Declaring a music genre dead is useless in its finality, for listeners know that genres and their conventions metamorphose. Dubstep originated as a chill, downtempo fusion of dub and two-step heard in any Skream, Benga, Rusko, Ital Tek, 2562, or Deadbeat release.
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Autechre has been pushing the boundaries with crafting bizarre sounds to engage us in new ways for over two decades. They’re essentially the godfathers of Intelligent Dance Music (IDM), an unfortunate moniker for their unique blend of abstract, provocative electronics. Their most successful experiments include the wonkiness of early-career “Squeller” (EP7, 1999), the spinning cans of “VI Scose Poise” (Confield, 2001), and the more recent dark banger “Treale” on Oversteps (2010).
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Starkey is a native Philadelphian who has been crafting dubstep/grime tracks for years. His first album, Ephemeral Exhibits (2008), was a revelation, blending dubstep with ambient and melodic electronics. Last year’s The Transponder Orchestra found him further stretching the boundaries between melodic synths and epic bass blasts.
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The universe began 13.8 billion years ago, in a trillion-trillionth of a second, with a horrendous explosion that created space and time itself, as well as everything we identify as our universe. It’s fitting that duo These Hidden Hands should evoke the creation of the universe with the start of their brilliantly epic second LP Vicarious Memories, since there is nothing more epic than the Big Bang.
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Ital Tek’s latest, Hollowed, is a stripped down, brooding ambient work, a gorgeous album that knows when to skitter, shimmer and simmer. The minimal percussion on most of the tracks is suppressed almost to the point of it being a creative restraint. Hollowed‘s use of strings is a thread throughout, giving the tracks a gravity that is at once cinematic and dystopian.
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Andy Stott‘s latest, Too Many Voices, could be the sonic story of a slow, solitary drive through quiet urban neighborhoods in the twilight hours. Voices‘ deep bass frequencies rattle the vehicle, the snares cracking from the speakers like bones breaking. These experimental dub techno tracks evoke an approaching apocalypse, but a human one, an emotional mushroom cloud masquerading as lounge music.
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Drumcorps‘ Falling Forward is the music of road rage on the Los Angeles freeway, disaffected teenagers grounded on Saturday night, backroom brawls among friends, and the album you blast when you’ve got a case of the Mondays. This music is extreme. On first listen, its chaotic noise makes no sense. Listen deeper though, and you’ll hear a controlled method to the madness keeping the beats tight, allowing you to at least nod your head in time while your brain turns to mush.
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The most common incarnation of punk, that of angry mohawked adolescents swinging guitars, isn’t the only one. In Aeternam Vale‘s Laurent Prot is one of the biggest “synth punks,” and now he’s dropped Pink Flamingos out on DEMENT3D, consisting of two hours of unreleased music from a vault of hundreds of tracks spanning three decades of prolific work.
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Senking is the master of the nasty bass groove. The Raster-Noton artist’s most intricate work involves creating tension between several layers of aggressive low frequencies woven together. Astonishingly, with that much low end, the sound never becomes muddied. His entire body of work explores this tension, but it’s best illustrated throughout Capsize Recovery.
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Okay: let’s start with the incomprehensible name. Set aside the fact that the vowelless mash of letters reaches the limits of unreadability, but try and read it anyway. What do you get? Maybe nothing. Now think back to your childhood, when neighborhood boys would sound off imitations of bombs blowing up, guns firing, missiles shooting across the sky.
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