sat 22/02/2025

dubstep

Mordant Mass, The Vortex

Nick Edwards aka Ekoplekz, creating abstract dub from the sound of surging electricity

Avant-garde art, by its very nature, always treads a fine line between the sublime and the ridiculous, and between entertainment and alienation. Thankfully this is something understood very well by the joint curators of Friday night's show at the...

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CD: James Blake - James Blake

James Blake, a blur of carefully crafted understatement

James Blake's "Limit to Your Love" was a bolt out of the blue at the end of last year, perhaps even a quantum leap in soul'n'bass culture in the same way that Massive Attack or Roni Size once were. This fact was swiftly acknowledged in various New...

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Singles & Downloads 9

Riz Ahmed: He was an MC long before film cameras fell in love with him

This month we have some unjustly hyped rubbish electro-pop, some unjustly ignored brilliant eletcro-pop, some postmodern retro-disco, some dubstep, some grime, some sampledelic New York punk, and, at the top of the pile, one of Britain's brightest...

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Gilles Peterson's Worldwide Awards 2011, Koko

Young avant-garde crooner James Blake: Not jazz, but well in Gilles Peterson's orbit

Club music has always been hard to keep track of, and never more so than in the current climate of constant genre meltdown and cross-fertilisation. Which is why the DJ's art is more important than ever, particularly in the case of scene...

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Year Out/Year In: Electronic Music Digs In and Spreads Out

2010 saw some major shifts stirring up the UK club music ecosystem and unleashing some fascinating hybrids and variants of existing sounds out into the wild. As the hefty bass of dubstep muscled its way firmly into the heart of the mainstream,...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Producer/DJ Richie Hawtin

Minimal techno kingpin Richie Hawtin deals with those allegations of over-seriousness head on

It's only after hanging up the Skype connection to Richie Hawtin that I realise how effective a branding exercise he has made the interview. In conversation the English-born, Canadian-raised Berlin resident is charming and smart, but listening...

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Singles & Downloads 8

Pet Shop Boys: Still looking and sounding sharp after all these years

Two lots of abiding electropop royalty, classicist Slovenian techno, an indie band who play electronica, a hyper-synthetic R&B superstar, Irish-Mancunian disco-boogie, "buzzsaw fuzz" meets Phil Spector, Paris-Bordeaux-Alabama-Berlin rock chaos,...

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Magnetic Man, Heaven

Magnetic Man's LED cage

Rave music, in its many ever-mutating forms, is now more than a generation into its existence. Many, possibly most, of the crowd pushing into Heaven, under Charing Cross station, weren't even born when acid house fully hit the UK in 1988, but none...

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Ninja Tune XX, Ewer Street Carpark

Its authenticity was helped no end by a torrential downpour leaking through the brickwork and creating puddles in various parts of the uneven floor – and by the rousing mix of hyperkinetic Nineties jungle beats cut up with seemingly humanly...

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New Music CDs Round-Up 13

New generation Ninja Tune artist Andreya Triana

This month's extraordinary, rich and strange releases are led by Ninja Tune's 20th-anniversary album of new tunes and remixes ("hard to know when to stop throwing the compliments"), Robert Plant's new band ("puts most vintage rockers to shame") and...

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Singles and Downloads 7

The recently peroxided Mark Ronson, uncertain yet as to whether blondes have more fun

Mark Ronson & The Business Intl, The Bike Song (Sony Music) There are ways and ways to make novelty retro-pop. Mark Ronson, for example, has absolutely nailed it here. This song, with its almost unbearably sunny Lovin' Spoonful-styled harmony...

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Dubstep: what lies beyond?

The compilation tries to traverse boundaries - but where are those boundaries?

Dubstep is everywhere – and if you will excuse a little self-promotion I have, in my small way, helped this state of affairs come about. The bass-heavy, rhythmically exploratory and very British electronic dance music genre has now – via Magnetic...

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