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Thursday, 24 May
2x12" // £11.99Single of the Week
Girl Unit returns to the Night Slugs mothership with an EP hefty enough - six tracks - and rewarding enough to be described as a mini-album. We'd almost forgotten how good this fella is, and 'Ensemble (Club Mix)''s boogiedown synths and deadly drum programming instantly set us straight. 'Cake Boss' is quite simply mental, seeming to re-imagine 909-bashing techno brutalism according to the jagging, stop-start demands of a grime dance, and 'Plaza'' is a ghetto-electro bouncer for the jeeps, while 'Double Take' strips away the feelgood synths and pushes the same rhythmic template deep into 'floor-crushing abstraction - it almost wouldn'… Read more
Single of the Week
**First edition with picture sleeve** Slackk (aka Patrice & Friends) makes his first move of 2012 with the eagerly anticipated 'Raw Missions' for Local Action. Named after a former East London pirate station, this is effectively Slackk doing Grime instrumentals from his insider/outsider perspective - he ran the legendary Grimetapes facility from Liverpool for years - and it's effing deadly. Paying tribute to the ranks of Ruff Sqwad, DJ Oddz and Waifer, the EP rolls shoulders from trilling claps and seasick folk/road melodies on 'Blue Sleet' to the bare bones acidic syncopation of '90 Years' on the A-side, thru the G-Funk styles of '… Read more
Single of the Week
**Hand-stamped white label** Blank Mind - the label what dropped those maaad soca bits from Adrian Lenz/Sandman - do y'all a favour by pressing up two long-out-of-print, late '90s Juke aces from 'The Honorable' DJ Clent. Face up it's the weirdly wired '3rd Wurle' from Clent's 1st 12" on Dance Mania; an hydraulic Ghetto pumper with wheezee horns and glute-pummelling bass. Face down, 'Hit It From The Back' plays inside-out with herky-jerky claps and needling hi-hats locked on a percolating bassline. Original's would cost you a good deal more than this = don't be daft: cop dat!
Recommended release
7even is a label we normally associate with reliably powerful, techno-crisp dubstep, so this has to count as their most adventurous and surprising offering yet. Why? Well, there are vocals, and pretty good vocals at that - particularly impressive is the strung-out, sub-heavy boy-girl duet 'You Live In Me', which sounds like Portishead might if they'd grown up raving at FWD. The same vocal partnership also lights up 'Stop', an uptempo techno stepper, while on 'Forest' the human voices recede into the shadows, allowing us to focus on the low-slung breaks and enhanced bottom-end - it's no exaggeration to say that this one sounds like the … Read more
Recommended release
Well good this, on his latest Bristol lad Gemmy has decided to take on grime and serves up a blasted sawtooth appreciation to all things South London with the phenomenal title cut. This one’s worth the price of admission alone, but just for kicks we get three more bangers too, and while they don’t have quite the same abrasive neck-snapping quality as ‘Tales of the Deep’ they still hit hard, and move in similar grime-baiting circles. Fans of the recent slew of Butterz material or Joker’s more street-focused bangers will be needing this one ASAP. Don’t sleep.
Recommended release
Pasteman & Tanka hold it down for 877 Records with two 808-driven Electro/House rollers. 'Camaro' is the big one - all escalating arpeggios, ass-tapping cowbells and booming bass for your mum's Suzuki jeep. B-side 'Torino' plays it cooler with strutting, dubbed-out House vibes sounding like Wbeeza if he did a record for Swamp 81. Big twelve!
Recommended release
Three deep-fried Boogie-Step burners with heavy grime and a Brazilian influence. It's not a simple concoction, but it's one well within Swindle's means. A-side 'Do The Jazz' syncs strummed guitar, tickled organ and Bossa scat on the intro before flipping into synth-strike Boogie-Step and back again. B-side 'Under The Sun' runs from halfstep sway to taut double-timed kick drums and raving synths, while 'If I Was A Superhero' comes off like Roy Ayers with a copy of fruityloops.
NYC-based Californian ex-pat Stryker Mathews debuts on Skream's Disfigured Dubz with a pair of melancholic modern House/Bass swings. With its pitched vox, moody bass and tinkling, trilling polyrhythms the frontside 'Binary Shake' sounds something like dBridge meets Mount Kimbie, while the brittle drums and plangent gamelan-like patterns of 'Batty Koda' curve into Geiom-style exotic steppers styles.
Hardcore Dubstep weaponry. Kromestar pulls no punches with the metal-tearing mid-range synthlines and trilling Trap 808s of 'Noiz', while Dark Tantrums hinge on silvery hi-hats over abyssal bass swerve on The Growler'. No messing, mate.
Recommended release
**Hand-sprayed screen-printed sleeve includes A3 poster** Senseless set off the 2nd 12" celebrating their 5th anniversary. Frontside is a grimy ruckus called 'Void' from up-and-comers Mak & Pasteman, fitting East London claps to fragrant vocals and body swerving bass for fans of J Sweet, Jam City, or Rossi B & Luca. NKC bruks open the B-side with a shrill but bassy bubbler named 'Errthing' crossing the lines between Ballroom and Dutch House styles, while German production duo JTRP - best known for their aces on Deep Teknologi - unload the bassbin-crumpling torque of 'Nothing To Do Here', forward styles!
