Pulled Apart By Horses – Tough Love

Transgressive

“When I was young I was a dick. Nothing changes!” cries Tom Hudson on ‘Wolf Hand’, perhaps a bit of a harsh self-critique from the Pulled Apart By Horses singer, but with that kind of conviction, who are we to argue?

The Leeds noiseniks have returned from their extensive travels to grace fans with another album of rambunctious post-hardcore. And this time, they’ve only gone and done the requisite follow-up-self-made-debut-with-proper-studio-album-produced-by-someone-who’s-worked-with-the-Pixies-and-Foo-Fighters type affair. Not that producer Gil Norton has taken over here — the tracks remain short and sweet, in a hit-it-and-quit-it style that gets its point across before vanishing in a puff of dry ice.

Lead single ‘V.E.N.O.M’ is quality stuff, complete with eyes-down, heads-nodding riffs and a memorable-if-incoherent hook. Shades of the recently reformed At the Drive In permeate Tough Love, and none more so than on its fiery opener.

Throughout, Hudson’s vocals jump from the screams of D.C. hardcore to straining Cobain-isms (‘Give Me a Reason’ certainly has a Bleach-era Nirvana something about it), adding yet more dynamism to already sparky tracks. Bass player Rob Lee (not the former Charlton and Newcastle midfield general) and lead guitarist James Brown (not the late Godfather of Soul… we think) play off each other with a precision surely built from time on the road, and it’s their interplay that informs many of Tough Love’s better moments.

For a band known for their explosively volatile live shows, Pulled Apart by Horses do a reasonably decent job of transferring that energy to tape. ‘Bromance Ain’t Dead’ invokes The MC5 at their riotous best, while ‘Night Of The Living (I’m Scared Of People)’’s syncopated chorus throws some disco rhythms into the mix, before breaking down into an unnerving section of creeping tom rolls and single note guitar wails, crashing back into the hook before Vincent Price’s imminent monologue can get a foot in the creaking door.

A cogent 33 minutes of no-filler riffs and closely structured arrangements, Tough Love is progressive but never prog; certainly more coherent than the band’s previous effort. The humorous and bizarre track names may have disappeared (there’s no ‘I Punched A Lion In The Throat’ or ‘E=MC Hammer’ equivalents here), but there are still enough of the playful elements that endeared fans to that debut to keep them on board. It may be the album to make PABH admirers out of those not already on the bus, but its tighter productionand playing will irk the ‘purists’ who will forever claim the rougher edges of the band’s debut to be their pinnacle. But fuck the purists.

Read this review in context over at THE STOOL PIGEON

Lapalux – When You’re Gone

Brainfeeder

            Last we heard from Stuart Howard – April’s fantastic Many Face Out of Focus EP – the Essex-based producer was carefully honing his blurred, distant and sonically rich beat style for Pictures Music. In the intervening months, Howard has seen his Lapalux project take flight, touching down in the far-flung yet none-more-appropriate LA home of the infamous Brainfeeder label. Surrounded by like-minded souls and healthy sources of influence, Howard’s first release for the imprint, the seven-track-strong When You’re Gone EP, is an impressive way to make an introduction.

            Opener ‘102 of Introduction’ has more than a hint of the crackle and jerk of its Brainfeeder home, soft keys and Howard’s own strained vocals joined by a mesh of jazz samples, while Vocalist PY’s contributions to ‘Moments’ begin as the track’s focus, before getting chewed up and spat out by the skittering, erratic beats Howard constructs around it. It’s the EP’s most disjointed, awe-inspiring production – complex and mutating, but never bewildering.

            One of the most endearing traits of the Lapalux sound is its ability to absorb a range of production styles and create a wholly unique account of their strengths. ‘Gone’ has elements of Clams Casino’s lethargic, syrupy ‘trap beats’ – huge synths and metallic claps nailing down melancholic samples at a snail’s pace – while ‘Yellow 90’s’ lifts the pace and tone, a Roger Troutman vocoder line snaking through some twisted yet up-tempo hip-hop. Some of the stylistic intricacies of ‘Moments’ make a reappearance here, demonstrating the skill and craftsmanship that so initially impressed the Brainfeeder camp.

