BASS REVIEWS
OLI MARLOW, [email protected]
QUICKIES
Lockah
If Loving U Is Wrong, I Don’t
Want To Be Wrong
Donky Pitch
DJ Vague
In a weird way ‘If Loving U Is
Wrong…’ is exactly the type of thing
you’d expect from an artist who’s
gearing up for an album release:
it ably shows a diversity from his
previous material, whilst cementing
a very certain production sheen that
he’s made his own. ‘Ayyo Tricknology’
is again wantonly different, even from
the A-side, asking a few not-so-subtle
questions of the direction of that
forthcoming long-player.
Templar Sound
Mr Mitch
Things Next Door
7.0
The Room Where I Belong
Gobstopper
8.5
Crackazat
Candle Coast EP
Y
MONET!
SHO
Local Talk
8.0
Sure, there are points on his
‘Candle Coast EP’ where Ben
Jacobs sounds like a lot of
other producers making happy,
overtly musical 4/4, but then
there’s also ‘Dancrodile’ — a
guitar-flecked marimba-driven
funkster of a production that’s a
proven grey-London-morningpick-me-up. It’s the glaring
hit in the middle of a solid
three-tracker that just builds and
builds melodically to the point
where you can actually taste
the serotonin seeping into your
central nervous system.
JETS feat Jamie Lidell
Midas Touch
Leisure System
7.5
Thankfully, Machinedrum and Jimmy
Edgar (known collaboratively as
JETS) manage to properly harness
the strength of Jamie Lidell’s vocal
line without ever eclipsing it on
this vinyl-only drop. The original
track — one that previously opened
Machinedrum’s Essential Mix — ‘Midas
Touch’ is fraught with a sense of
space and driven by a simple boogie,
but Machinedrum’s version is a little
more crammed with shocks of colour,
his wedges of synth sitting clipped
between the vocal.
Mumdance
Springtime EP
Unknown to the Unknown
8.0
Turns out, there’s even more of a
sweetboy side to Jack Adams’ work
as Mumdance than his penchant for
shoegaze and structural grime would
have you believe. These two cuts for
the UTTU label rely on very different
things — ‘Springtime’ leans heavily
on layered warbling, low bit-rate,
almost skweee synthesisers, whilst
‘It’s Peak’ makes overwhelming use of
stabs and a big pounding kick drum
— delivering a hard-edged variation
on anything you might’ve been
expecting.
Buz Ludzha
Love Repetitive Rhythmics
All City
8.0
Recording here as Buz Ludzha, The
Cyclist’s debut drop for the All City
label dishes out two slices of the
type of scuzzed-up, rippling techno
we’ve come to expect after his album
dalliance on Leaving Records. A
little more linear than that material,
‘Rave With Love’ and ‘Basslines For
Death’ are hard-hitting, functional
tools. Their character lies primarily
in combustion, creating two shots
of exemplary, crunchy, gritty house
music.
Ratcatcher
Somehow/Motion
Peach
6.0
There’s definitely a time and a place
for lusciously produced, polite
house music but oddly enough,
sometimes the people you expect to
do something impressive with the
form just seem to conform instead.
There’s nothing drastically wrong
with ex-C.R.S.T member Ratcatcher’s
two original offerings here, it’s just
they’re so vividly overshadowed by
the drum work and melody of Leon
Vynehall and Benjamin Damage’s
remixes that it’s hard to really
embrace them properly.
For all this talk of the renaissance
of alien instrumental grime that’s
being flung around at the minute,
there’s not been a statement that’s
really encapsulated it as perfectly as
Mr Mitch does here on his latest fourtracker. Like Logos, he’s got a very
unique command of space, like Murlo
he’s got the earworm melodies, but
then Mitch has also got these moving
pieces like his digital funeral march,
‘The Lion, the Bitch & the Bordeaux’.
Porsche Trax
8.0
Some people seem able to
make any rushed session
sound like one of the most
vital things ever and that
fast and loose approach
pays dividends for Helix,
as his three-track 12” for
Templar Sound as DJ Vague
showcases.
Alis
Astro:dynamics
7.0
Three slices of slightly empirical drone and one super
delay-laden drum track
make up Alis’ long-awaited
debut on the gloriously
formed Astro:dynamics
label, ‘Things Next Door’.
Shabby and brittle to a
fault, it’s eerily reassuring.
Stenny
Eternal Restriction
7.0
More hammer and tong
monochrome techno from
the Ilian Tape camp is
always welcome, and these
three original tracks from
Stenny are no exception,
with the snatched snare
drums of ‘Boulders’ the
highlight.
Leyland Kirby
Breaks My Heart
Each Time
Apollo
7.5
As a patchwork of
internally comtemplative electronica, Leyland
Kirby’s work excels with
tracks called things like
‘Diminishing Emotion’
and ‘Breaks My Heart Each
Time’, built expertly out
of a delightfully corroded
sound palette; but as a
listen, it’s nothing if not
fractured.
QUICKIES
Gantz
Gobstopper Records
Deep Medi
Easily one of grime’s most
exciting producers, pushing
the boundaries with style
and confidence. Sick EP.
Spry Sinister
7.5
8.0
Madly syncopated dubstep
from the Turkish producer
will boggle and delight in
equal measures. Great to
Ed West
hear some experimentation Telephone Riddim
in these quarters!
Reggae Roast
7.0
Versa
Esoteric
Shanti Tone
8.0
Taking time out from
making angular electronica
cum techno garage hybrids
du jour, Versa starts a new
label for his love of dub.
Everything irie! Check.
Mr Mitch
Modern danceh