Carrier / Scalameriya (47)

47017 – Overlook and Positive Centre debut their collaborative project, Carrier.

Masterful production on these impressively crunchy, jagged, industrial broken beats with a BIG rolling juggernaut of a low end. There’s an infectious, driving, piston funk woven into these tracks as they build and reach cruise speed, surely the result of Overlook’s D&B background and sensibility (over on UVB-76 Music etc). Sound sytem bangers. As is young Scaly’s ‘Ghroar’ tune below.

 

47018 – Serbia’s Scalameriya. Normally all I can say about his schtick is Meh! with a shrug; his competent but uninspired, perfectly adequate but textbooky, almost B-list, broken beat thumping and bashing. Still, essays handed in, no matter how badly written, can usually get you at least a C. So finished beats perfect, as they say. All that aside, he seems to ratchet it up a gear and break out for one stormer of a track ‘Ghroar’ injecting the template with rippling sheets of blurting, buzzsaw filth to make it monolithic, quite ritualistic and very nasty. Could’ve/should’ve gone even further though.

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Betek: Discipline (Rotterdam Electronix)

A2. ‘Drivers License’ is the one you want here. A bubbling, acidic electro, slow cooker, brought to the boil for an eventual serving of dark rave, best set aside and served cold. Props to my pal Ghetto G for hipping me to this one.

DiNT: Hooker (Horo)

Must say, I didn’t think too much of this when it came out in March. I’d been playing catch up and listening to a tonne of the Grey Area et al. stuff over the last months so maybe I’d just ODed on the Horo sound? It sounded too muddy and murky with all its (mercifully) low in the mix corrosive EDM vocals and farty bass. I bought it though, like the nerd I am, and persevered with it in the pick-up with the sub woofer cranked on my night drives home. And suddenly I got right into it. It seemed to get better on repeat listens (something that’s not always or often the case). The extended 10 minute ‘Skewer’ was the one that did it for me and pulled me in: the cavernous Doom claps that whip up the vibe at the beginning….but then I wish they hadn’t been dropped out of the mix altogether….something could have really been done with those?

Unwitch – the first session (Leyla Records)

Some choice cuts off this latest compilation; Unhuman, Mondkopf, but Manni Dee’s contribution is particularly relentless; full on hiss, grit and broken beat bounce that unleashes an infectious, industrialised, Rotterdam Termination Source-esque ‘Poing’ with lashings of dub chamber white out.

 

Boylan (Slimzos 012)

That’s what I’m talking about! Boylan sneaks a last one in before the year plays out. Meticulous funereal Grime with an undead lumber – there’s almost a kind of Nosferatu-esque (1922 silent version) jerkiness and flicker to the swing and shuffle and dread laden bass grind. Sound system carnage guaranteed.

Pugilist: Raindance EP

Pugilist smashes it again on Kenzo’s Artikal. He’s going to be one to watch if he keeps this up. ‘Raindance’ drops dessicated, concrete block beats and such hugely compressed bass weight you feel like you’re levitating a few inches off the floor on a magic carpet of low frequencies. No idea how the kid does it? but it’s special!
‘Murmur’ is the other standout for me, with a quirky stagger and lolloping swing to the groove; more slimey, rolling, more organic and wastelandish.

Pugilist: Astral Plane

This is more like it. If you’re going to slavishly emulate and/or reference an all out Dub aesthetic you may as well come correct and get heavy with the business, rather than faff around with all this tasteful, fussy, calibration and twee restraint. Here we have the convincing, unforgiving smack, thud and pummel of a running-it-red, booming rig at peak witching hour, absolutely wiping the floor with the tepid likes of aforementioned Karma and other lightweight wannabes. I mean it’s not hard to do, if you set your dial to it, so better cut it professional with thick and oily ganja fug, and not fuck around, knowhaddmean?

To be honest I think this is a raw nerve within the Dubstep ‘community’. This blog has more tumbleweeds rolling through it than an abandoned desert western film set most of the time, ya get me? so when I posted some knocked off, rambling thoughts about Digidub v Dubstep last year, I was more than a little surprised to have more reads/visitors in a few hours/days than I get in a couple of months!? Go figure. I should re-write that piece properly and flesh out my argument coherently (if and when I can be bothered) because I was clearly on to something?