今週

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: 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: Repress alert! Wednesday: Hyperdub announce a new three track release from enigmatic producer Burial - his first solo work in four years. Thursday: Said records arrive on Juno doorstep. How's that for service (and secrecy)! The news came just a matter of days after the producer's collaboration with Radiohead front man Thom Yorke and Four Tet arrived on record shelves across the UK and promptly sold out amidst a frenzy of hype. There are three new tracks on offer here, namely "Street Halo", "NYC" and "Stolen Dog". First up "Street Halo" showcases the classic Burial sound; subterranean bass gurgles, trademark clicking beats and barely-there vocal snatches. A sweet childlike vocal pervades the sonic mist on "NYC" while "Stolen Dog" closes out with ethereal vocal harmonies buried deep beneath vinyl crackle. Stunning.

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: Following last summer's scorching anonymous first CV white label "War / Fan Dem Off", RDG's label returns with another mysterious never-to-be-repressed doublet. Fittingly cold and wintry for this time of year, both "Sly" and the much-coveted "Teardrop" are taken to glacial places. Deep, smoky, spacious and foggy, both cuts burn long smouldering fires both at home and in the dance. Grab them while they're ice cold.

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: Hyperdub kick off the vinyl side to their ten-year celebrations with this weighty four-tracker from some of the leading lights from the label's story. Mala is in a strident mood with "Expected, Level 10" carrying through that extra touch of melody from the Mala In Cuba LP. DVA cuts loose with the leftfield scattershot groove of "Technical Difficulties", reveling in tonal experimentation and jagged rhythmic flair to a stunning end. Still locked into the sci-fi trap tangent that characterised Severant, Kuedo turns out the haunting "Mtzpn" and Helix pops up for a remix of Kode9's "Xingfu Lu" that strips down to bare essentials with a little starlit soul rubbed into the framework.

Review: Since 2015, deep dubstep explorer Corin Bornoff AKA Karma has put out one EP a year. This year's was delayed, it seems, but it has finally appeared - just as 2018 is wheezing its' last, scarlet-faced breath. Opener "Bluefoot" was arguably worth the wait, though. Built around a skewed but still stepping, reggae-fired dubstep "ridim", the track shuffles along on a wave of hushed shakers, ultra-deep sub-bass and intergalactic dub-wise effects. Over on the flipside, "Choose Life" is surprisingly positive, with Bornoff wrapping ear-catching synthesizer melodies, alien electronics and UK steppas style bass around a punchy drum track.

Review: Since delivering his first 12" four years ago, Theo Bennett AKA Sepia has become once of the most celebrated producers on the deep dubstep underground, delivering singles for Gourmet Beats and Infernal Sounds - amongst others - that push the style's accepted boundaries. His first Wheel and Deal outing ticks similar boxes. He begins by encasing crunchy beats and heavy sub-bass in chiming music box melodies on "Last Chance Saloon", before doffing a cap to grime on the intoxicating, near tropical heaviness of "Kira". Turn to side B for inspired Koma collaboration "Embalment" - a stuttering, shuffling treat rich in atmospheric chords and ear-pleasing melodies - and the more dub-wise pressure of closer "Frequency".

Review: Taking a savage bite out of 2018 before January is even out, Artikal don J:Kenzo strides forth with two show-stopping cuts. "Shark Eye" has all the killer instinct coded deep into sprung drums and restrained but ominous bass growls. "Asutoraru" on the flip drives with more of an upbeat feel thanks to its rolling percussion, staccato riff and pneumatic, soul-flattening kicks. We're going to need a bigger sub.

Review: Following his recent collaboration with Sepia on Wheel & Deal, Chonkmob's Koma gets busy on Encrypted with three dastardly originals. "Moonlight" is murky and all fogged out with devilish tendencies while "Uncle Sullivan" takes a trappist approach with its lavish lead strikes creating drama on every up and down. "Deep In The Crease" (with Dalek One) is all about the hip hop breaks, gritty sleaze, off beat samples and sweary cockney. Need a more trippiness? Jump on Murk's remix.

Review: For the latest sub-heavy missive on his fast-rising Navy Cut label, Jack Sparrow has turned to his friend in bass, Fiend - and the shadowy producer has duly delivered. The real killer - to our ears, at least - is A-side "Jah Hear Me", an ultra-deep affair where reggae vocal samples echo across the soundscape and creepy ambient chords slowly pulse above a hushed rhythm track and rubling, super-low sub-bass. It's one that we could see appealing just as much to ambient astronaughts and deep dubstep heads. Over on side B, "Missing Link" offers up a sturdier rhythm, heavier bass, alien effects and a serious deep space atmosphere.

