今週

Review: Deep, Dark & Dangerous' latest ten-ton twelve-inch comes courtesy of Sam Bartlett AKA Samba, a producer who has previously impressed via must-have EPs on Crucial, Innerverse and Encrypted Audio. There's something particularly wondrous about EP opener "Kings", a punchy workout that contrasts weighty sub-bass with sparkling synthesizer lines and Amiga style eight-bit electronics. The producer's passion for combining club-ready dubstep grooves with attractive synthesizer lines continues on the fresh and exotic "Paleluv", while "Explain" sees him wrap Japanese-inspired melodies around military snares and gut-busting bass. The deeper and slower "Haru" is, if anything, even better.

Review: Seven years have passed since Burial first stopped us dead in our tracks with this universally acclaimed second album.. Sounding so different, so removed and far away from anything else, it changed the game entirely - and created a whole school of imitators in its wake. Now repressed by Hyperdub, this is a rare opportunity to grab it on fresh wax. Even if you have this on other formats in your collection, the dusty weight and chasmic crackles sound so much better on vinyl.

Review: Although Dalek One has been exterminating dancefloors (sorry) for some time, it was only last summer that the deep dubstep don made his long-awaited vinyl debut. Here he keeps up the pressure via a weighty EP on Encrypted Audio. Check first the mangled, electronically scrambled rap vocals and sci-fi riddims of "Eyes Red", before getting your ears around the elongated sub-bass tones, tribal percussion and paranoid electronics of "Wire Tap". If that's not enough to set the pulse racing - and it should be - we'd recommend whacking on the crackling, sub-heavy roller that is time-travelling dancefloor treat "Man Sees Alien". In summary: pleasingly far-out.

Review: Following their beguiling "Signals" EP, enigmatic Primer returns to Rarefied with four more trips. With its desert sand storm textures and staccato vocal clip, "Nowhere And Nothing" isn't quite as bleak as it sounds, it's actually super warm and intense. The same can be said for "Drowned"; while sombre and introspective, the dub sounds and elements are buoyant and eventually rise into something pretty hopeful after the second drop. "Tal (part 2)" provides closure for those of us who are still nursing sore minds from "Tal (part 1)" on Primer's debut release as it uses the same mystic elements to wind down the chaos into a subtle woozy brew. Speaking of woozy, "I Had A Faraway Dream" brings us back home with a beautifully sleepy harp, stumbling kicks and a vocal that seems to melt into itself. Singular. No one's doing it like Primer.

Review: It's been a while since we last spotted French deepsmith Argo on Encrypted but the timing is perfect for a return as he eases us into 2019 with dreamy allure. Following his "Daredevil" EP on Artikal late last year we're once again enshrouded in somnambulant sonics; "Astro Dub" is all about the twinkled arpeggio while "LNTC" takes a sombre stroll between some tightly weaved 808 hi-hat rolls. "Your Steps" closes with more of a nod to the dancefloor, with its rolling break and warping bassline whipping up a Swamp 83 style technoid edge. Step in time.

Review: Well Rounded Dubs chomp into 2019 with their first (300 limited) 12" of the year. And once again it's a showcase of next level talent as Foamplate and Sibla step up to the series. Foamplate (who was on the label launch release) returns with a vibrant, fuzzy piece of funk laden with trippy metallic harmonics and some serious off-grid funk in the drums. Sibla takes the flip with a stuttering slice of strange textures, harp plucks, crashing drums and so much sub you'll want to shave some off the record and bake with it. Well good mate.

Review: Vinyl-only business from the FKOF crew: Sheffield's Dark Harmonics and Subaltern's Otz team up for the incendiary "Voidwalker". Creepier than a graveyard picnic, it's all in the strange misty textures and powerful sense of tension before the flabbiest of subs kick in and the fun begins. Remix wise J:Kenzo does them proud with a similarly tense twist that's based around hard swaggering kicks and more eerie and bad dream textures. Elsewhere Dark Harmonics throws down a crucial solo. Brilliantly entitled "Fucking Spiders", it's an outstanding piece of 23rd century funk with all the right room and gloom we've come to expect from him. Creepy crawly.

