Local Group

When the BPM average hits 153.2, you know you’re in for a lesson in leg-wobbling physics, and Local Group’s drum & bass and breakbeat set at Westival 2022 for Keep Hush Live is a masterclass in jungle telegraphy. This is for the heads who communicate via rewinds and airhorns, in a field or a warehouse where the bass is felt in the teeth. The vibe is pure rave nostalgia, strobes cutting through night air, everyone locked into the Amen break’s eternal recursion.

The technical framework is built on speed and harmonic tension, primarily oscillating between the driving 7A and the atmospheric 12A keys. The energy is overwhelmingly low-focused at 0.66, with those sub-basslines acting as the narrative engine, while the mid-range provides the funk and the highs are used sparingly for impact. This is a crate digger’s dream, unearthing gems like ‘Foul Play - Finest Illusion’ for its ethereal pads and ‘Krome & Time - The Licence (Break Remix)’ as a 36-minute epic of pure jungle pressure.

‘Anybody's Guess - Start Over’ offers a moment of soulful respite, while ‘Black Box - I Don't Know Anybody Else’ gets twisted into a breakbeat monster. The journey is classic rave architecture: it kicks off with the sample-heavy frenzy of ‘MC Lethal - The Rave Digger’, builds to a peak with the relentless ‘Force Mass Motion - Esthisis’, and closes with the atmospheric drift of that same track, leaving us breathless.