UK Garage is splintering into ever more narrow, 'dark' underground sub-genres as the majors continue to loose interest, the 'bouncement' frequencies of UK hip-hop artists are getting heavier and heavier and Dizzee Rascal is ready to blow with a sound that uses bass where the more conventional would opt for beats.
Berlin still emits a low electronic pulse somewhere between Jamaican dub as we know it and techno as it was defined in Detroit and dancehall is rougher and fresher than it has been in years. It's this backdrop that best introduces the latest album from sometime Techno Animal, Kevin Martin recording under his Bug moniker with the assistance of a motley bunch of ruffnecks, rastas and raggamuffins on hand to rinse things out.
'Pressure' brings together talents as diverse as New Flesh's Toastie Taylor with London poet and Attica Blues collaborator Roger Robinson and ragga veteran Daddy Freddy. Not on the same tracks, thankfully, but on a collection that runs from gentle electronic dub to punishing mutant dancehall techno. This album, on Aphex's Rephlex label here in the UK, has been licensed by Kid 606's Tigerbeat 6 label in the U.S. and delivers innovation on the level these kind of sponsors ought to guarantee.
'Politicians & Paedophiles' sets out a pretty uncompromising stall for the 11 tracks that follow it as Daddy Freddy fires incomprehensible political ire in all directions and the bass pounds in time to the dancehall piston. Incredibly, he's even more ferocious on 'Run The Place Red'. A hugely distorted Toastie Taylor turns basslines into cluster bombs on the elastic soundstystem mash up of 'Beats, Bombs, Bass, Weapons' whilst securing himself a dancehall career if he ever tires of New Flesh.
Relative light relief comes with Roger Robinson's spoken word contributions, even if Martin still manages to construct pretty seismic digital structures around his words. 'Executor' sounds like Linton Kwesi Johnson on a Kingston crack binge, 'Thief Of Dreams' and 'Living Dub' like a sexed up and stoned Basic Channel respectively.
Bass, then, is what it's all about - a fantastically pure expression of the power of the frequency to trigger response. Happily this album shuns the heard mentality of UK clubland's foremost bass scientists. Instead it proves a subsonic soundtrack for everyone from the breakbeat Garage heads to the techno boffins and, most importantly, the dancehall. Bass up, treble down.
