Neil Wells casts his critical ear over; Psi Spy - 'Bake 'n' Bite', Vex'd - 'Pop Pop'/'Canyon' and 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.

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I must confess I had absolutely no idea that I'd even bought this 12" until I was halfway home. Anyway, to not put too fine a point on it, it's basically Grime.

'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.

Hot on the heels of his first 12" comes this new offering, and it continues to stake out dangerous territory. Dangerous because, by rights this record should be utter rubbish - it's completely unashamed, hands-in-the-air electro-house that would quite probably go down a storm at any number of dodgy house nights up and down the country. But somehow it manages to be completely brilliant, mainly (like its predecessor) through mounting the arpeggiated synths, claps, squeals and 4/4 kicks on a substructure of uncompromisingly tough, dry sound - shearing away all of the lazy percussion, reverb, buildups and related guff which make bad dance music so tiresome to listen to, and replacing it with a defiantly experimental attitude, clever edits, and fantastic little twists in the rhythm - check the little break about 30 seconds from the end. At its heart this is fun party music in the vein of Bangkok Impact, and there just isn't enogh of that around at the moment in my book.

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.

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