I knew 2step garage was something I should try to like - the rhythms were interesting, the basslines gritty and rough, but the vocals never did it for me - if I wanted r n b then I’d listen to Missy Elliott. But, every so often there would be a few tracks that snuck through that peaked my interest – ES Dubs’ ‘Standard Hoodlum Issue’, Stanton Warriors’ version of ‘She’s A Bitch’, and a few others. These would be at the dubbier, darker end of the spectrum, stripped back, rumbling, a sound that seemed more crack than cocaine or champers. This wasn’t the sound of a ‘large’ lifestyle, more a housing estate and the paranoia of too much ganja.
Horsepower Productions is a crew of young producers including the wonderfully named Benny Ill, and the less flamboyantly named Nassis and Lev Jnr, and their debut album In Fine Style brings together a series of their 12”s for Tempa and Turn U On (Not U Turn’s garage offspring), as well as the remix/dub of Elephant Man’s ‘Log On’ (thankfully with the homophobic chatter removed). There’s some lovely darker dub sounds and dread vocal on ‘Gorgon Sound’, ‘The Swindle’, ‘Rude Boyz’, ‘Fat Larry’s Skank’, and others that skirt a border between 2-step and more rolling breaks. Not all of it is outstanding or groundbreaking, but that is to be expected with a compilation of 12”s, and the fade out edits on the CD version are more than annoying. However this is a definite indication that a shift is happening – a little like that moment when techstep emerged from jungle.
Sebastian Chan
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