            ‘Gutter Glitter’ has been doing the blog rounds for a couple of weeks already – a worthy calling card for When You’re Gone – and ‘Face Down, Eyes Shut’ bookends the EP with a return to the tranquil themes of the opener, Howard’s voice drifting in long, distant layers over white noise and ambient pads. The Lapalux – Brainfeeder link up is a formidable prospect, and hopefully one that will produce quality like this for years to come.

Read this review in context over at HYPONIK

Portico Quartet (L to R): Jack Wyllie, Keir Vine, Duncan Bellamy, Milo Fitzpatrick

“Who said a funk band can’t play rock?” queried Funkadelic’s George Clinton in the 1978 song of the same name. While he may have been bemoaning the pigeonholing of his band as exclusively a funk outfit (perhaps conveniently overlooking the group’s name), in the same song Clinton also asks “who said a jazz band can’t play dance music?” And now, 34 years later, another band is asking the same question.

To be fair, theirs is not an all-out rejection of a genre they are unquestionably grounded in, more a reasonable request not to be judged by its boundaries, for London’s Portico Quartet bring so much more to the table than jazz. The group established their sound from days spent busking on the South Bank — through debut album Knee Deep In The North Sea’s Cinematic Orchestra-inflected instrumentals, and its follow up Isla’s development of the same — and are now incorporating electronic elements into their music.

“Electronic music is a little less dogmatic now,” explains Keir Vine when we meet up with the group in a Dalston café. “Which I think is why you can be free to do whatever the fuck you want.”

It’s a bold move for a band that had, until now, built their identity on a keen sense of melody and arrangement, as well as the unique tones of the ‘hang’ — a tuned percussion instrument that the group use to good effect as a textural layer. Not that they’ve abandoned it in any way.

“We’ve reinvented the hang quite a lot, because we’ve resampled it and pitched it and pulled it around,” says drummer Duncan Bellamy.

Vine agrees. “Yeah, the sub-bass you can generate from shifting it down a couple of octaves is wicked. So we’ve got it all over: melodic, bass, textural…we just need to put it through a vocoder next!”

Despite the experimentation, one listen to their imminent third, self-titled, album proves that the group are skilled enough to know when to reel it in if it’s in detriment to the track. Longer, noodlier cuts such as ‘Rubidium’ and ‘City of Glass’ are balanced out by the Bonobo-type groove of ‘Ruins’, or a refined turn from vocalist Cornelia on the elegant ‘Steepless’. The Swedish singer was an ideal fit for Portico Quartet’s first non-instrumental foray, and the process was a natural one.

Ruins

“It was a very basic sketch that we sent to her”, admits Bellamy. “But because she’s a friend, we trusted her, I suppose. She did her thing, we didn’t interfere.”

The band uploaded elements of the track for a remix competition on their website, a gauntlet taken up to interesting effect by a number of fans.

“It’s quite a good insight into the way a lot of our listeners hear the music”, bass player Milo Fitzpatrick explains. “Sometimes they’ll hear a drum beat, or a piano loop, or a high synth line that’s usually supposed to be in the background of the music, they hear that as the most prominent part, and decipher that in interesting ways.”

Good-natured and humorous, the group talk excitedly of an upcoming tour. It’s a rarity that four individuals who spend so much time together display no obvious friction, especially when considering that Bellamy, Fitzpatrick and saxophonist Jack Wyllie all used to share a house (along with blue-eyed soul boy Jamie Woon).

“Yeeeah” starts Wyllie, hesitantly, when asked about the period. “It was a bit intense, I think. Do you know what I mean?”

Was Woon an influence on the electronic side of things?

“He used to stand just outside the door of our practice room,” jokes Fitzpatrick, affecting an impression of the singer: “I need some ideas, guys!”

Bellamy chips in: “Yeah, like “Jamie, turn your recorder off! Jamie, turn that microphone off!””

