DJ Rum - Emerald/Plead With Me

Let's kick off the week with a spot of dubstep, shall we?

DJ Rum would appear to be a young lad from London and, on this evidence, operates in that area of dubstep where the crossover is with IDM, ambient techno and such. However, Plead With Me does also have cut-up, treated vox that hark back to the music's roots in garage, and as such, I'd be happy to give it ear-space in those very late night, smoky kinda moments. Not that I have too many of those these days, but still.

It also reminds me of the kind of thing I used to pick up on very limited 12" from Release The Groove circa 2000-2001, which sort of makes me smile in a nostalgic, old man-ish kind of fashion. I'm less taken by Emerald (The Antidote) – to give it its full title – which is the more out-and-out experimental/ambient-sounding of the two, but I'm sure it'll go down well with the Earnest Young Men who dig that kinda thing.

Out: This week

About: You can find out (a bit) more about DJ Rum at his MySpace. As for the label, this is on Smokin' Sessions, a sub-label of the Z Audio stable… which is interesting because a) this is the polar opposite of the kind of rude, in-your-face tearout dubstep that you normally associate Z Audio with and b) their logo is remarkably similar to the old Smokin' Beats logo, as old-time house n' garage heads will attest. So is it a tribute, or another one of Paul & Neil's multifarious stealth projects? You tell me…

PS Oh and welcome to Mr Fingers, this blog's newest follower and, quite excitingly, number 25. That's only about 39,975 or so readers less than Mixmag! I'm guessing it's not actually Larry Heard but you can't have everything.