special friday reviews

After stumbling upon them, I feel compelled to give my thoughts on a recent batch of dubstep 12"s. Now here's an interesting phenomena! It reminds me of what I was doing with the more sinister sounding d&b records I got my hands on - and that was to pitch them way the fuck back to emphasize their creepy brooding potential. Of course the d&b heads thought I was off my rocker for doing that, but I really didn't care and it looks like I was on to something after all because now rekkids are being produced that way.

Dread D - Are 1/Invade 2 (black op's, jc44): A side has trashcan percussion & sludgy basslines. B-side has shaker sounding beats, with hollow reverby bass stabs.

Scuba - Timba/Sleepa (hotflush records, scuba001): A side is slow mo' fo' sho' with some high pitch squeaky noises, the bassline sounds just like it would if it were a 45 on 33. The b-side has more thuddy bouncy feel to the beats and a menacing synth line.

Dub Child - Take Me/Psycopath (storming productions, storm004): This is more along the lines of what I used to tinker with. A side has a traditional d&b structure to it, it just sounds pitched down. It has female singing & midway through we get some nice hoover sounds. B side features more of the same - hoovertronic punches and dark atmospherics. This isn't straight dubstep, more like d&b with dubstep tendencies.

Moving Ninja - shellcode/murky/lost tribe (tectonic, tec002): This is my fave of the batch. The A-side crawls at almost a downtempo/IDM-ish pace, real sparce. B1's percussion sounds like bamboo or wooden blocks with slippery bass lingering behind it. B2 is a bit livelier and has a real round sound to it.

-nephstep-