Super-taut, crystalline fusion of Hip Hop, Footwork and Electronic club music with a world-wide dancefloor outlook. XLII hails from Tokyo and his dynamic constructions are brimming with the sort of electric energy you'd expect from that city. 'Dilated' is a sharp slowfast burner with steel-tipped 808s, skewed synths and elastic bass stabs while 'No Cure' rocks up a rapid, outsider take on Chicago Footwork and 'Thro Yo!' works with flash, Amon Tobin-styled synthwork and ultra-criss drum programming beside the robotic ragga of 'Rasclap'. Starkey gives 'Thro Yo!' a fractal Grime overhaul and ex-Various P… Read more
Precision engineered doublepack of powerful Dubstep torque from Icicle. On his first record of 2012 Icicle unleashes the Industrial-strength 'Acid Step' and the tribal twyster 'BNC' - both of which previously appeared on his ace Rinse mix - beside the bubblin' tuck and parry of 'Get A Job' and the jack-steppin' beast 'Together In The Dust'. Tip!
Thursday, 17 May
*Senking returns to Raster with another double-headed set of slowed-down, rugged and dark transmissions.* Senking's 2nd EP follow-up to 2010's heavyweight 'Pong' LP sees him add chiming harmonies and even vocals to his abyssal bass contours. With gargantuan A-side 'The Dance Hall Walk' he lasers warped and glooming features into a hulking iceberg sculpture, perching a blunted text read by Michael Cramm over unshakeable, plunging bass ballast. This will sound shocking on a big rig! B-side's 'Closing Eyes' swipes away any extraneous sounds to leave a desolate scape of plangent, ringing tones skidding acr… Read more
**150g vinyl housed in matte varnished sleeve** Arriving with support from Oneman, Jackmaster and more, Last Japan aka Marco Giuliani makes his vinyl debut for Lo Note UK. 'Ambush' presents a sparse and cold, yet fleshly tactile sound, setting up the dance with misdirecting minimal subs and skeletal percussion before the titular ambush comes, dropping a dirtload of junglist breaks on yer. 'Tactics' holds down the flipside, craftily blending field recordings into the rhythmic framework before subsiding into rolling Bass styles punctuated by crisp, reserved tribal drums. One for fans of South London Ordnance, Blawan, Dark Sky, Untold, then.
Bristol's don gorgons, Pinch and RSD reinforce Henry & Louis' 'Love Like' in killer, contrasting versions. Pinch deigns for a thudding 4/4 steppers' pressure amped-up with pendulous subs and a f**king mucky mid-way subsidence. On the flip, RSD traps the floor in a super-tight matrix of delay and reverb flux sounding like Garage, Dubstep and Drum & Bass all at once if you shake you head hard enough. Winners!
Thursday, 10 May
South London Ordnance debuts with his brilliant 'Sanctuary' and 'Roofy' cuts on 2nd Drop. Little is known about the fella and that's just how it is: his tunes do all the chat. A-side's 'Sanctuary' is a serious groove tool, body-syncing hi-hat strafes and ruffed-up snares with the deftness of a Beneath riddim, but placing more emphasis on wide-assed, 'floor-consuming bass and dark-end-of-the-warehouse reverbs for those who prefer to dance in the shadows. B-side's 'Roofy' is slower, murkier: voices are half-heard from the pill-eyed patina smudge of resonant drums, Motor City strin… Read more
**Now available on vinyl** Bryant Rutledge and Antaeus Roy (aka Lando Kal) make their mark on Modeselektor's Monkeytown imprint here on 'Memory', another flickering journey into 4am electro and tempered footwork. It shouldn't be too much of a surprise that fellow Berlin scenesters Jimmy Edgar and Machinedrum pop up for a couple of guest spots, given that Roy now is also a permanent fixture around those parts. It's Edgar's contribution that seems most fitting too, as he adds his sticky signatures to 'Let's Work' - a razor-sharp re-imagining of Otherpeopleplace's sleazy electronic funk. The Drexiya… Read more
12" // £6.99Blue 2-step skipper from the MoM producer, readied with OPR8 and Troy Gunner remixes. The original features what sounds like a soul singer with a speech impediment woven into an Footwork/Garage rhythm and soaked in fine ambient vibes. OPR8 brings the tempo down and dances with twinkling bells, clipped Funky/Garage drums and swirling chords, for Troy Gunner to give the highlights, a glyding 4/4 roller over on the flip.
