Various Artists – Box of Dub (Soul Jazz/Inertia)

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Soul Jazz’s first compilation of dubstep brings together a solid list of participants but perhaps strangely ends up presenting a a collection that sounds more like a continuation of digidub and techno than ‘dubstep’ as it is in mid 2007. In some ways that might be the point – Soul Jazz’s expertise across its substantial and important re-issue catalogue lies in as much their ability to draw out connections between artists and sounds, as in their cherry picking capabilities.

Of the bigger names, Digital Mystikz’s ‘I Wait’s and Skream’s ‘Irie’ could almost have been plucked from any point since the late 1980s UK digidub scene – ‘Irie’ reminds me most of The Disciples. Kode9’s ‘Magnetic City’ is close to minimal techno and fits nicely into the Detroit-Kingston-Berlin axis of Hardwax, Tikiman/Paul St Hillaire’s presence on the tracks with Sub Version only serve to reinforce this connection with the Maurizio/Berlin camp. King Midas Sound’s ‘Surround Me’, the new project of Kevin Martin/The Bug and Roger Robertson is close to dubbed out dystopian trip hop. Burial drops the lovely ‘Unite’ which revolves around soul diva vocal recalling the atmospheres of peak era of junglists Omni Trio – a kind of mournful sense of loss, twisting the uplifting character of the vocal sample into something darker – here by the stepped pitching down of the refrain, all the while drenched in typical Burial radio static and rain. Of the rest, Scuba and the more breakbeat oriented Tayo meets Acid Rockers drop the most typically ‘wobbler’ bass tracks.

As a compilation, though, this doesn’t so much capture the state of play in dubstep this year, as point to escape routes on the outer edges – connection points to other universes of sound, alternate universes that will be increasingly important to explore as dubstep, itself, inevitably locks down into more and more formulaic structures.

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Seb Chan founded Cyclic Defrost Magazine in 1998 with Dale Harrison. He handed over the reins at the end of 2010 but still contributes the occasional article and review.

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