“But no, we owe Jamie quite a lot. He was our technological guinea pig,” concedes Fitzpatrick. “We used to nick his stuff, and if we liked it, then we would get it!”

The relationship has also stretched to collaboration, with Woon contributing to a remix of a track called ‘Coy Carp’ for an upcoming EP. Other contemporary influences are discussed, such as Oneohtrix Point Never, Grouper, and Detroit house man Theo Parrish, and the band seem keen to emphasise their position outside the orthodox jazz realm.

“People that aren’t in to jazz call us jazz, and people that are in to jazz definitely don’t call us jazz”, explains Vine, referring to the characters the group have encountered at the stranger festivals of central Germany and parts of Switzerland.

“They’re a much older demographic,” Wyllie reasons. “We’ll be playing our electronic influenced stuff, and there’ll be someone else with a Zimmer frame singing bop!”

Surely that’s a collaboration waiting to happen?

Vine laughs at the suggestion. “Yeah, don’t get me wrong, the next album’s brewing and it’s looking pretty good!”

Read this interview in context over at The Stool Pigeon

Porcelain Raft – Strange Weekend

Secretly Canadian

There’s no escaping it: it’s 2012, and we are living in a post-chillwave society. We all suffered its infectious smog of synths; its occasional gem and its never-ending knock-offs; its knowing glances towards ‘70s AOR and over-abuse of tape compression; and we all survived. Yet now we must deal with its aftermath, and, straight off the bat for the New Year, here’s Porcelain Raft.

Mauro Remiddi’s one-man band project may be familiar to those who got hold of 2010 blog favourite ‘Tip of Your Tongue’ (endearingly phrased “teep of your tonne” in Remiddi’s pan-European accent), and now Porcelain Raft return with a full-length debut that pulls from the hundreds of demos and travel-inspired ditties penned by its creator, whittling them down into a lean 35 minutes entitled Strange Weekend.

The Porcelain Raft vibe is definitively airy (indeed Air-y on occasion). Remiddi’s androgynous Elizabeth Fraser-type vocal style seems intentionally detached and off on travels of its own, while sepia toned arrangements swim beneath it. We’re definitely dealing with the ‘dream-pop’ (bleurgh) end of the chillwave spectrum, which is a shame, because there are some pretty decent tunes hidden under the reverb.

There is certainly a wide variety of range here in song writing approach, from pleasant acoustic strum (‘Shapeless & Gone’, ‘Put me to Sleep’) to peppy electro-pop (‘Is It Too Deep for You?’). ‘Backwords’ cranks up the sentimental schmaltz levels, revisited on closer ‘The Way In’, but it’s the pastiche collage of ‘The End of Silence’ that really impresses. Emotive washes of vocal sit resplendently atop a mid-tempo Spector girl group beat; the Cocteau Twins returning once again to cast their influence over everything in-between.

As alluded to above, the Italian-born Remiddi is well travelled, and the sense of movement on Strange Weekend is strong from the off: this is music to listen to while gazing from a train window. He plays on the emotion of motion, without the usual signifiers of fast tempos or pulsing, driving rhythms. Opener ‘Drifting in and Out’ is perhaps the best example of this; phasing in like a horizon coming into view and referring – lyrically and musically – to escape and the freedom afforded by constant movement.

Remiddi has more to offer than the average reverb-laden bedroom artist, and tracks like ‘Picture’ – by far the catchiest thing here – prove he has a more than decent pop song in him if he could only tone down the washed out production style of Washed Out et al. Strange Weekend is an adequate stopgap in the meantime.

Read this review in context over at THE STOOL PIGEON

If you didn’t already know, François Marry is a French ex-pat with a cutesy accent and an ear for a bit of esoteric yet essentially quaint indie, while his Atlas Mountains are an ever-changing group of musicians that flesh out his distinctive ideas with interesting arrangements and instrumentation. It’s hardly surprising, then, that the group would have past associations with the King Creosote-centric Fence collective, who released Marry’s third LP Plaine Inondable a couple of years ago. Now with Domino, little has changed with Marry’s delicate, occasionally touching style.