Review: Up there with Swindle and Joker, dubstep's funkiest OG Silkie returns to Deep Medi with three more sublime grooves. Broken, cheery, just a little cheeky and swooning with switches, each of these cuts rattles and bashes with Silkie's signature west- coast-meets-UKG-in-a-long-dark-Croydon-tunnel melting pot: "Impervious" flips from orchestral epic to dreamy flutters before dropping into 80s horn funk with mischief while "Reevea" is Silkie in classic "Poltergeist" mode. Finally "Egyptian March" is straight out of Indiana Jones. A jittering snake charmer that has you going from nought to rolling under stone doors and grabbing your hat in 10 seconds. Silkie you absolute don.

Review: The original enfant terrible of the bass music world marks his second long player for 4AD with a sprawling opus of more than 30 skits and skirmishes daubed in his trademark colourful sonic scrawl. There is plenty here that reminds you of the early days of the producer's emergence when dubstep was a younger beast, from the spacious "Horrid" to the measured arpeggios of "Pray For Me", but you'll also find more intricate musings such as the dynamic and dramatic "Memories". Hype abounds on the creepy Funky of "VI-XI", while "Overdose" launches enthusiastically into a jungle tear out. At any given turn, you'll find yourself surprised, lurched from a serene mood into a manic one, only to be tempered again. There's a staggering range of ideas and styles to comprehend here, but would you want it any other way from one of electronic music's most outspoken upstarts?

Review: Version time: Innamind look back over the vaults and pick two of their many cult subversive tracks and hand them over to two of the modern game's most distinctive craftsmen for remix duties. The results speak for themselves as Egoless charges up LAS' "Uuha" with a whole new layer of organic instrumental funk while Foamplate flips Ago's "Why Won't You" into much starker pastures, injecting the already eerie skanker with stacks more space. Don't sleep on this.

Review: It's 2019 and Chestplate bossman Distance is well and truly woke. Dropping his first officials since his outing on J:Kenzo's Artikal last spring, the whole four tracker is a pungent trip back to the stinker golden age. Rough funk, distorted and tailored strictly to kick the living peanuts out of the crowd, each cut is Distance doing what he does best. From the psychedelic dirge of "Awaken" right through to the orchestral darkness of "Settling Scores", Distance isn't mucking around here. Neither should you.

Review: Don't be fooled by the title; this ain't no sampler from Skeppy's fantastic debut album Enjoy This Trip, these are two fresh new tracks that remind us the Exit artist depths and versatility. His first 140 jams in a while, "Paper House" shudders under the weight of DRS's crystaline poetry while "Nebula" shoots us to the edge of the sub bass cosmos on a rocket made of spacious, skippy beats and shows us no way of returning home. It's the trip that keeps on giving...

Review: Peng Sound revisit their highly sought after debut release. Just shy of two years old, it still rattles and hums with authentic dub warmth and drama. Gorgon Sound's original bubbles with bouncy heat as the bass modulations spring off the double-up kicks. Dubkasm's version is equally alluring as we're invited into a much wider space where guitar shots and other melodic elements are entwined into the mix. One timeless composition, two killer versions, if you weren't lucky enough to grab this first time round, you know what to do!

Review: Recovering from the damage caused by Caspa's "Gutter Riddim" earlier this year, Youngsta's Sentry returns with a rightfully-hyped newcomer Gramz. Following a strong range of flips and self-releases, here we find the UK talent in full vinyl mode with two ridiculously on-point 140 jams. "Dip Dip Potato Chip" is every bit as tasty and filling as it sounds. Trippy, slurring and woozier than a disgraced celeb, this one sucks you right in and doesn't even bother to chew you up; it just swallows you whole. "Illa" takes the freakiness to even more refreshingly vital levels with its pitched ghetto vocals and drill-like snares. As with all previous Sentry releases, this is nothing short of essential.

