The dubstep crossover continues…
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[6.44]
Katherine St Asaph: This generation’s “Unfinished Sympathy”. Listen to the normal version first. Pretty great, yes? Now shove it to the back of your head and pull up this one. It’s like it’s been singed by lightning, every single note electrified. The percussion’s been yanked to the front, the difference between glancing over a perfect stranger from across the room and pulling him into a corner. Toward the end, the beats morph into gunshots randomly, trip over each other, ratatatatat faster and faster until they collapse and the air hangs still. The whole song is heightened in fact, Katy’s vocals more plaintive than ever and the background tense as a caught breath. Call it mixing if you insist; I call it human chemistry.
[10]
Pete Baran: It’s like a vignette version of “Inner City Life”, which is no bad thing as Goldie’s track was too sprawling. I only fear that the track in itself lacks a cohesive through line, but it’s a terrific bit of fun while it’s on.
[7]
Jer Fairall: Standard issue drum and bass with a singer that sounds a bit too excited for her sterile surroundings.
[4]
Martin Skidmore: Magnetic Man’s pointless gimmick is making dubstep with live instruments, but let’s not hold that against them. This is lively and almost lovely, and Katy’s slightly sharp high notes help to energise it. It stops and beeps at you occasionally, but mostly it got me moving — my favourite vocal dubstep number in a while, I think.
[8]
Jonathan Bogart: Look, if you’re going to use the “Amen” break you need to do something with it. I’m not even a beats guy and I know that much.
[4]
David Katz: It’s pop with genuine sonic ambition, its creators interested in blurring boundaries between genres and prodding at our expectations. Excuse me for the enthusiast-dilettante dubstep references here: it starts like a late 00s hyperdub single with its colourful synths and paranoid reserve, and then explodes into a crunching breakbeat the Prodigy would be proud of. And the ‘all I really know is’ chorus squares the difference between prime-Madge and dream-pop. Like the scenario of its title — fleeting attraction on the dancefloor — it slides into your evening’s listening with an uncanny allure.
[8]
Mallory O’Donnell: I like the basic architecture of this, the variance and sequence of its parts. But there’s something about the constituent elements themselves that’s so wan and uninterested in even their own goings-on. Something, something, something…
[5]
Josh Langhoff: The promising opening build, staccato stabs over long-note atmosphere, sounds like an attempt to conjure mysterious caverns of space in the manner of Faithless, but once Katy B comes in the mystery dissipates — poof! — and the sound becomes too streamlined and dry. Unfortunately, Ms. B’s tune can’t withstand the increased scrutiny.
[3]
Kat Stevens: The pub behind my house empties its glass bottles into the recycling bin with a hideous crash every night. During the day I hear my neighbours’ toddlers shrieking at each other and at night I hear exhausted buses wheezing up the A10. Local birdsong consists of ugly crow caws and rutting pigeons. At first I can’t quite grasp how a clear beautiful voice like Katy’s fits into this grim grey soundscape that spawned dubstep, full of chewing gum and fag ends and hard concrete edges to scrape your knees on. She’s not just a breath of fresh air, she’s a children’s environmental poster competition cliche: a single precious sapling growing in a crack in the pavement, surrounded by barbed wire factories pumping out noxious fumes and fascist propaganda. But plonk the same sapling into thriving woodland surroundings, and it ends up becoming an insignificant bramble waiting to be trodden on. Katy’s voice would be wasted on cutesy folk or suburban kitchen sink pop. Her pipes work their best magic when I’m tired and cold and the 149 is full of aggressive wankers eating smelly kebabs. With her help I can press my headphone buds deeper into my ears, stare out of the window and try and remember why I love living here so much.
[9]