Line recorded this live session for DELTA 9′s WWFM show in October 2004. Line’s ‘Hearts’ album is out on Uncharted Audio. Line also has 2 tracks – ‘Aim+fire’ and ‘Ansidotsys’ on the Plastic Volume 1 compilation, out on our DELTA 9 Plastics label.

Tracklist

1. When you smile, I see stars
2. Momentum
3. IWBTBL
4. (re)definition of a line
5. Teenage kixx
6. Aim+fire

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Posted by %%author%% for DELTA 9, © 2005
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‘Canyon’ is by far the less impressive of the two cuts – solidly-produced but ultimately pretty unexciting mid-paced dark 2-step stuff which is solid but frankly unlikely to win any prizes, lacking as it does the subtle little twists and touches which mark out the leaders of the pack. It’s better than having no grooves cut into that side, but this is at heart a one-sided 12″, because the A-side – ‘Pop Pop’ – makes a positive virtue out of the lack of subtlety that so hamstrings the B-side.

For it features what I can only describe as one of the finest drops it has ever been my privilege to hear – brutal, cold and warped, it takes the dark, cold, slightly spooked electroid quality of say Sync_24′s EP on Touchin’ Bass (though it sounds nothing like it) and piledrives it with precision right through the speaker cones, solid waves of bass cutting and stopping on a pin, while brutal, almost industrial stabs keep up the pressure. To be honest, it doesn’t do very much after that, but to be honest it doesn’t need to.

It’s not clever, it’s not funny, but it is very very big.

Posted by %%author%% for DELTA 9, © 2004
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Rex the Dog - Frequency

The rather gushing press release on this little EP extols the virtues of the ‘Grime’- flavoured first tune, which is more than a little misleading…

Point 1: The first track, ‘Locked’, isn’t Grime by any stretch of the imagination, and neither are any of the other tunes. What it is however, is competent 2-step-inflected electro in a Si Begg-only-not-quite-as-good sort of way. The sort of thing you’d give a spin if people were dancing, but nothing really to write home about.

Point 2: The focus on the slightly dubious Grime credentials of the EP disguise the fact that the first tune on the ‘B’ side, ‘Grayam’, is a sodding IMMENSE slow-paced jacking acidic electro juggernaut of a tune, ultra-funky and sounding like it was left off Luke Vibert’s Warp LP from last year for being too DAMN GOOD.

The rest of the side’s tunes carry on this direction in admirable style – fantastic, straight-up 303 action that forgets fashion and just gets straight on with the business of ripping it up. Great stuff.

www.pyramidtransmissions.com

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The B-side mines similarly camp territory – imagine New Order updated and shorn of the guitars, glammed-up and at a slightly seedy gay disco.

www.kompakt-net.de

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Amµnition

Planet Mu is a label that moves so fast and puts out such a wide range of music that it’s hard to get a good handle on what they’re doing. The ‘Cosmic Forces Of Mu’ 2xCD sampler from a couple of years ago gave a good and balanced look at the breadth of the label’s output, offering up a few classic and exclusive tunes along the way – but felt a bit sprawling and difficult to handle, veering as it did from whimsical folktronica to nosebleed deathcore in the space of two or three tracks.

This new (and budget-priced – mine cost a mere £3) sampler eschews that tactic almost completely, offering instead a 70-odd min long mixed cruise through the label’s output, focussing quite heavily on the junglist/breakcore aspect for which Planet Mu is probably most famous. It kicks off in fine style with a whopping SIX Venetian Snares tracks, starting out with the gentle beatless electric piano of ‘Aaron’, before the alien electro of ‘Keek’ kicks in.

The meat of the mix though is the quite astonishing centrepiece that is tracks 10 through 24, starting with Hellfish’s ‘You don’t quit’ which simply plonks an old-skool rap atop a frenzied gabba rush to absolutely genius effect. No bullshit, no fuck around, as Bruce Lee might say. Things don’t let up either, with Rude-Ass Tinker and another Hellfish tune leading us on to a sumptuous succession of work by Remarc – possibly jungle’s finest break-slicer – culled from the ‘Sound Murderer’ and ‘Unreleased Dubs’ collections. He may need no introduction, but to those who haven’t heard of him, the inclusion of so much classic material in a mix warrants the price of admission alone – superbly chopped amen madness which never for one minute loses sight of the dancefloor. Then we pile through, in short order, a selection of runglecore mentalist Shitmat’s tunes, Bizzy B’s excellent ‘Darkside’ and some 2-steppy goodness from Hawerchuk, before touching back down with a selection of edit-heavy ambience to cool us down.

There’s a lot of label samplers crowding my shelves, but few of them make it beyond one or two listens. This one is different – by focussing on making a great mix CD first and a label sampler second, label boss Mike Paradinas has provided a much better taste of the spirit of the label than a ragbag of album tracks could have done. Of course, this is at the expense of excluding great swathes of the label’s best new output – dubstep wonderboy Mark One and the sublime indietronics of Julian Fane are notable by their absence, but crucially, at its heart this is a record you’ll want to listen to, before exploring the rest of the label – not something that’ll end up as a beermat after one desultory spin. Recommended.

Posted by %%author%% for DELTA 9, © 2004
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