Although a fully certified Bristolian, Marry took his band back to his home town of Saintes, close to La Rochelle in southwest France, to do the whole recording-in-a-church thing for E Volo Love. The real Atlas Mountains may be a range in the north of Africa, but it’s the rhythmic highlife/juju guitar work of the French colonial west of the continent that informs some of the tracks here. This is most clear on opener ‘Les Plus Beaux’, one of the stronger cuts on the album, Marry perhaps unwisely playing his trump card from the off. The track pairs a rolling guitar figure — as much Graceland as it is King Sunny Ade — with an affecting, harmonised chorus.

On hearing ‘Les Plus Beaux’ (and the affecting stomp of following track ‘Muddy Heart’), it comes as no surprise that Jean-Paul Romann, a big player in the Tinariwen projects, is in control of production duties for E Volo Love.

‘Edge of Town’ slinks along with a yacht-funk groove and tuned wooden percussion, while ‘City Kiss’ picks up the pace with some driving guitar lines and tales of early morning bedrooms with curtains not yet drawn from the night before.

Marry certainly has a lot to offer with his music, but too often falls short of the mark. Most rough edges are coated in a thick, syrupy layer of twee: clear and clipped French or polite English vocals, often indefensibly quaint lyrical themes, a propensity for AOR grooves (see ‘Slow Love’ for an example of all three). Marry’s voice, meanwhile, relies heavily on a tone of childlike innocence that some may warm to, but others may not be able to get around in order to enjoy the often intricate and confidently composed music behind it.

That said, sometimes things click, as with the ghostly harmonies on early release ‘Royen’, or ‘Buried Treasures’, whose lamenting vocal recalls Bradford Cox’s work as Atlas Sound (Coincidence? Probably).

Despite only inconsistent flashes of real quality, E Volo Love is more rhythmically alive than Plaine Inondable’s listless plod, and perhaps Marry’s most accomplished work to date.

Read this review in context over at THE STOOL PIGEON

Michael Kiwanuka – Home Again EP

Polite laughter; the clink of a wine glass. You’re at a dinner party. Hugh Fearnley & Whittingstall’s latest evangelical series about vegetarianism has meant that you’re currently trying to work out how best to approach your polenta soufflé. More wine will help. The conversation has turned to Clarkson’s latest claim that the whole of East Anglia is sinking due to immigration levels, and you start to tune into the gentle strumming that’s been sonically wallpapering the evening. If it’s 2012, chances are that it’s Michael Kiwanuka – mainly because the London singer-songwriter has just topped the BBC’s ‘Sound of Dinner Parties and Adverts for Emotional Dramas 2012’ poll, an annual industry pat-on-the-back whose alumni include Corinne Bailey Rae, Keane and Ellie Goulding.

Kiwanuka was a safe choice for the Beeb, as his is an inoffensive sound that could easily be sold to the gazillions that bought former winner Adele’s ‘21’ last year (runner up Frank Ocean’s Odd Future connections and third-placed Azealia Banks’ odes to cunnilingus were perhaps a little too risqué for the corporation).

But cattiness and cheap shots aside, Kiwanuka isn’t entirely undeserving of the praise. Creeping on to the radar last year with ‘Tell Me a Tale’ – a track with all the compelling urgency of Terry Callier at his melancholic best – the Londoner looked to have set his stall out in esoteric psyche-folk, with the help of live-and-loose production work from Paul Butler of The Bees. However, the accompanying EP and its follow up ‘I’m Getting Ready’ headed directly for the middle of the road, where Kiwanuka appears to have remained a traffic hazard ever since.

Unfortunately, ‘Home Again’ doesn’t look to be the EP to change that state of affairs. The centrepiece title track is a more-than-pleasant Ben Harper rewrite complete with tapping foot and a soothing, yearning melody. That Kiwanuka leaves himself so open to comparison in both style and performance to a (fairly narrow) range of artists – from the aforementioned Harper to the wet blanket tones of James Morrison and Paulo Nutini – yet still has enough about him to catch the ear adds further frustration to the apparent direction he seems intent on taking his talent.

