Various – Haunted House Sampler

Ho ho ho, merry Xmas everybody! And here's wishing you the very happiest of festive greetings for this joyous season of… no hang on, it's not Xmas at all, is it? No it's Hallowe'en, season of scary monsters, supercreeps, ghosts and ghouls and things that go bump in the night. If only someone would put together a handy compilation of dark n' scary dubstep and D&B to suit the occasion… oh look, they have!

The good news, though, is that as compilations of dark n' scary dubstep and D&B with tracks called stuff like Werewolf and Tales From The Darkside go, this isn't actually the horribly gnarly kiddie-chav-horror-fest you might expect. There are one or two comedically gnarly numbers from the 'subtle as a slasher movie' school of thought, certainly. But generally speaking the darkness on the 20 tracks featured here comes as often from dark atmospherics and moody cinematic tension as it does from ridiculous saw-tooth basslines or someone shouting “I'm going to eat your brain.”

I'm guessing most TIWWD readers aren't that into horrorcore, gorestep etc and neither am I, yet there's plenty here I do like. Insatek's excellent deep, technoid dubstep outing Haunter, for one; or the vaguely Doc Scott-ish D&B workout Patterns Of Thought (also from Insatek), or Hue Jah Fink's Every Time, which is essentially yer classic Urban Takeover-style late 90s jump-up.

So… approach with open ears, peeps!

Out: This week

About: This trip to the darkside is brought to you by Section 8 Dub, those Denver-based stalwarts of all things D&B and dubstep-related. Section 8 actually tend towards the darker side of things a lot of the time anyway, which makes the pleasing restraint shown here doubly surprising.