Olie Bass Weight - Triton/The Void

Ha! Just when you were all nice and relaxed from the Proj3kt Dharma single, here comes some heavy, heavy dubstep to filth out your ears.

But not in a bad way. See, while the bottom end on the two tracks here is certainly dark and doomy enough to warrant Olie adopting the name he has, this is no horrible wurgh! wurgh! wurgh! kiddy chav-step gnarl-fest. The two tracks here are deep and dubby enough that even my girlfriend likes it (who is not, it's fair to say, much of a dubstep lass)… yet they've got enough low-end grunt to satisfy the most mangled of bass-face ravers at the same time.

Triton is the deeper of the two, The Void the more twisted and scary, and I think I'd plump for the former if pushed. But both are eminently checkable for sure. Excellent work.

Out: This week

About: This is the latest from Denver-based Section 8. If you'd like to know more, here's an interview with Michael Ramirez, who runs the label.

Total mega-armaggedon FREE DUBSTEP death overload!

Well well well… for those of you that like dubstep, here's something of a treat. LU10 Records have clearly been at the Christmas sherry a bit early and, suddenly full of festive cheer, they've decided to give you some tuneage for free. A free track? No. A free album? No.

A free whole whopping bloody great 70 tracks? That'll be the one.

Yeah, you read that right… that's 70, as in one more than something a bit rude, tracks of speaker-bothering, gut-churning, in-your-face gnarly dubstep and grime… with a few poppier UK funky cuts and some deeper gems to be found in there as well. And a bit of electro. And some bassline. Oh, and a half-hour mix from Hybrid Theory & Saila as well, so make that 71.

The phrase 'rude not to' doesn't really cover it. So here you go, then…

More Freebies Link http://www.4shared.com/file/VaZsr6Bv/Freebies.html by LU10 Records

Crump - Broken Thoughts EP

Don't seem to have had any dubstep on here for a while… people keep sending me lots of silly kiddly gnarly chavstep bizniss. But here's an altogether deeper and more satisfying dubstep/future garage EP to wrap your ears around.

Opener 5am sounds to me like how dubstep might have sounded like if it had been invented by Warp Records circa 1991, as resonating bass chords and glitchy, D&B-influenced percussion do battle with bleeps, analogue synth sounds and tons and tons of reverb. Broken Thoughts is a more melodic affair with a highly distorted, resung vocal refrain from Simonelli's garage classic Do You Feel Me? (released as NY's finest, and which in turn sampled it from Zhana's Sanctuary Of Love) over frantic snares and technoid rave-y bass. And then finally I Don't Want You is a big, dramatic stomper with almost Ibiza-eque pop/electro touches.

The first two have the edge for me, I think, but overall this is an EP that proves there's still plenty of fruitful exploration yet to be undertaken in this particular part of the electronic music spectrum.

Out: This week

About: London-based LU10, sister label to Four40 and Lepento, can be found on Facebook and Soundcloud.

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.