(07.15.05) Don’t bother about genres. Don’t call it grime, 8-bar or dubstep. All you need is a few oldskool terms: breaks, bass and industrial. I was expecting only dancefloor material here, but the first half of Degenerate is more like Scorn doing broken beat. Which is just what the world needed: a mixture of tight drum programming, squeezed basslines and pitch black backgrounds. The first track “Pop Pop VIP” is quite danceable, less than the original though, but from “Thunder” to “Venus” it starts a deep journey into industrial realms, beats and snares are always hammering, between loads of distorted, buzzing and wobbly bass. The result is claustrophobic, unsettling and yet striking, for what was only a sub-subgenre a year ago has made impressive steps towards unheard territories with Vex’d.
The choice of samples is very accurate; the woman speaking in “Corridor” sends shivers down my spine every time I hear her. “Gunman” and “Lion VIP” unleash the party potential of Vex’d music, with ragga samples, guns, straight breaks and basslines more dedicated to your legs. “Fire” and “Slime,” instead, turn toward a more laid back feeling –rhythms are always solid but more rarefied, like the deeper works of Mark One’s One Way. More quality comes from the addition of spooky interludes, like the eerie “Cold,” the explicit “Cruhser Dub,” and the anxious echoing “Destruction,” plus the amazing idea of adding a second CD with the tunes released only on vinyl so far. We’re speaking of “Pop Pop,” “Canyon,” “Lion,” “Ghost,” all these tracks made quite a stir on the British floors, and even if “Smart Bomb” is not as famous as the previous ones, I can assure it’s another corker, like you hadn’t enough already. This is a serious contender for my album of the year, if you want to know what is the sound of the underground in the year 2005, don’t hesitate to check out Degenerate.
Degenerate is out now on Planet Mu.