Review: Croatia's Ognjen Zecevic, otherise known as Egoless, has been absolutely smashing over the last three years, with releases for imprints like ZamZam Records and Deep Medi Music instilling his sound at the top of the contemporary bass game. To that point, here he is on Youngsta's Sentry Records, home to producers like dBridge, Caspa and Gramz - so you know the quality is on point. The title tune "Decolonize" is an Eastern riddim, mashing up tough dub-steps with flutes and chimes from the Levant; "Global" keeps that narrative going with some Middle-Eastern melodies blended up and filtered-down into a heady, percussive groove for the ultimate mood-switcher.

Review: Dubzy's back with some biblical business, old testament style: "Wrath Of God" lives up to its name with swaggering near-operatic levels of theatre and drama and high levels of smite in the subs. "Dilemma" softens the vibe a little thanks to a set of Oriental pipes and a springy funk in the drums. Finally, "Fuck 'Em" shuts the EP down with a swampy 2007-style system shake. Loose percussion, big string strikes and a few surprises in bassline; the omnipotent Chad is in fine form here. Smiting ain't easy.

Review: Most recently spotted on Foundation Audio's digital arm collaborating on Krook's EP, LA's Tetrad switches lanes to the label's vinyl league with three outstanding system slugs. "Shakuhachi" sets the tone with a rounded unhurried bounce that ploughs though any scoops like lava. It's joined by the similarly flabby bass-slapped "Samos" where there's less of a bass melody but these epic trippy trails coming off each sub. Finally, "MIC" closes on a slightly cosmic-yet-barbed touch as dreamy arpeggios wrap around thick treacle subs and some dark politic messages. Serious bass integrity.

Review: There's no stopping this American trio right now; after a massive year of ugly thumpers on the likes of Dank & Dirty Dubz, Chestplate and Artikal, they return to DUPLOC for another EP, this time fully vinylised and loaded with two VIPs of their label debut last year. "Forest Temple" is a real foundation shaker where the subs do all the talking and the eerie textures ripple through the spaces while "Up Up" is just a straight up stinker with full wobbles and teeth gnashing filth. Flip for two crucial VIPs as "Verify Me" and "Yellow & Grey" are given the most dapper go-gullier-stripes you ever did hear. Sound as a pound.

Review: Bristol-based badman Borai has been quietly issuing some of the city's most immense club wreckers for many years now, sometimes in partnership with October, and sometimes flying solo (as on the crucial Anybody From London for Hotline Recordings). Here he's inaugurating Higher Level with some absolute dance slayers, kicking off with the mammoth pitched-down drum funk and gut-wrenching bass of "Razor" before switching stance for the dreamier but no less rowdy "Predators." Both cuts are a masterclass in classic breakbeat science, delivering the foundational UK sound with panache that sets these weapons far apart from the rest of the pack.

Review: Bleak Winter whip up another highly limited storm with this powerful 12 that combines two very different approaches to bass yet share a similar glacial spirit. Inyoka takes the A with two incredibly emotive trips; the brilliantly titled "Beryl" is a dreamy march through the thickest of snow while wrapped up in the cosiest roadman coat you've ever fleece-lined under the glaze of the northern lights while "Turbines" is a more poignant, turbulent flight back home. Flip for more of a concrete adventure as Korin Complex makes his grimey beats shiver with the jitters on "Interlinked" before icing you out with junglised two-step on "The Person You Might've Been". For added vinyl-only pleasure VGB shoves us in the deep freeze with his remix. Ain't no spring on the horizon.

