The EP opens in fine form with Default Drub: disco vocals riding a taut, springy bassline, smudged synths that rise and descend amid a roiling, growling cloud of bit-degeneration. Then everything gives way to a gargantuan fuzzy bassline that thumps you left and right like a sock full of sand. Abstract Now is typically light-footed and profuse with the breakbeat chops and percussion, slewing the rhythm around that mighty bass.

The tone changes completely with EVRYTHNG. A tattoo of heavily gated kicks sets the rhythm and hems it in at the same time, underpinned by shuffled hihats. Rasps of distortion wrap themselves around the beat, scraped this way and that under the blade of a filter sweep; they rise in volume, like jets of exhaust escaping as the powerful engine warms up. Then the tune enters its groove, and there’s no arguing with it: an utterly compelling bassline in lockstep with those kicks, while two snares play off each other. Its components—industrial FX, lo-fi drums, and that bassline—are simple on paper, but the whole is so much more than the sum of its parts. The soul of the free party, and the dark hedonism of late-capitalist counter-cultural rave, live in this tune. Anthem.

A combination of carnivalesque energy and monumental beats in Forever recalls the vibe of Abstract Now’s previous Inna Riddim outing as half of Hypercolour. A ravey chord progression, rising out of muffling filters to a sparkling clarity, ignites the track as a massive chunk of breakbeat and a seismic bassline erupt into the tune. The disco vocals can’t get a purchase as the ground breaks up; we hear fragmented snippets before they’re swallowed up and disappear among the twizzling funky keys.

The Way It Is comes out of left-field to end the EP on a hallucinatory note. Eerie organ and sporadic percussion set the tone for a splash-reverb handclap and one of Abstract Now’s signature disco vocal samples. But then the tune spirals into its mesmeric centre, the first sounds disintegrating as a stereoscopic dot-painting of hundreds of sonic droplets swirl and descend around the listener. A scrap of rap vocals, chopped up juke-style, are pitch-bent and triggered against and around the beat, giving the final disorienting touch to this hall of mirrors.

Trap Shore Ha is charged with rising tension: masked dancers in a face-off across a moonlit ballroom, a crowd circling around them as they drop into dramatic stances. The staccato shouts of the antagonists echo and are absorbed into a mesmerisingly repeated vocal refrain, while delayed synth chords form a refrain on the off-beat that give this tune a subliminal depth of rhythm. Then there’s a militant snare rattle, and the trap-style beat drops in a flurry of skittering hats and a skewed kick-drum tattoo against a tactile field of sub bass. Ritual confrontation on the dancefloor.

The Vocal VIP sticks to the same vibe but gives it an extended workout, complicating the original’s sparse- ness with additional layers of chopped and pitch-bent vocals, for a fuller sound. But the Ill Crosby Grime VIP takes the track in an entirely different direction rhythmically: the original’s kick-drum orientation is exchanged for an emphasis on lead stabs and snares, and a brutally front-footed grime-style rhythm.

The pace jumps up to 160BPM with the final two tracks. Little Dripper, an atmospheric, dubbed-out take on juke, is an after-party on the beach, taking the rave out to the ‘shore’ of the EP’s title, with spacey endorphin-rush pads and subtle allusions to the sea, pebbles rushing back as a wave goes out, and then crashing in again on the drop—is that a seagull at the end of the breakdown? It’s all about lying back in the sand with a piña colada and shades on as the sun comes up, and letting the sprightly kick drum and rapid-fire hihats do the moves for you.

Dat Shit Cray ends the EP on a darker note, locking its complex, brittle drum patterns in a tight rotation around a central core of whirling vocal samples, repeating and varying up the pitch with an obsessive quality—voices in the head—while the carousel of FX and keys spins with a tight intensity. Blindfold and spun around, when the drums fall away, the claustrophobic trail of delays are no help in re-orienting yourself in this hurricane of a tune. This is the other face of the shore, evoking the chaos of the storm-hit east coast: to be caught between two mighty forces of nature.

