ZOMBY レコード& CD

Review: Zomby returns to Hyperdub with his first album in three years, trailed in high profile fashion by the Burial collaboration "Sweetz." That particular tune is one of Ultra's headline attractions, alongside eyebrow-raising collaborations with Darkstar, Banshee and Rezzett. What really impresses, though, is the skewed, left-of-centre nature of the mask-wearing producer's heavy, post-grime rhythms, sparse but sparkling synth work, and the breathlessly cut-up R&B vocals dotted throughout the set. Interestingly, there are subtle nods towards new wave synth-pop, ghetto-tech, spacey ambient and alien IDM, making Ultra Zomby's most intriguing and consistently on-point album to date.

Review: If the first single from this album, "Natalia's Song", left you worried that Zomby may have toned down his sound to fit the current zeitgeist in bass music, then don't. Dedication is a long way removed from Where Were U In '92?, but the influence of jungle and hardcore remains, albeit in a more spectral form, where skeletal beats play off against organic tones, his characteristic purple arpeggios drenched in reverb. The progression in his sound is just enough to add an element of introspection to his productions, while retaining the essence of what made his earlier material so irresistible; it's an album where air horns can co-exist happily with string sections and it doesn't seem jarring .With several tracks that are at times almost baroque in their execution, Dedication is an album that, whatever your preconceived notions of Zomby's sound, or bass music as a whole, must be heard.