‘They Say I’m Doing Just Fine’ melodically intones Dylan’s ‘I Shall Be Released’ over a lifeless arrangement, while ‘Now I’m Seeing’ is disappointingly forgettable. That there is nothing here as urgent and compelling as ‘Tell Me a Tale’ is disappointing, but Kiwanuka is certainly worth keeping half an eye on over the following months.

Back at the dinner party, and someone has put David Gray on. It’s time to make excuses and stumble to the bus stop.

Read this review in context over at THE STOOL PIGEON

Dance music may be one of the foremost areas of musical progression around, but reverence is constantly being paid to its past: from drawing on its influences, to remixing its classics. So when a collection of “lost” and forgotten tracks by one of the genre’s consistent innovators reappears after 15-or-so years (on DAT tapes labelled ‘1995-1998’), such a discovery should be treated as folklore come to life. Indiana Jones had his Holy Grail, Francis Bacon had Atlantis, and now d’n’b fans have ‘Back On Time’: a collection of mid-‘90s work by legendary beat maestro Luke Vibert under his Plug alias.

The first thing that hits you about ‘Back On Time’ is how fresh the tracks sound, despite some of them being a staggering 17 years old. (Actually, when you consider who’s behind them, it’s probably less surprising). The cold synth work of ‘Scar City’ hints at later Vibert works ‘YosepH’ and ‘Lover’s Acid’, but it’s this track’s Detroit techno vocal samples and jazz-inflected keys that set the tone for the following cuts. ‘Feeling So Special’ has a liquid feel, reminiscent of what the likes of London Electricity and Aquasky were doing around that time, while the cut-and-paste dialogue of ‘Come On My Skeleton’ displays Vibert’s eternal humour and playful nature.

The middle trio of ‘A Quick Plug For A New Slot’, ‘Mind Bending’ and the title track delve deeper into Vibert’s creative crates, with the former’s Amen break twists and the latter’s liberal scattering of percussion and metallic bass hits belying the complexity that runs through his back catalogue. There are mellower moments (‘Yes Man’) and seven-minute-plus slow builders (closer ‘Flight 78’), all of which show range, yet the domination of Aphex Twin/Squarepusher-type insanity of tracks like ‘Drum N Bass’ removes this set from the reaches of the club and into the headphones, where it delights and amazes. Let’s hope Vibert doesn’t leave it another 2 decades before pulling out some more hidden gems.

Read this review in context over at HYPONIK

Following on from 20-11, here be the top 10…

10. The War On Drugs – Slave Ambient

Beautifully languid Americana from Philly’s finest.

The War on Drugs – Brothers (Slave Ambient)

9. Evenings – Lately

Some ambient instrumental genius discovered over at Evening’s Bandcamp page.

Evenings – [Lately] See You Soon (Lately)

8. James Blake – James Blake

The much-lauded, self-titled debut from Blake deserved its plaudits.

James Blake – The Wilhelm Scream (James Blake)

Soft Powers – Outlandish Scandals

Brilliantly creative and esoteric rock from the outlandishly productive Soft Powers

Soft Powers – 1,300 Decibels (Outlandish Scandals)

6. Emika – Emika

One-woman producer/singer Emika created one of the year’s most forward-thinking bass music albums.

Emika – Count Backwards (Emika)

5. Summer Camp – Welcome to Condale

London duo combine pastiche with a sixth sense for melody, while proving themselves pretty handy live too

Summer Camp – Down (Welcome to Condale)

4. Pinch & Shackleton – Pinch & Shackleton

Some exquisitely composed and ambitious bass music from the two masters of the genre.

Pinch & Shackleton – Boracay Drift (Pinch & Shackleton)

3. Shabazz Palaces – Black Up

By far the best hip-hop album of the year, Black Up is dark, brooding and oozing effortless originality.

Shabazz Palaces – Recollections of the Wraith (Black Up)

2. Balam Acab – Wander/Wonder

Ethereal, ice-cold and majestic stuff from the Tri-Angle Records man with the visual nature.