Wherever you are in the world it’s time to tun up di bass! If you’re ready for some bump & grind business we’ve got a BIG mix to share with you courtesy of our L.A. connection Mike G to celebrate his release on Inna Riddim: The Shore EP [ INNAR015 ]

 

‘Mataglap‘ is chillingly filmic: walking down a dimly-lit corridor in an abandoned asylum, shapes lurking in the doorways, a bassline unfurling like dry ice across the floor, echoes of percussion from distant chambers, while clipped snares echo in deserted halls. A muted and delayed vibraphone picks out a eerily descending note sequence, while snipped vocals stutter from a malfunctioning announcement system; is that a second pair of foot- steps, a menacing figure in your peripheral vision? Pure cinematic atmosphere.

‘Abandoned‘ projects Yikes’ spectral style onto a much bigger canvas: a giant warehouse or, better, a great ocean liner – not wrecked like the Titanic but intact and mysteriously vacated like the Marie Celeste, left to steam ahead under its own power, undergirded by massive subsonic propulsion interlocking with a kick drum pounding out a broken techno-dubstep 4/4 rhythm, surging forward through an ocean of reverb, while heavily processed keys play a fragmented lament for the vessel’s lonely cybernetic soul. Half-submerged vocal samples echo for a moment and then are smudged out. Distortion isn’t used here in the game of midrange one-upmanship that has poisoned main- stream dubstep, but as a deliberate and delicate effect that offsets the crispness of the other sounds.

‘Knockout‘ is the most energetically upfront track on the EP: a halfstep rattles from a juddering kick to a snare that hasn’t quite faded away when the next one replaces it. The rasp of a sawtooth bassline is the writhing spine on which the track’s nervous system is centred. Yikes has sacrificed none of the attention to detail or atmospheric tension that mark his tracks out; and the ghosts are still present in the machine; drips from leaking faucets, and whispers of shakuhachi. But the title hasn’t been chosen for nothing: this is the one that’ll slot most naturally into a set for the dubstep dancefloor.

‘Hurt‘ soars skyward on a vast membrane of unbroken bass pressure, undulating arrhythmically, punctuated by the snapping syncopation and plosive hits of a future-garage beat. After a whispered coda in the middle of the tune, little swirls of sound like a melancholy serenade across the darkened floor of a derelict arcade from one broken coin-op to another, blinking their lights with a little stray electric current. Then the bass spirals back, phas- ing into time with the beat and then out again. It’s expansive yet delicate; intimate, distant and full of regret.

Amid today’s enormous volume of disposable tunes, exciting for a couple of weeks and then forgotten, ‘Dub Skies‘ is a gem in the slag heap: it’s a keeper, the kind of track you’ll still be playing years down the line, one that’s situated in the longue durée, not the bandwagon of the month. Part of the reason for that is its simultaneous evocation of several layers of electronic musical history: the warm, expansive synths that open the tune and on which it coasts forward, enfold the listener even as they open up a sense of vast space, reaching back beyond the beginnings of drum&bass, before jungle, even before rave, to the early synth pioneers; while the drums, a chopped break overlaid by funky, staccato percussion, are infused with the rolling power of late-90s drum&bass heyday; but the crisp production values are totally contemporary, and the overall effect is timeless. Push up your lighter!

‘Send for the New Gun‘ demands manoeuvres on the dancefloor to match its militancy, from the the taut, snapping snare to the rattling, irresistibly body-shaking tom roll. Reverb-drenched soundsystem FX and classic soundboy vocal samples set the tone: it’s a battlefield out there, subs descending like lobbed mortar shells, while the dancehall laser cuts through like a sniper. The anarchic energy at the heart of this tune remains in tension with the tight control that prevents its contrapuntal elements from spinning it into chaos. That tension is what gives it its irrepressible vitality and its atmosphere of stealth and danger, as the drums beat like rain on the window of a taxi speeding down city streets at 3am. Proper bruckout biz.