Review: Emergent chameleons Letherette are making quite a splash following their initial appearances on Ho Tep and Brownswood, and they deliver their first EP for Ninja Tune with an assured tone to their hybrid sound. At times sounding positively housey and at others locked into a fractured kind of groove, the overwhelming feeling is one of savvy pop music that reaches for all the right kind of signifiers to hold weight with the underground without fearing to embrace song structures and brief moments of anthemic bombast. There is a largely downtempo feel to Featurette even when the tracks are a touch more lively, but it binds the EP together smartly to offer a cohesive group that appeal on many different levels.

Review: Dropping a searing double pack of 10" badness ahead of the forthcoming Angels & Devils album, The Bug is back in business with some apocalyptic gutter bass of the highest order. "Freakshow" matches the leering delivery of Danny Brown with the sinister croon of King Midas Sound's Kiki Hitomi over a horn-laden trap swagger to devastating effect. "Louder" pits Flowdan in the depths of a nauseating half-step march, while "Dirty" takes the London MC into a barrage of equally nerve-jangling drum rattles and alarm-clanging stabs. Long-time Bug collaborator Daddy Freddy rolls up his sleeves for "Kill Them", anchoring the dread stomp with a fearsome growl as anthemic as it is nihilistic.

Review: Confession time... Kaiju's slick, innovative consistency is translated into album form with a concept that actually works. Seven sins, seven tracks - each one resembling their title in one way or another. "Envy" sees Jack Gates pouring out his heart, "Greed" groans and croaks like the last man standing at a banquet battle while the gully-grunting "Pride" struts with its head held so high it's almost in the clouds. "Sloth", as you'd expect, is a much slower, spacier, deeper creeper with cavernous room around each percussive element while "Gluttony" shows off the duo's ability by squeezing in almost too many ideas and fresh textures. Finally, "Wrath" lashes out with hard-hitting snare vengeance and "Lust" brings the show to a sweet, soft-focus close with Riya and Total Science providing the perfect deep dream textures. Sinfully good.

Review: It seems fitting that the hundredth and final volume in the "FabricLive" mix series should also be its most hotly anticipated. Coming from heavyweight heroes Kode9 and Burial - whose previous back-to-back mix for Mary-Anne Hobbs' show eight years ago has reached near mythical status. The album is a wonderfully full-throttle and mixed-up affair, with the shadowy bass lieutenants giddily flitting between quick-fire sections focusing on South African gqom, footwork, Juke, vintage hardcore, early jungle and more contemporary dancefloor experimentalism, each broken up by typically blazed and paranoid ambient interludes and the occasional surprise selection. There's a lot going on throughout, but that only adds to the fun. In other words, it's a triumphant finale to a landmark mix series.

Review: Of all the artists past and present who claim to let their music do their talking for them, Burial is one of the elite band of whom this truly is the case. In fact, so reluctant is he to engage with the cult-of-personality hoopla that surrounds almost every modern producer and musician of merit, that he remains a genuine recluse; he has never appeared live, only one obliquely-angled publicity photograph is known to exist, and the number of interviews he has given can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Yet despite this, his music speaks loud and wide, and the world has been listening ever since his 'South London Boroughs' EP debut on Hyperdub in March 2005. His eponymous album, which began life as a low-key release in May 2006, is now widely regarded as the benchmark release of the ever-widening dubstep genre, picking up unanimous critical acclaim along the way, and ending the year heavily featured in many 'best of' polls. Now Burial returns with 'Untrue', a new record of weird soul music, which lovingly processes spectral female voices into vaporised R&B and smudged 2step garage. Vocal lines are blurred, smeared, pitched up pitched down and pitch bent until their content is cast adrift from their original context and they whisper their saccharin sweet nothings into the void. The album continues with the debut's crackle-drenched yearning and bustling syncopations, haunted by the ghosts of rave, but also reveals some new Burial treats with a more glowing, upbeat energy. Kicking off with the skittering 2step syncopations and vocal science of 'Archangel', 'Near Dark' and 'Ghost Hardware', before long it descends into a space of radiant divas and ambience. Where 'Burial' first was humid, suffocating and unrelentingly sad, 'Untrue' is less sunless. Many of the tracks are so sweet, they become toxic, underscored by the almost geological rumbles of growling basslines. Unlike the overpoweringly melancholic prevailing mood of before, Burial's sound is now better defined as a downcast euphoria typified by the epic, muted optimism of the album's last track 'Raver'. Forget central heating the radioactivity of this album is all that you'll need to keep you warm this winter. 'Untrue' is available as full 13 track digipack CD, including recent underground hit 'Ghost Hardware', and 9 track DJ friendly double vinyl set, from which some of the beatless pieces have been edited.

