Individual レコード& CD

Review: Dom Angas has come a long way from his Moving Shadow singularity 'Can't Punish Me', which soon saw(tooth) an enviable career in techstep well underway. The nominally double-taker artist now issues 'Reimagination', throwing back to another shadowgraph from the MS era, 'Imagination'. This tune appealed best to the dystopian rollage crowd: there's no drop, but rather a straight barrage of hyper-crunchy cybergoth Reesework and parched beats. His new 'Reimagination', from now, continues to channel the mood but this time with added hope and angelics, shortly before a forget-me-not VIP of the original track reveals a wicked Star Trek sampling darkside version: "There are times when I find myself transfixed by a shadow on the wall, or the splashing of water against a stone. The hours pass, the world around me drops away, replaced by worlds being created and destroyed by my imagination."

Review: Dom of Dom & Roland (Roland being a machine) has remained a drum and bass visionary since the mid -90s. He remains notably the only solo artist to have scored award-winning albums on both Metalheadz and Moving Shadow; in recent years, he's since gone on to record various full-length records, such as a recent album on Overshadow earlier this year. His collaborations range far and wide and have included the likes of Optical, Amon Tobin and more recently Noisia; though his outernational performance style has attracted many more such pioneers along the way, including the likes of Art of Noise, David Bowie, Laurent Garnier, Goldie and Clyde Stubblefield. Now delivering his first EP 'The Stormfront', we're met with a four-hit haul of stonking sound-crushes, future-bleak halftime hack n' slashers, from the opening meteorological portents of 'Stormy Waters' to the closing, impish weirdo snaggles of 'Hallucination'.

Review: Darkmaster was an early alias of the now esteemed Dom & Roland, and now, in the words of the artist, "that part of me now makes a comeback." This new EP contains a repress of one of the most sought-after tracks from the Darkmaster single, an unreleased amen version of the first ever Dom & Roland track on Moving Shadow, 'Other Planets', plus a remix of 'Intastella Jazz', featuring a much heavier bassline than the original. Assuming this isn't an intentional mistake, the opening track is like no other drum & bass track we've ever heard, blurring two distinct amen lines into a clustered antinomy of tempo and sense, while the inverse laxations, also sporting 'The Way You Feel', provide aural glimpses of the underside of the artist's duskier works.

Review: Following his latest album Against A Dark Background, the inimitable Dom & Roland continues to forge his own unique near-30 year path with the launch of a brand new label. Fittingly entitled Individual, it kicks off with two exceptional - not to mention uncompromising - cuts. 'Burn Bright' is your quintessential hardcore jungle d&b with big stabs, massive splashing cymbals and iced out atmospheres stretches over the top. 'Being' meanwhile is a hyper jazz jam with brutalist steppy drums, treacle subs and wild blasts of muted trumpet. Far out.

Review: More dark arts from the man and his machine; Dom & Roland tears 2025 a new one with four powerful drum & bass compositions. Provocative and unapologetic, 'Under The Spell' snaps the firmest of wands and does so for the best part of 10 minutes. A real hypnotic showdown. 'Re-Resistance' meanwhile takes us into much more industrial, abstract territories in a way that you might imagine Krust or Amit might. 'I'm Here To Stay' is a much more placid, spacious affair laced with lush pads and a smouldering vocal that induces euphoria at 50 paces. Complete with a tearing remix of 'The Storm', it's another essential 12" from one of d&b's most consistent artists.

Review: Dom & Roland's Industry set new standards when it was released on Moving Shadow in 1998. This was a vision of d&b as a cinematic vessel like never before, pushing the limits of sound design in a style which has been standard practice ever since. Steely and intense, it's as fresh and relevant now as it was when it first laid waste to the scene in a blizzard of industrial strength drums and dystopian moods. Newly remastered and now spread across five plates (compared to the still considerable four it originally arrived on), this is a landmark slice of drum & bass history given the ceremonious reappraisal it deserves.