Balam Acab – Apart (Wander/Wonder)

1. Kurt Vile – Smoke Ring for my Halo

Essentially Eclectic’s love affair with Kurt Vile is no secret, from tumbling superlatives about live performances to a more than positive review for Smoke Ring for my Halo. It’s no surprise then that the long-haired Philadelphia man tops the tree in our round-up of 2011.

Kurt Vile – Runner Ups (Smoke Ring for my Halo)

Kurt Vile – Society Is My Friend (Smoke Ring for my Halo)

It’s list time all over the world once again, and Essentially Eclectic neither sees itself above them nor can resist the chance to share its own. Last year we went for an ambitious top 40 songs of 2010, so this year we’re concentrating on the long players – 20 of them to be precise. Here’s numbers 20-11 (with a track from each). The top ten to follow over the coming week…

20. Jonti – Twirligig

Some delightfully bizarre production trickery from the Stones Throw man. Colourful, playful, delightful.

Jonti – Cyclic Love (Twirligig)

19. Gil Scott-Heron & Jamie xx – We’re New Here

Scott-Heron’s sad passing this year was marked poignantly by this Jamie xx reworking of his final word, I’m New Here. Also check out a Gil Scott-Heron minimix we did back in May…

Gil Scott-Heron & Jamie xx – The Crutch (We’re New Here)

18. Teebs – Collections 01

The former Flying Lotus apprentice moves out from behind his master’s shadow with this fine collection of neck-snapping beats.

Teebs – LSP featuring Austin Peralta (Collections 01)

17. Nicolas Jaar – Space is Only Noise

Elements of trip-hop, electronica and a healthy dose of musique concrete went into Jaar’s impressive full length debut.

Also check out this video/short film for the track ‘Keep me There’, directed by Lucas Duchemin…

Nicolas Jaar – Colomb (Space is Only Noise)

16. tUnE-yArDs – w h o k i l l

Merrill Garbus’ wonderfully weird world is given album form on the bizarre and incredibly creative w h o k i l l.

tUnE-yArDs – Es-So (w h o k i l l)

15. Tycho – Dive

Scott Hansen’s warming Boards of Canada-esque synth textures are put to good use on Dive, his latest full length as Tycho. Also check out Hansen’s immaculately kept photo and music blog.

Tycho – Elegy (Dive)

14. Gardens & Villa – Gardens & Villa

Santa Barbara group Gardens & Villa arrived in the summer with a unique sound and a handful of great songs that make up their self-titled debut.

Gardens & Villa – Black Hills (Gardens & Villa)

13. Bjork – Biophilia

Essentially Eclectic’s tendency for a bit of Bjork love is no secret, so it’s no surprise that her adventurous latest Biophilia makes the list. The album came complete with a set of apps for each track based on the scientific content, but it’s the music itself that interests us.

Bjork – Thunderbolt (Biophilia)

12. Ghostpoet – Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam

Obaro Ejimiwe delivered a refreshing take on UK hip-hop with his Ghostpoet debut.

Ghostpoet – Us Against Whatever Ever (Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam)

11. Cults – Cults

Mixing Spector girl-group aesthetics with incessantly catchy tunes (and an almost unhealthy amount of glockenspiel), Cults’ debut produced the (cringe) “feel good hit of the summer” (cringe) with ‘Go Outside’.

Cults – Go Outside (Cults)

As a year that saw the 10th anniversary of the crucial FWD>> club night – one of the genre’s original breeding grounds – 2011 seems as better time as any to take stock of dubstep’s growth and progress by evaluating its current state, and looking to where it might go from here. In the last ten years, the genre has made stars of some of its earlier innovators; seen its influence spread globally; won both critical and commercial acclaim; and made bass addicts of countless fans who continue to show reverence to its culture and history as it matures. Just to note: it could be reductive to use the term dubstep when describing its present state due to the way the genre has split and diffracted, and the catchall term “bass music” is perhaps more useful as a reference; allowing deeper analysis of the various alternative styles on which to draw that producers have available to them.

