Beyond The Tension: “Evolution” or “Fluidity”

A your thoughts about changes 

 Liquicity began as a YouTube channel and quickly grew into a movement. With slogans like “For the love of liquid drum & bass,” it offered a counterpoint to the harsher ends of the spectrum—techstep, neurofunk, and jump-up. For many fans, it wasn’t just about music; it was about emotion over aggression, connection over chaos. 

Geestmerambacht 2024

For years, Liquicity stood as the emotional sanctuary of the drum & bass scene—pure, melodic, and untouched by the darker subgenres like neurofunk. But in recent Liquicity festivals, something has changed. Artists like Black Sun Empire, IMANU, Buunshin or Synergy—with roots in neuro—have started appearing on the lineup. Although for soulful or dancefloor liquid DnB people can be difficult allowed the changes in the DnB genres, liquid DnB (once) stood as a different music genre with different vibes than was mainstream DnB scene, than is neurofunk, perhaps artist like IMANU (once known as Signal, signed to Noisia’s Invisible) represent this evolution. His sets are not pure neurofunk anymore—they’re a swirling mix of glitchy halftime, sharp bass design, and unpredictable emotional arcs. It’s a sound that doesn’t quite belong to any subgenre. A shifting towards neuro genres brings also its aggression, including a ravers— this a man can feel. 

And yeah, beyond programming logic, there’s a cultural shift at play. The drum & bass scene has never been more fractured—yet also never more interconnected. In Czechia, for example, neurofunk is the mainstream. Labels like Eatbrain, Hoofbeats, and events like Let It Roll dominate, pushing aggressive, high-speed tech into the everyday. For young Czech ravers, this isn’t fringe music—it’s just what drum & bass is. Meanwhile in the Netherlands, Liquicity’s home turf, the neurofunk movement was once led by giants like Noisia and Black Sun Empire. But after Noisia’s farewell in 2022, the neuro scene fractured into something more hybridized. Artists like Posij and [IMANU] now explore new sonic worlds that blur genre lines entirely. Neuro no longer exists in a box—it’s leaking into liquid, into halftime, into house and glitch and IDM. 

Due a roots of liquid DnB or liquid DnB policy, this can’t be advocate, but probably Liquicity can no longer afford to be seen as insular or elitist. In an era when inclusion, diversity, and openness are demanded from every cultural institution, sticking to a single subgenre becomes a branding liability.