Elucidating my obsession with a random drum-and-bass music record label

Most of those I get to know at a non-superficial level have likely heard about my music tastes, usually to their peril. It’s such a massive way I’ve come to experience the world, mainly by my own admission — I use a pair of high-end noise cancelling headphones pretty much constantly! However, something I’d never anticipated is that for many people (I’d wager the majority of people across the world), the types of music they listen to don’t determine the feeling they get in their chest when thinking about certain times in their life, ebbing away with some relentless, difficult-to-describe, insurmountable sensation; nostalgic or not.

For a far larger subset of people, these feelings also aren’t determined by the exact Liquicity Yearmix they happened to listen to during some two-month time period. I’ve become very accustomed to the fact that most people just don’t operate in thinking about their past like that, and it’s not like those periods of time in my past are solely tied to them, but the concept of not remembering a period of time and immediately attaching that to the one-and-a-half hour mix of songs nearly nobody else you know of can relate to having listened to before is extremely foreign to me.

For longer than a year, I’ve predominantly listened to liquid, atmospheric, and dancefloor drum-and-bass — I can best describe this amalgamation of my preferences as highly melodic and somewhat melancholy, yet (depending on the song) extremely energised and fast-paced — I’d reckon the average BPM of the songs I listen to exceeds 170. If a song manages to be what I’ve described above,1 chances are I’d really like it.2 It also just so happens that a lot of this music lies within an innocuous record label called Liquicity, which has led to people probably thinking I’m a bit weird for talking about as much as I do; they’re not even a band.

The problem is, the mean reaction I receive when I show these types of music to my friends is — “Oh my god, is this 2016 Roblox tycoon music?”3 — usually followed by some vaguely judgmental looks. To be completely honest, they’re not wrong! The music I listened to most in mid-2024 was Liquicity Yearmix 2012, an hour-long mix of liquid drum and bass from that year, which you genuinely only need to listen to the first ten seconds of to understand their perspective. This unfortunate characterisation of the music I listen to, however, prevents anyone from perceiving the songs I like to the depth that I perceive them with.

Take the first ninety seconds of that yearmix. Even though I couldn’t really rid myself of the impression most others would have either, it turns out to also be the exact music I’d simultaneously imagine myself writing my first GCSE paper to, nerve-wracked, fighting a battle all on my own. It turns out the element of nostalgia the mix has, being so old, kind of made me reminisce about all the definitely-happy moments I had throughout secondary school, all culminating into the most important one-to-two hour bursts of my life (at the time).

Other examples that stick out to me quite a bit include 2020, which brings me right to the end of secondary school, where I’d just left the period of time I call the worst five years of my life — yet, the future I imagined for myself after it all ended never came to fruition, and I was dealing with the melancholy that followed. The last half-hour, in particular, I ended up looping as it resonated particularly with the feelings of loss, and the sentiment of “What Happens Now?” that I felt throughout much of that summer, even following on later.

2024 represents the first few months of 2025 — where I’d felt the most lost, trying to rebuild myself after a barrage of inconveniently timed, bad events. I was at the beginning of a weight loss journey that ended in me losing >25% of my former body weight. I hadn’t even found running yet, which would turn out to be one of my favourite things, and something I actively keep myself going with long-term goals. The last half-hour in particular evokes a lot of energised despondence, as it personally seemed to sum up that period of time as, “I’m really depressed, but I’m trying to work really hard to change that”.

In contrast, 2021 represents me reaping the rewards of the hard work I did earlier that year. I’d managed to see the light at the end of the tunnel after a lot of personal growth — I’d ran two half-marathons, hit an all-time personal best on the 5K, finished that weight loss journey and lost 30kg, made amazing friends, and had the best summer camp of my entire life. I now associate any form of extremely meaningful enjoyment with that period of time; it is truly memorable, and I hope to create many more summers like that.

An observation I’ve just made while writing is that, throughout, I seem to particularly like pieces of music if I can fit them into the narrative of some really important, meaningful struggle I’m trying to overcome. This essentially applies to every Liquicity Yearmix I’ve listened to, which, as of writing, is much easier to describe by mentioning the ones I haven’t played (on loop, for many hours). People have often expressed surprise at the fact that I don’t have any peaceful, non-energised music to listen to; I think the most valid explanation of this is that I’ve observed that I’m nearly constantly hyperactive — even if I’m exhausted or drained, I still feel internally active. I extremely frequently, even in periods of rest or inactivity, daydream about doing great things, or doing hard things, and I’ve internally established a link between that and really meaningful, intense, melodic music.

As these mixes of songs are usually an hour and a half long, it takes me about two months before I get tired of looping the same one on repeat constantly before I move on to the next. Unfortunately, when I’m asked about my music tastes, I’m essentially forced to distil everything I’ve detailed above into a few words to avoid speaking a mouthful about artists and collections of songs the other hasn’t heard of at all, despite how massive a topic this is and how significant it’s been for me. Worse yet is saying, “you wouldn’t’ve heard of it”, which feels criminal to tell someone clearly getting to know you, even though you’re forever burdened with the curse of being a part of a niche that such a small proportion of the population relates with.4 You’re telling me I have to somehow tread the line between overexplaining exactly why my music tastes are the way they are and saying, “umm… I listen to drum-and-bass”?

Why drum-and-bass? Before I found Liquicity, a lot of the music I listened to was electronic or dance (note that this somehow differs from EDM;5 don’t ask me how).6 But in 2021, something interesting happened — I got really into osu!, a rhythm game where you click circles to the beat of music playing in the background.

This, long story short, is pretty much what got me into drum-and-bass in the first place, not only by virtue of enabling me to discover Liquicity itself, but also establishing some brain-pleasing neural connection that lies within hearing the actual beats of music as “clicks” or “taps”, or something else. While I don’t play the game much nowadays, I often chatter my teeth to the beat of the songs I’m listening to (usually involuntarily at this point), and I now scarcely enjoy songs that aren’t energetic or at a high BPM, with exceptions usually only for particularly incredible, or sad, pieces of music.

What keeps it going now the most is certainly the fact that I’m into long-distance running. These mixes are suitably long, range from 160-180BPM, and extremely energetic, and as a result are almost perfectly conducive to running. Listening to them during high-intensity, hard sessions is an experience I’d seriously recommend, and borders being memorable at times in its vividness. I’ve sometimes done ungoaled 10Ks where I push my pace solely to the intensity of the music I listen to, which I’ve found amazing if the purpose for a run on a given day is to prevent me from going insane.

I find it so interesting how the things I’ve been exposed to have had a seemingly causative influence on my musical preferences, especially to this extent. I wouldn’t argue against you if you told me I’d been conditioned to like drum-and-bass to this extent — it’s kind of true! I also find it curious that I link pieces of music extremely strongly to my feelings; not only in the moment, but to the general feelings I’ve had across weeks and months, and to entire periods of time (which I’ve learned not everyone does).

I’m currently listening to Liquicity Yearmix 2025, which I’ve come to love extremely quickly, and will likely be the subject of my overplaying for the next few months. If you’ve taken interest enough to read down this far, you should play it!