Articles
Slow Six
Label Profile: Fällt
Alexander Turnquist

Albums
4 Bonjour's Parties
AGF
Atlas Sound
Autistic Daughters
Baja
Evan Bartholomew
Sylvain Chauveau
Destroyalldreamers
DoF
Dot Tape Dot
Fessenden
Floriana vs. Màcro
Florian Hecker
I Am A Vowel
Jaermulk Manhattan
Steve Jansen
LabField
Liar's Rosebush
Eliot Lipp
Luminous
Mojib
Monocle
Nicolay & Kay
Panda Riot
Ghislain Poirier
Prosumer & Murat Tepeli
randomNumber
Sambassadeur
Starting Teeth
Carl Stone
Strings of Consciousness
Suite Crude Revue
Text Adventure
Alexander Turnquist
Valet
Viirus
Willits + Sakamoto
Yaporigami

Compilations/Mixes
Armin Van Buuren
Caroline
Goodbye Said the Rain
Sieben Mal Solo
A Weevil in a Biscuit

3"/ 7"/ 10"/ 12"/ EPs
0>1
A Setting Sun
The Bug ft. Warrior Queen
Myungho Choi
Deadbeat
Entsounds
Itosha
JDSY
l'Objet
Noah Pred
Repair
The Retail Sectors
Socks & Sandals
Someone Else
Trembling Blue Stars
.xtrak

The Bug ft. Warrior Queen: Poison Dart
Ninja Tune

London-based producer Kevin Martin (aka The Bug) merges dubstep, dancehall, and ragga into a mind-melting Molotov cocktail on this five-track EP, which includes two lethal originals (“Poison Dart,” “Skeng”) and three remixes by Skream (Tempa), DJ Baku (Japanese mutant turntablist), and Kode 9 (Hyperdub).

In the viral “Poison Dart” original, Jamaica-born MC Warrior Queen engages in a ferocious call-and-response war over a nightmarish tribal-dub skank and hornet swarm bass pulse. Skream then mutates the tune by adding sputtering Moog warble and morphing the groove into a slamming stomp. Even wilder is the treatment by DJ Baku which shreds Warrior Queen's voice and then splatters it against Flowdan's equally shattered vocal and equally deranged synth treatments. The primitive and raw “Skeng,” featuring Flowdan and Killa P, is strong too but Kode 9's “Skeng” remix impresses most of all, not for being more crushing than the others (it isn't) but for being so startlingly original. With mutant dancehall and jittery handclapping passages given an echo-drenched viral mix, the tune undergoes a total metamorphosis, and becomes an alien, six-minute skank that's unlike anything you've ever heard before. If this single's a reliable indicator of what's to come, The Bug's forthcoming album on Ninja Tune should be amazing.

February 2008