The almost anonymous duo of Adam Phillips and Ian Carter, being Various Production, were responsible for a series of absolutely fantastic limited vinyl releases over the last two years. So diverse it was hard to imagine that they might even be the same producers – veering from queasy downtempo beats, 60s folk, to late 80s acid house reworkings of Brandy and The Sugarbabes to ruff urban grime and Missy Elliott cut ups. Having been courted by a slew of labels they have ended up on XL through whom their debut album The World Is Gone is released.
The World Is Gone is a wonderful record which reveals more with each listen and confirms that the preceding singles were just tasters for a very British debut album. Extremely geographically specific, The World Is Gone is one of those ‘place’ records – defined and defining a particular sound place/place sound. In mood it recalls Tricky’ Maxinquaye, although the beats are entrirely modern drawing on dubstep, grime, and urban genres – almost like a compressed history of the last 15 years of British urban music. The opener, Thunnk, is all dystopian dubstep with a William Gibson-styled monologue ‘this is a 12 thousand line dense pixel grid of escalators ascending, descending’ and Hater is a fantastic grime spit channelled through Portishead – ‘I’m a hater / See you later / I’d hate to see you soon’. The three traditional folk tracks – Fly, Deadman and Circle of Sorrow – clearly mark the geography whilst radiating a sense of loss of rurality and magic. And despite the initial jarring effect of multiple styles crashing up against each other, The World Is Gone is a remarkably wholistic listening experience. I’m off to hit play again.
