The
Hostage situation is this: with a
Lil John rhythm
tinkling in the background, '
Listen' pledges
agreement with
Redlight’s to-the-point polices with a grime-dubstep cyber
destroyer. Interspersed with the weirdly wonderful involvement of sugar plum
fairies, Hostage hangs out the window of a rough urban ride while involved in a
space shootout.
'Dutty Horn', of which
UK funky exclusively deals in, draws back an extra-large arrow of bass to carve
through the crowd with. All while the sound of a central locking device pipes
up in front of pseudo snake-charming – see, it’s not all the bottom end, the
ear-catching little bits of listenability help too. Locking onto a 4x4 riddim
would’ve been preferable, but the stop-start gives the ducking and ducking a
bit of cheekiness to the rudebwoy rise-up. '
Wot
U Call It' has another argument to its bow.
Bouncing heavily is weighty minimalist percolator '
Dreams', bashment that for all its dreamy
dub builds and breakdowns, tramples the ‘floor like a long jumper wearing
killer spikes going hard at the sand. It’s also another age-old victory of
tinny little riffs holding together bass to knock your head off. Moody rave
roll '
Desire' is all about old skool
vibin’, breaks in the best tradition of
Lennie De Ice and
Meat Beat Manifesto
while basslines are coughed up for some heavyweight amp-troubling, stirred
bunker-deep by a vow-keeping monastery
to be awestruck by and in fear of.
Round
about now there’s normally a cooling off period, but Hostage carries on
sticking up speakers with '
Razrr', stripping
back even further before sending out sticky distress signals clapped into
gnawing away at anything within biting distance. A payday of skin blistering
beats out of a paltry set-up. '
No Bitch
Equal' screws up the bass with the misfire of a black-market ray gun to
burst out over a fairly faithful 4x4 format ticking away with tininess on its
side, the spewing vocal chop giving this a rugged techno machismo not encountered previously, to complete six
of the best in shaking bass-heads inside the place.