Irish electronic producer Dos McGouran first emerged under his Detboi alias back around 2007-08, and since then he’s been responsible for a fair slew of 12” releases as well as his 2010 debut album ‘Curse Of The Voodoo Drums’. On the heels of regular appearances on the latter’s Rinse FM radio show, this latest 12” EP offers up Detboi’s first outing on Blackdown’s Keysound Recordings label. While the four tracks collected here take their DNA directly from the clattering breakbeats of classic nineties hardcore and ragga jungle, it’s the contorted and crushed feel of these productions that’s most intriguing here. Indeed, opening title track ‘Scatter’ calls to mind a chopped n’ screwed take on jungle more than anything else as cold ambient whirs give way to squished clattering Amen breaks and dark synth buzzes, while the snares get filtered all over the place and ghostly MC vocals flit through the mix alongside distant siren bursts.
‘Give Love’ meanwhile gets more spacious and streamlined, sending stripped-back rhythms rolling against sheeny synths, analogue bleeps and swelling sub-bass as a retro house diva vocal soars in the background, shortly before the entire track descends into a contorted knot of snapping breakbeats and yawning bass drops as it surges to its finish. Elsewhere, ‘Shots’ calls to mind a smeared-out take on the sorts of unpredictably elastic junglist grooves explored by Luke Vibert under his Amen Andrews alias as chunky snares get timestretched against cut-up ragga MC vocals and stabbing rave synths. As an exercise in squeezing retro hardcore / junglist styles into a post-garage chassis, this is strong stuff.
