THE ALIEN SWELL

When building towards a drop, you’ll want to draw on various production tricks to ramp up the perceived intensity. One great way to build momentum is by automating trippy reverb or delay effects over certain breakdown elements (or even the master channel) to the point of chaos, to ‘wash out’ the buildup and signify that something huge is about to happen. Then, just before the imminent point of impact, you can completely switch off all the effects to starkly slam back into the contrastingly dry drop. As we’re not used to hearing huge ambience vanish in such an unrealistic way, this trick is particularly effective for generating an attention-grabbing sense of claustrophobia. Have a listen to Dubfire’s Roadkill ( bit.ly/DFroadkill) and hear how the build-up ambience sucks in right at the drop… guaranteed dancefloor damage!