fri 24/03/2023

dubstep

Album: Skrillex - Quest for Fire

Ageing boppers may bristle at the idea of a dance album where the average track length is three minutes. Yet this, Sonny “Skrillex” Moore’s first solo album since his debut nine years ago, is the most groove-based thing he’s done. It’s certainly a...

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Album: Greentea Peng - Man Made

Greentea Peng is a south Londoner, heavily tattooed, heavily spiritual, heavily anti-establishment, and very, very heavily into basslines. She cuts a singular figure in many ways, but her rebel dub soul style also makes her a particularly British...

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Disc of the Day 10th Anniversary: the level playing field

Theartsdesk is a labour of love. Bloody-mindedly run as a co-operative of journalists from the beginning, our obsession with maintaining a daily-updated platform for good culture writing has caused a good few grey and lost hairs over the years. But...

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Disc of the Day Celebrates 10 Years of Album Reviews

Ten years ago yesterday, on Monday 14th February 2011, one of theartsdesk’s writers, Joe Muggs, reviewed an album called Paranormale Aktivitat, by an outfit called Zwischenwelt. It was the first ever Disc of the Day, a new slot inserted into...

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Album: [MONRHEA] - her[ART]

The debut album from one woman outfit [MONRHEA] shows off the seriously impolite electronica that’s blossoming in East Africa. Electronic sounds from Africa are over-represented in Europe by jolly pop and elegantly faceless house music, but there’s...

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Album: Footsie - No Favours

Footsie might not have the profile of a Skepta or Wiley, or even his Newham Generals partner and recent IKEA advert soundtracker D Double E. But anyone halfway schooled in grime will know that both as MC and producer he's a key player from grime's...

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Album: Hodge - Shadows in Blue

For underground music producers, there almost always comes a phase in life when they accept they're no longer young guns and embrace either massively complicated synthesisers, floaty new age music, or both. For Bristol-based Jake Martin aka Hodge it...

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Albums of the Year 2019: Terror Danjah - Invasion

This is a bittersweet recommendation to make. On the one hand, it is simply one of the mightiest electronic albums of the year, an exemplar of how grime continues to be a vital part of the British sound palette long after it was pushed aside as the...

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CD: James Blake - Assume Form

There is an inevitable change that comes with moving from the realms of self-produced bedroom blubstep to slickly-produced West Cali smoothness that will cause chaotic realms of loss of self, fans and at some level, originality. But let’s not forget...

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10 Questions for DJ / producer Rob Smith of Smith & Mighty

Rob Smith & Ray Mighty are truly the unsung heroes of British bass music. Coming out of the same cultural melting pot in Bristol that gave us Massive Attack, Tricky, Portishead and mega-producer Nellee Hooper, they looked to be among the city's...

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Best Albums of 2018

Disc of the Day reviews new albums, week in, week out, all year. Below are the albums to which our writers awarded five stars. Click on any one of them to find out why. Baxter Dury, Etienne de Crécy and Delilah Holliday - B.E.D. ★★★★★ A small...

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CD: Oneohtrix Point Never - Age Of

Everything on this record changes shape. One moment in “RayCats” Far Eastern instrumentation is being glitched beyond recognition, then suddenly it sounds like something from a relaxation tape. “Same” shimmers and twists between 20th century avant-...

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