Workforce’s Set & Setting: An Album to Revisit

workforce-set-and-setting

Set & Setting is Workforce’s debut album, released on Must Make Music on 20 May 2022. Workforce is Jack Stevens, previously one half of SpectraSoul. We keep it in our reference folder for one reason: the drums. They hit hard and still leave the pads, vocals and bass completely intact around them, which is harder to pull off than it sounds.

Listen to Set & Setting on Bandcamp

The Bandcamp instrumentals

If you’re working on a vocal drum and bass track, it’s useful to have a reference for both versions of the same song. The Bandcamp edition of Set & Setting gives you that: alongside the album, it includes instrumentals of Death Dreams, Broken, Forever and So Long.

The instrumental shows what’s actually filling that space underneath the vocals. With both loaded next to your own project, you can check each side separately. Is your topline sitting right, and does your beat still hold up without it?

How it was made

Stevens has said openly that the album wasn’t easy. In a later interview with UKF, he described working obsessively on arrangements, structures and transitions so the record would play as one album rather than a set of singles. He also said how draining that became. If you listen start to finish, you can hear the transitions he means.

For DnB sounds for your own productions, browse Ghost Syndicate’s Drum & Bass Sample Packs.