January AOTM #1: Se Bueno

Album of the Month: Se Bueno - TURQUOISEDEATH

The London-based Drum and Bass artist TURQUOISEDEATH made their name with this record back in 2023, but they didn't come to my attention until the release of their third LP last year. Guardian was one of my favourite records of 2025 and was instrumental in finally getting me to truly explore the incredibly vast world of EDM. TURQUOISEDEATH are not an incredibly innovative project within their ilk of atmospheric DnB artists. But across their three full lengths they iterate on the maximalist style of drum and bass popular in the modern day, with dreamscape atmospheres and an expansive set of influences from classic '90s Jungle to Trance and other forms of EDM to various kinds of vaporwave popular in the 2010's. In a genre like EDM with so much constant evolution it's incredibly difficult to do something truly new, but entire genres of electronic music are defined by building off of what is old to make something fresh.

Part of what makes TURQUOISEDEATH standout is the consonance between their consistent atmospheric DnB style and the wide variety of influences seen across their discography, aspects which stand-alone on each record. Here on their first record, TURQUOISEDEATH pull strongly from post-rock and dream pop, inflecting the vocals with a nostalgic and reverential quality while transforming the tracks with dense, wall-of-sound atmospheres as on "Dive" (featuring Parannoul). Part of what makes a track like "Starfields" so transportive is the combined effect of slow and thunderous rock-like drumming with buzzing synths and sections of drawn out melody and seamlessly cut breakbeats.

Se Bueno uses every tool in the playbook to draw the listener in: field recordings which sound like the splash of rain as a car drives by and infinitely echoing guitar and saxophone parts in "Vertigo", emotionally charged and utterly delighted DnB shuffles stuttering along and disregarding all melodic variation and swells in "Crawl Space". The closing two tracks, "Vertigo" and "Escape Your Dream" are especially effective as soundscapes, both tracks are rich and colourful, emphasizing highly directed drum patterns and slowly paced melodies.

Many of the best moments on the album occur in the first several tracks, like when the breakbeats finally kick in on the opener "Eureka!" or the effervescent outro of "The Sky Fall" leading into the trippy cuts and psychedelic atmosphere of "Crawl Space". But I think overall the greater emphasis on ambiance at the end of the record with "Starfields" and "Vertigo" (among others) make those my favourite cuts from the album. Se Bueno does a lot with it's "ingredients", simultaneously building club ready beats and introspective tracks which just make want to say "Man...".

-Paul Taylor

(Assistant News Director at WXOU)