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.