Thursday, 03 May
At this point everyone's got their own view on the Yank's co-opting of dubstep, but you should know in advance that Atlanta beatsmith Distal is no Skrillex clone, he does come after all co-signed by Pinch's rearview-wobbling Tectonic label. Rather than hit the post-'Spongebob' chainsaw bass mode, Distal instead blends Atlanta's signature electro-indebted bass-heavy 'dirty south' sound with the rolling minimalism of Martyn, 2562 or Pinch himself. This rare rap focus gives a stark individuality to Distal's sound, and tracks like 'Preach On Hustle', 'Rattlesnake' and 'House Party Five' are an entry … Read more
Now available as three separate EP's - this is EP 1* Perhaps the most subtle yet striking new element in this new material from Shackleton is the wheezing, scaling tonal spectrum siphoned through the Italian drawbar organ module which inspired the title of the EP's. Spread across three 12"s and effectively forming an album in their own right, it's here that we find more condensed, rhythmically structured episodes reminding of his recent live shows - which are, in our humble opinion, the finest in the world right now. Meditating on late '60s/early '70s Reich-ian rhythm phasing, staine… Read more
Now available as three separate EP's - this is EP 2* Perhaps the most subtle yet striking new element in this new material from Shackleton is the wheezing, scaling tonal spectrum siphoned through the Italian drawbar organ module which inspired the title of the EP's. Spread across three 12"s and effectively forming an album in their own right, it's here that we find more condensed, rhythmically structured episodes reminding of his recent live shows - which are, in our humble opinion, the finest in the world right now. Meditating on late '60s/early '70s Reich-ian rhythm phasing, staine… Read more
Now available as three separate EP's - this is EP 3* Perhaps the most subtle yet striking new element in this new material from Shackleton is the wheezing, scaling tonal spectrum siphoned through the Italian drawbar organ module which inspired the title of the EP's. Spread across three 12"s and effectively forming an album in their own right, it's here that we find more condensed, rhythmically structured episodes reminding of his recent live shows - which are, in our humble opinion, the finest in the world right now. Meditating on late '60s/early '70s Reich-ian rhythm phasing, staine… Read more
**Marbled green wax housed in debossed, reverse-card jacket** Tightly coiled and razor-sharp Bass rollidge from two hot young producers, backed with a body-synced Presk remix. Working in the cracks between Garage, Old skool 'Ardcore and up-to-the-moment House, Hackman and Tessela crisply consolidate their individual approaches to heavyweight effect. Flipside they ease into a slower, swaggering roll with the spherical subs and ClonQy percussion of 'Feel Like Loving Me' to heat the blood of any Blawan fans, while Dutchman Presk shakes it up with a tighter broken beat flex reminding of classic Aardvarck cuts.
Deep Medi unveil the debut from South London's secret weapons, K Man and Mr Kerox. Well, OK, they're not that secret: they've already notched up the opening track on Chef's Dubstep Allstars 07 mix and are regular players at DMZ and Subdub sessions; but to all intents and purposes, this is their debut and stands to put them properly on the Dubstep map. A-side 'The Clash' is a stone cold Mala favourite and it's easy to hear why: those, cattle-prod stabs, the divebombing bass, the explosive claps - it's a proper vibe. Flipside, 'Highest Strain' displays their mellow side with swirling, portside guitar licks and magical boogie chords on a slick bass roll. Smoke on it!
Grievous Angel offers a wild and raw Bass workout for Forefront Recordings. 'Kleer' works a palette of 'Video Crash' style Chicago toms and stabs with proper UK swagger, spiking the whole lot with spaced-out neon synths to sound like one of Bok Bok's more delirious productions. Maintaining his ties with grimier UK sounds, he remixes a cut from Forefront's previous release, giving J Sweet's 'Subwoofer' a lick of steel-tipped drum hits and roguish bass pressure.
Joker returns from a wee absence with two Hi-Tech Dubstep Funk and Grime cuts on his homebrewed Kapsize label. 'Skitta' finds your boy locked on a tight halfstep lean blazing trance riffs and ecstatic breakdown from the hip. In collusion with Newham Generals on the flip, 'I Think You Should Know' arrives with melodramatic intent, before bouncing out with a taut flex matching D Double and Footsie's swagger.
Two highlights from Clubroot's end-of-cycle album 'MMX III'. 'Scars' seduces to the darkside with haunting vocals (or are they strings?) and scowling rave stabs hanging on a halfstep lurch. Meanwhile 'Hellion' nods to Burial and classic No U Turn's in strong style.
Tuffer Dubstep/Kuduro/Instrumental Grime styles from the Italy's Numa Crew. They come off like some Roman answer to Virus Syndicate on the siren-firing halfstep slope of 'Infama' feat MC Ninjaz & Charlie Dakilo, whilst 'Feeling Macaco VIP' jams on electro-etched Kuduro rhythms, and 'Nobody Can Stop Us' sounds like some old Youngstar production.
Dramatic dread halfstep motions from the barrel of Compa. 'Security' is the one you need: a deftly detailed drum pattern rendered 3D with dynamic echo chamber FX guaranteed to spark up the dance.
Thursday, 26 April
Another advanced, bogler-friendly Funky manifestation from London's Ill Blu, making no secret of its debt to the martial drums and carnival parps of 90s-present day JA dancehall. Traxman is an inspired choice of remixer, his deep, sci-fi footwork version arguably more compelling - and certainly more complex - than the source material. Two sides of different strokes, both quality, arriving in good time for summer and peaktime party deployment.
