“Frankly I want hanky-panky if it’s skanky”, a wise man once said, so here’s the opening run-out from a label tweaking frequencies and formulae. J.me.J’s Gut Romper mixes dubstep’s robo-stepping with breaks’ synth racing spillage and is built on chords inducing an angelic uprising – when the beat drops out midway, there’s an exultant ambiguity caught between heavenly respite and temporarily hiding from the chaos. Thoughtful yet still complex, computer game-ready in taking from both 8-bit deadstock and high-spec thumb-swellers, while it won’t make stomachs churn, the Vancouver producer does have a digital sensitivity to his sound without the artisan’s right to reply.
Eager to branch out with a devil may care attitude to where the spanners land that Skanky Panky throw, leftfield hip-hop, cranked up by grouchy bass spasms and globe-spanning emcees ASM, is Fredo’s Ent Wot Yo doing a Freq Nasty-style step. Again, the agenda isn’t as clear cut as that, with interceptions of pitched up and heavily flanged soul and p-funk samples reinvesting an organic element, presumably which was what attracted Tru Thoughts into recently capturing Fredo’s signature. Bass and rhymes for the b-boys, the initiative wrestled away from them with a victorious brass neck.
Despite being brilliantly named, the works of experienced label head William Breakspear and SixAM are down the pecking order with breaks that are happy to drop off into second gear. Vowel Mouthed follows a crunk template of a jiggy bounce rounded on by synths programmed to slam into club walls like a rock star signing off by ploughing his guitar into the amps.
South African crew Mix n Blend tote thug rap samples and test out whether it’s possible to stay slippery round corners and exude a casual gangster’s roll while detonating dubstep power. The answer is they’d be really rubbish at playing hide and seek because of size blowing their cover, Get Crunk wit Jesus wiping out anyone and anything caught in its crosshairs with dead-souled calm to again show the label’s willingness to see what else can stick to the dubstep stencil.