Album: Alley Cat - The Widow Project

If the names Pinch, Vex’d, Burial, Digital Mystikz, The Bug mean anything to you, stop reading now and buy or stream this album. Seriously, go. Go get it. That honestly is all you need to know: if you like the imperial phase when British dubstep was first establishing lasting artistic careers and extending its tendrils into the wider musical world – completely separately from its branching into a fizzy, EDM / rave form in big arenas – then you will love this record.

Which is not to say it’s a throwback. Alicia Bauer aka Alley Cat has been in the bass music realm for a long time – starting in drum’n’bass around the turn of the millennium, and through her Kokeshi label and work as an agent joining dots between different genres and subgenres as they’ve risen. All of this has clearly left her hunger for the new, and for the immediacy of impact of sound in the moment, undimmed – as you can instantly hear, every single sound, space and structure on this record is crafted not to sound like any particular influence, but in order to achieve that impact.

The overarching mood is monumental and eerie, like a vast haunted factory, the clangs and hisses of past industry echoing endlessly through the dark space. The rhythms are generally those of “half-step” dubstep, a 70bpm crawl that makes space for huge snares, but also allows fine lines of percussion and filtered breakbeats to snake round the basslines. And it connects back to older traditions – unsurprisingly to industrial music, but also to its first cousin, goth.

The latter is most obvious when the vocals of Johnette Napolitano of veteran gloom-rockers Concrete Blonde come in three of the 16 tracks, but it is also all-pervading as the album goes on – partly in specific guitar and synth motifs that rise through the mix, but also in an arch, mysterious musicality throughout. Most of all, though, this is soundsystem music. Every sound, whether from guitar, drum machine or abstract sample, is perfectly placed in space, and feels like an object you can walk around, apprehend, perhaps even touch. It’s incredible sound sculpture, crafted as a full album experience, and in these darker than dark times is quite the experience to hide in the shadows with.

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@joemuggs

Listen to "Post Script":