Under this umbrella description are a growing number of artists that use dubstep as one of the many compositional tools at their disposal, and 2011 has seen a further continuation of bass music’s fascinating creative possibilities. Having permeated the charts in a commercial and garishly polished package (as so much underground music eventually does), dubstep’s pioneers were left free to experiment, evolve, and continue to perpetuate forward motion, and some of the year’s best releases serve as audio brochures for quite how much the music has developed and where it could go from here.

As a primary example, we have the stunning self-titled debut from Bristol-raised, Berlin-based singer/producer Emika. Cramming everything from dark, brooding synth-pop, to hard and metallic grime tones, to deep and shuddering dubstep productions into 12 consistent and challenging tracks, the Native Instruments sound designer even touches on her classical piano training for the romantic miniature of closer ‘Credit Theme’. The result is breath taking, and exposes every facet of Emika’s Bristol background (the tail-end of trip-hop was obviously a big influence, as was time spent with Peverelist and the rest of the Punch Drunk stable) as much as the current osmosis of minimal Berlin techno she now enjoys. If Emika’s literal and stylistic voice represents dubstep’s future, it’s in good hands.

Some of those that have been immersed in bass music’s deeper reaches for some time now also returned in 2011 for another rewrite of the rules. Pinch & Shackleton, two of sub-bass led musics most respected practitioners, joined forces to produce a spectacular inversion of Shackleton’s Skull Disco sound with another of this year’s self-titled albums. ‘Pinch & Shackleton’ is terrifying in both mood and intricacy; its spook conjured from cavernous reverbs, quivering bass and carefully manipulated tones and samples. Loops take a back seat, as the pair layer mutating percussive ideas and eastern instruments into somehow dense-yet-infinitely-spacious constructs of sound, even at one point setting a preaching vocal sample into phase with itself to demented effect. The release acts as one of the clearest demonstrations yet as to how vast bass music’s possibilities are, and, along with Zomby (who’s ‘Dedication’ album from this year shares Pinch & Shackleton’s ghostly undertones), the pair guide the way for those producers looking to branch out from the more garish, club-orientated end of the bass music spectrum.

Vocalised ‘pop-step’ took on a new level of sophistication this year too, represented in different ways by SBTRKT’s self-titled ‘SBTRKT’ and Katy B’s ‘On a Mission’. Both these releases (as with the Emika album mentioned above) showed that the classic verse-chorus structure could be utilised within the genre: proof that a good hook works just as well over the pulsating bass of the former’s Little Dragon-featuring ‘Wildfire’ as it does for ABBA’s entire back catalogue. ‘On A Mission’ places Katy B into a long-exercised tradition; heading from the underground to the clubs in a way not too dissimilar to how sometime collaborator Ms Dynamite did with garage before her, while SBTRKT augmented his highly considered productions with vocals, touring the tracks with Sampha in an impressive live show.

The exact genre of James Blake’s debut full-length is a point of contentious debate – especially in its differences to the brilliantly twisted instrumentals of his earlier EPs – but only the true purists would deny that the rumbling sub-frequencies and imposingly slow tempos owe some debt to dubstep’s imperious wobble (I personally hear an innovative yet entirely un-dubstep variation on the singer-songwriter tradition), hopefully seeing a quick disappearance of the cringe worthy ‘blub-step’ tag.

There was even room this year for an EP from the genre’s most esoteric member, Burial, who’s style is so distinctive that it sits in its own little corner, quietly peddling its yearning muffle in a way that consistently takes the breath away. Burial has long recognised dubstep’s endless potential for conjuring moods, and ‘Street Halo’ proved that his unique sound is still without equal.

So dubstep, and bass music in general is in prime health, safe in its position as a forerunner of musical innovation. It may have become unrecognisable from its dub/2-step crossover beginnings, its borders stretched and constantly tested (the 8-bit beeps of Rustie’s ‘Glass Swords’ and Kode9 & Spaceape’s smoked out monster ‘Black Sun’ would seem far removed from the genre to dubstep’s earlier creators), leaving nothing but anticipation for the fruits of its next ten years.

Read this review in context over at HYPONIK