from his 2010 debut album on Hospital, or Lenzman's "Open Page" with Riya. And Calibre's tunes drip in soul.
From Bukem's pads to the Velvet Rooms
Jazz-influenced roots in the 1990s
Part of the lineage runs back to LTJ Bukem (Danny Williamson), a classically trained pianist whose early productions had roots in jazz fusion, in contrast to the darker breakbeat hardcore of the time. His tracks used long intros, strings, synth pads and lingering Rhodes chords. The Good Looking label and its sub-labels gave other producers a platform for a mellower side of jungle and drum & bass, and that mellower sound helped set the direction for liquid and other later sub-styles.
Swerve and the naming of liquid funk
Wednesday's Swerve at the Velvet Rooms, Fabio's night, is credited with nurturing the genre's most soulful aspects, and Fabio is credited with coining the term "liquid funk" with his 2000 release Liquid Funk Volume 1. His Creative Source label, established in 1995, describes itself as "the jazzy side of drum and bass or liquid funk as seen by Fabio"; its artists include Redeyes and Naibu. Hospital and Good Looking helped spread the sound further, with Calibre and DJ Marky among its key artists.
Soul:R, Signature and the Manchester-Belfast axis
Marcus Intalex (Marcus Kaye) lived in Manchester and ran the Soul:R and Revolve:R labels. He had worked in the mid-1990s as Da Intalex with Mark XTC. In 2007 he mixed FabricLive.35, a selection that moved between darker and soulful tracks. Calibre, the Belfast-born producer Dominick Martin, runs Signature, whose discography goes back to 2003 and includes the Shelflife series. His Shelf-Life and Overflow albums had him on fire in the late 2000s, and Even If (Signature, 2010) was his seventh album in nine years, dressed in jazzy basslines and heavily melodic flourishes.
Hospital, Fokuz and the late-2000s run
Hospital Records was founded in 1996 by London Elektricity and Chris Goss, and it also launched the festival Hospitality In The Park. The Dutch label Fokuz Recordings had focused on the mellow side since 1999; its releases included Atlantic Connection's "It's Your Jazz", with sliding double bass and piano samples. A 2009 Electrosoul System release on Allsorts belongs to the same stretch, one that heads still point to as a high point of the decade. On the vocal side, Commix's "Be True" comes from the album Call To Mind on Metalheadz, and S.P.Y's "By Your Side" (2010) came out on Spearhead Records.
Brazil
São Paulo has its own sunny-side soul: classic Latin guitars and Brazilian instruments such as the cuica and atabaque. Fabio is credited with coining "liquid drum & bass" for the deeper, rolling style around the same time. The city's early-1990s jungle movement traces back to XRS, Patife and Marky. XRS's early records appeared on UK imprints including Critical and Soul:R, and in 2002 Marky, XRS and Stamina MC reached No. 17 in the UK chart with LK.
The names to know
Calibre is the figure most often named. Marcus Intalex's Soul:R roster included Calibre, DJ Marky, dBridge, LSB and DRS. DRS (Delroy Pottinger), a Manchester MC who has worked with LTJ Bukem, Lenzman, Intalex and Calibre, released his debut album on Soul:R in 2012 and the follow-up Mid Mic Crisis there in 2015. That album's "The View", produced by LSB with Tyler Daley, is a vocal liquid tune, and "Something To Believe In" pairs a Calibre production with DRS on the mic, a certified soulful beauty, shimmering and gleaming. SpectraSoul, the London duo of Jack Stevens and Dave Kennett, started on SGN:LTD, a sub-label of Shogun Audio, in 2006. Their 2015 album The Mistress features six vocalists, drops the tempo and moves into song-focused territory in places. Break of Bristol launched Symmetry Recordings in 2006, known for funk elements and deep basslines.
Marcus Intalex died in May 2017. His debut solo album 21 had come out in 2011, and he also worked in techno as Trevino. Calibre was one of his greatest allies, and his collaborations with ST Files and Calibre are remembered as era-defining.
Where it went next
By the late 2000s the style had settled into a chilled-out, laid-back sound. Several of its figures have since widened their range. Calibre, whose catalogue stands at 17 albums, made Feeling Normal his first fully 140 BPM record, which he says lets him retain the dirtiness of drum & bass while slipping in his own vocals. SpectraSoul's The Mistress and DRS's Mid Mic Crisis, both from 2015, point to a vocal, song-led direction in the mid-2010s.
Related styles
Closest neighbours on this site are Liquid Funk, Intelligent, Atmospheric, Jazzstep, Sambass and Deep, with the older jungle tradition behind them.