Review: This first album on Kode9's deeply-respected Hyperdub label comes from the mysterious Burial, who carves out a sound which sends the dormant slinky syncopations of UK garage, via radio interference, into a padded cell of cushioned, muffled bass, passing through clouds of Pole's dense crackle dub en route. 'Burial' - the album - explores a tangential, parallel dimension of the growing dubstep ouevre, using sounds set in a near-future South London submerged underwater. You can never tell if the crackle is the burning static off pirate radio transmissions, or the tropical downpour of the city outside, taking its loud-quiet aesthetic neither from the latest digital glitch software nor a mere nostalgia for vinyl's intrinsic physicality. In their sometimes suffocating melancholy, most of these tracks seem to yearn for drowned lovers, as haunted echoed voices breeze in and out, on roads to and from other times. The smouldering desire of 'Distant Lights' is cooled only by the percussive ice-sharp slicing of blades and jets of hot air blowing from the bass. Listen also for a fleeting appearance from Hyperdub's resident vocalist, the Spaceape, unravelling his cryptobiography. 'Burial' is a renegade signal from other frequencies, a tidal wave of seductive low-impact noise submerging all but the crispest syncopations, and is well on course to be universally welcomed as the standard-bearer for creative vision built upon the grime and dubstep blueprint.

Review: Woof! Hyperdub bring together two of the most recognisable and enigmatic artists of recent times on this 10", as Zomby and Burial square down ahead of the former's new album for the label. Zomby's Ultra LP is undoubtedly one of this year's most anticipated albums and "Sweetz" suggests it may be a very moody affair indeed. Whilst rooted in UK dance, Zomby and Burial do look elsewhere for inspiration too. Just under seven minutes long, "Sweetz" veers through various sub-heavy soundscapes with intermittent rhythmic patters and a distinctive looped vocal sample whose pitch changes with dramatic effect.

Review: Longstanding Innamind representative Mikael sparks up our inner freaks once more with two system-primed sub smashers. "Wildfire" see-saws on a pivot-like atonal riff over a lolloping sub/kick flow and big splash rimshots while "Lintumies" is a spacier jam where stretched outer-space aesthetics play games with your head and the bass keeps kicking you out of orbit.

Review: Epoch returns! And he's packing some of his rarest steez since "Soundboy Abduction". All air raid sirens, trippy widescreen basses and a scientific spoken word all comprise to form a brutal wall of sound slo-mo drama on "V1" while "Roacher" bubbles with a technoid sense of playfulness and unpredictability. Finally "Rib Cage" takes the surreal sensations to even higher levels with a melting intro, nagging hi-end percussion and the strangest harmonic strings ever to grace an Innamind release. Truly singular.

Review: Following up great releases by EVA808, Epoch and V.I.V.E.K, American bass imprint Innamind returns with some deep dubstep - courtesy of Utrecht's Tomas Roels, better known to us as TMSV. Moody low-end pulsations permeate the powerful opener "No Sleep", while "Temple" gets off on a more uplifting vibe with its ethereal pads, creative rhythm arrangements and hypnotic melodies. Lastly on the flip, "Maniac Mansion" proudly wears its U.K. influence on its sleeve. Following up great releases for labels like Cosmic Bridge. Artikal Music and Black Box, Roels is, well - on a roll!