(05.01.07) Much anticipated first album from Distance, and it’s probably the darkest product coming out from the dubstep suburbs. Allegedly, Distance has his musical roots deep down in metal instead of dub and jungle like the others players from the scene, and you can distinctly hear this influence throughout My Demons.
The drums (on My Demons) are very organic, there are no synthetic beats, they don’t give the usual drum-machine feeling, and the basslines are arranged much like distorted guitar riffs, you can hear it from the start in “Night Vision” or in the already classic “Traffic,” where you are almost forced to air guitar the entire tracks. Like in the case of Vex’d, a sudden comparison to Scorn springs to mind: slow tempo, rarefied beats, swarms of bass frequencies, hypnotic vibes… these are all common elements, what distinguishes Distance’s sound from the Vex’d duo is that you won’t hear all those industrial rhythmic distortions. One interesting feature is instead the use of repeated vocal snippets as hooks, and “Weigh Down” shows this technique in full effect, your attention is instantly magnetized by those two looped muffled words. “Ska” is another killer tune, it has nothing in common with ska music, and instead relies on an abrasive synth that guarantees serious head-banging, “Fractured” sounds like the very meaning of the word stepper, with its wobbly bassline locked to a snappy beat, and “Tuning” explicitly suggest to tune your woofers to cope with the amount of bass packed in only four minutes. To me the perfect track on My Demons is “Confined,” because it summarizes all the goodness found in such a great record, the rhythm gives the impression of a live drummer on-stage, the bassline is raw, gritty and changes every ten seconds and finally the horn sample make the perfect link with 15 years of jungle. The icing on the cake comes with the stunning photos used for the artwork, unreal urban landscapes tweaked by this guy, Keith Kin Yan – check him at overshadowed.com.
My Demons is out now on Planet Mu. [Purchase
