Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 15/09/2003
Label: SUAD

There's been a loud rumble in the streets of London over the last fifteen years. A gnarly, low, bassy rumble - the kind that stimulates and threatens all at the same time.

It's caused by veteran inner city renegades PJ and Smiley - aka Shut Up And Dance - the authors of many a back-in-the-day rave classic and still a potent force on the underground club circuit.

Their subterranean shake is about to get louder as they prepare to drop their new long player, 'Reclaim The Streets'.

The title of the album and it's individual cuts - 'Riot!', Reclaim The Streets',' Release The Gimp', 'Anger Management', 'Eleven September', 'Arrest The President' and 'There's Evil Amongst Us' - indicate that the duo have not decided to soften their sound into sedate Sunday picnic fodder.

Indeed the title track (featuring ex-SUAD-member-turned-junglist DJ Hype) immediately shows the team haven't lost their touch at making right royal rollers, as it comes off all Body Rock style swing and blistering jungle juice.

The album unfolds steadily and massively to reveal their own unique take on the urban breakbeat continuum, swooping eloquently (and effectively) into hip hop, reggae, drum & bass, breakbeat and 2-step, even dipping into poignant computerised orchestral flourishes on the tribute song 'Eleven September'.

There is some soul - 'Heaven and Earth', 'Baby Mother Blues', 'Eleven September' - but it's mostly a brooding, narrative soul more in line with the urban vibe of the album than the shrill hands-in-the-air affairs of their garage peers.

As always, SUAD's music incorporates their own manifesto of disorder, anomie, angst and isolation in a mini-festival of urgent shouts, streetwise rhymes and incisive observations delivered to a backdrop of equally uncompromising urban beats.

Let the quake awake you...

    by Paul Sullivan