Secret Operations Vinyl & CDs

Review: Swedish d&b pioneer Seba continues to roll out more reissues from his Secret Operations label vaults, taking back over 15 years to some of his most career-defining work. The swaggering opener 'Your Deepest Love', the ice cold finale piece 'Legion' and the breath-taking 'Forever' all take us back to the mid-2000s (2006/7 to be precise) when Seba and his label really started to make their own independent mark in drum & bass. For good measure and balance he's also including 'Inkasso'. A little more recent in his discography at only eight years old, but just as hard hitting and timeless - Seba always hits the spot whatever era you find him at.

Review: Back to 2022! Seba reissues his third album Ingaro on this beautifully presented and precision-pressed yellow vinyl box set. With four 12"s, all 10 cuts get generous wax space and sound amazing as a result. Especially highlights such as the Spirit-like super charge of 'Sequence 5', the cosmic jungle thrust of 'Outer Worlds', the powerful and provocative 'Thoughts Run Free' with Rupture legend and killer MC Blackeye. And that's just for starters; the Bjorn Berglund-collaborated and Samuel Lancine-fronted downtempo cut 'Diamonds' is a sense-arresting moment and the dreamy finale 'Progression'. Seba, we salute you.

Review: Secret Operations deliver two thoroughly well-compressed remixes of respective tracks from fellow drum & bass heavyweight Seba's recent album, Ingaro. First up, we've Mako with his well-fashioned Reese filtration systemic sizzler version of 'Horsepower'; we're surprised Mako is going by the metric of "horsepower" at all, not least since he's broken the speedometer. Then there's Phil Tangent's 'Eztli', but despite the name, he hardly breaks away on a tangent at all, moving parallel to rather than obliquely away from the original's well circumscribed preference for liquid rollage (though there's no less weight brought to this new version, that's for sure).