Review: Two sides, two vibes: Well Rounded Dubs get real with two refreshingly singular pieces of 140 innovation. Yung Jackson builds on his releases on the likes of Dub Tribu and Under Surveillance with this long awaited industrial strength minimal swagger jam. Sounding like it was made in the hottest part of a metal foundry while wearing an iron shirt, it's the sound of a new generation artist making a serious statement of intent. Flip for more forthright soundsystem fury from Denver's Ether as he gets his grunge on with a rough, sludgy bass riff that scuffs the beats, the gutter, its knuckles and your own purdy little features. Limited to the not-so-well-rounded amount of 297 copies, sleeping on this is not recommended.

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: 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: 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: 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!

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: 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: 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: 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: Two massive Pinch classics taken on by the mighty Kromestar; need we say more? Pinch's 2010 speaker shredder "The Boxer" gets an absolute fouling with epic distortion on the bass and swaggering drums. It's so heavy it's been on dub for at least two years. Flip for Kromestar's take on Pinch's 2011 Deep Medi murker "Swish" as it's given a bullet proof suit of armour ready for any militant war scenario. Both absolutely destroy the dance.

Review: Torsten Profrock’s T++ project has continually spread its wings since conception in 2005. Championed by fans of techno, dubstep, experimental and drum & bass alike, his latest EP for Honest Jons (and rumoured to be his last under this monkier) showcases the amalgamation of styles and sounds that has earnt the German such a far reaching fanbase.



If it does prove to be the final T++ release ever, then the alias will have left us with the most expressive and energetic of his works. Adding a real sense of personality, Profrock unearthed a handful of samples of the singer and ndingidi player Ssekinomu, recorded in East Africa in the 1930s and 40s in the label’s vaults for this release. Skilfully, the producer works these snippets into the complex rhythm structures, giving his music a human touch that has never been seen before. Profrock looks to the radical fringe of UK garage for the snapping 2 step vibe in these rhythms that remain central to all four tracks on the EP. This results in a clutch of tracks that take on an immensely tribal and subconsciously innate feel. They morph new structures from the forms of 2 step, techno and drum & bass around which Profrock wraps twisted FX and weighty sub bass to create one whole, throbbing organism.
So with quite possibly his final release, T++ leaves us, rather fittingly, with a record that sounds at once both ancient and modern. It has a totally unique tone, like a form of tribal language that can only speak to and be understood by today’s culture through these sub-heavy, atmospheric sounds.

Review: It was only a matter of time before Boofy landed on Pinch's Tectonic. Both Bristol. Both magnetised to the fringes. Both responsible for untold low end hurters like these... "Back In The Box" is a heavy pressure cut with pneumatic kicks and ominous stretched brass textures while "Herbie" is a highly strung piece that's stripped back to just drums, subs and an eerie faltering lead and builds and twists when you least expect it. Flip for the churchy chords and rattled percussion of "In My Head" before "Perfunktion" closes with jazzier chords and a stone cold steppy kick arrangement. Classic Boofs.

Review: Indigo and Synkro return for Houndstooth duty under the Akkord guise, with HTH020 their first material for the fabric-affiliated label since last year's roundly praised debut album. That long player was perhaps the most confident display of the sound design-heavy production style the Mancunian pair had been narrowing in on since their cultish white label bow, but this new 12" finds them adding whole new levels of darkness to the mix. Moody low end sits deep in the channels; given the space to breath by Akkord who seem careful to restrict their drum samples to the barest of appearances at times (see "Gravure") whilst those out there that enjoyed the Millie + Andrea album for Modern Love will probably gravitate towards "Continuum" which showcases a murky, raw take on breakbeat-led jungle.

Review: You sometimes get the feeling Tectonic boss Rob 'Pinch' Ellis finds particular enjoyment in the process of collaboration, be it with younger artists such as Roska and Mumdance or more iconic names like Shackleton and Adrian Sherwood. The latter dub pioneer first hooked up with Pinch for a brace of excellent 12"s on his long running On U Sound label back in 2013, and the clear studio chemistry shown there made the notion of a joint LP a near certainty. Late Night Endless sees ten tracks from Sherwood's deep discography deconstructed by the pair, with the resultant fusion a deft balance of Pinch's urban paranoia and Sherwood's interstellar dub. On tracks like "Gimme Some More (Tight Like That)" and "Different Eyes" it's displayed with devastating mastery!

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: Last spotted on Boka shotting "22 Ounces", Chad Dubz now returns to find us all fully fledged "Addicts" awaiting our next Bristol fix. The lead track is at once bouncy and subdued with a heavy pressure and filter on the riff fluctuations. "Out Of Here" gets us on the first train to rehab city, its tricky percussive rolls and deep space slowly cleansing our souls before "Teachings In Wub" diverts us with scholarly wobble-whipped subterfuge. The final stage of our program takes us deep into the wilderness to find ourselves; "Iggy's Castle" leaves us on a mystic finale, all cobweb sonics and strange shadows. Moreish.