New releases last two weeks: Deep Dubstep

Review: A heavyweight ensemble of drum & bass minds take on Break's most recent set of productions, pushing them deeper into system territory. The Bristol veteran revisits his own material alongside a dream team of remixers including Skeptical, Calyx, Mefjus and The Sauce, each adding distinct bite and tension to the originals. Alibi's flip of 'Headshot' is all murky propulsion and low-end snap, while L-Side draws out the yearning in 'Gunshot Love' with Liam Bailey's vocal laid over thick, heaving bass pressure. Charli Brix floats through Break's own icy rework of 'Lost', while SP:MC cuts through the dense, noir-streaked paranoia of Skeptical's 'Box Clever' edit. Clean but rough, emotive yet primed for damage, this is high-grade d&b from a cross-generational cast who know exactly how to thread vocals and subs without compromise.

Review: Cologne-based Belfast boy Dominick Martin has been delivering deliciously good albums as Calibre for the best part of a quarter of a century, frequently departing from his trademark drum & bass sound to showcase his love of other sub-heavy and mind-bending sounds such as dub techno, ambient and dubstep. On Little Foot, his first album in two years and 22nd in total, he leans into this considered eclecticism. For proof, compare and contrast the tactile and dreamy 4/4 dub of 'Blame Dub', the dub-wise junglist bruk-up of 'Special', the mutant two-step delight of 'Ukrained', the angularm, sub-heavy UK techno of 'Threadvare' and the Mark Ernestus style spaced-out dub techno of 'Choosing Beggar'. And that's just CD1. A genuine triumphant from one of bass culture's most distinctive musical voices.

Review: The debut full-length from Bangladeshi-Canadian producer Raf Reza fuses UK soundsystem culture with his own deep-rooted Bangladeshi influences. Raised in Tokyo and musically shaped in Toronto and Glasgow, Reza blends dub, bleep, breaks and jungle with Baul music samples and vintage Bengali film soundtracks here and it results in a brilliantly original style. The album explores sonic futurism and asks how diasporic and Dhaka-based electronic cultures can intersect. With a unique mix of field recordings, semi-obscured monologues and dubwise textures, Reza's identity-driven narrative comes to life and cements him as a bold, genre-bending voice in cultural fusion and sound.