MRK1 - X-Tatik/Moving Toad

When grime was a Rephlex banner still to be intercepted and overtaken by emcees, lord of the sub-low MRK1 marked his spot as the premier pre-dubstep hatchet man hired to colour livers a frightening shade of lily with his impossibly harrowing bassline plunges and sharp angles. To describe him as having lightened up in recent times is wholly inappropriate – he can’t do anything but harsh when riding with the Virus Syndicate – but with X-Tatik he’s following dubstep’s fundamental sawtooth line of wittering and withering bassline confrontation. Upholding customary dub precedents of bouncy stammers and effects and fanfares of a plastically upbeat nature, it’s a nippy scurrier whose intentions of vastness are a little undone by the manic chipping away at both bass and treble levels (which in fairness, will have been at the heart of a ton of dubstep records this year).

Hush your mouth though if underestimation of the man is being considered, as scarily more impressive is Moving Toad, which is more like the MRK1 surround sound storm-trooping of old. The DND-style bassline still cheeps like a budgie with verbal diarrhoea, but it’s skulking through the night under much more suspicious terms and conditions, half light-fingered thief in the night, half heavy-footed waver of good riddance. It fires like a light hand weapon that seems ineffective until its enduring burning sensation kicks in. Stirred into the mix are hi-hats set to a spec of shattered bones, between keys bearing a PPK mark of Morse Code, and the unerringly unnerving echo of samples and tics being sent spiralling downwards to a grave left to be long undiscovered.  All go to show that MRK1 remains someone you shouldn’t listen to alone in the dark.