"Maybe just maybe we should tell you"
Welcome to the paranoid bliss-state. If rave, ardkore and jungle were a technicolour explosion, a reaction to years of inner city pressure (and even the dark stuff was dayglo), then this slippery thing called dubstep is maybe what happens years down the line. Rave equalled surrender and physical / psychical revolution; body as brain, as Kodwo Eshun puts it. It was an irruption that claimed many, moved us into another world that represented a new foundation, away from the concerns of a laughably ineffective and outdated music press that still struggles to theorise rhythm, that still trots, hand-in-hand, with utterly incompetent bollocks indie rock that is about as serious as a paper cut and as horizon setting as a trip to KFC.
_ "Maybe just maybe we can feel you" _
Dubstep is making a claim for 2006, amongst other things, and although this is not a bolt-out-of-the-blue genre, there can be no denying the quantum leaps and ground won terms in sound and style in such a short space of time. As Digital Mystiks urge us to 'meditate on bass weight' a new low-end, re-made/re-modelled, makes a play for another generation - maybe those of us left stranded by the demise of jungle into the dull muso tar-pit of drum & bass, or the unrealised potential of 2-Step, or the shockingly brief rise and fall of grime.
So space is the place, dubstep's territory. Otherwise the relationship here is more ambivalent. But then maybe this is where the power lies, as an aesthetic temporary autonomous zone- unlike ardkore or jungle there is_ no_ dubstep template. This is further enforced by the notion of Hyperdub. This is not merely a label but a statement of intent, a theoretical base and a foundation. Kode 9, Spaceape, Burial and others are part of the mechanics but this is an open-circuit, Philip K Dick's scramble suit as aesthetic strategy.
This is a war zone of sorts, an eerie war zone so unique to dub - mystically ambivalent, filtered through Wu-Tang (and their orbiting satellites) deep into London's hinterlands. But this is no longer a reaction to the pressure. For exactly the same reason that Burial's debut was so magnificently haunting, Hyperdub and the better artists of the movement have forged an uneasy assemblage, a Deleuzian machine, with this sickly energy and maybe this explains the genre's peculiar rhythm and motion.
_"Maybe just maybe we can save you" _
For 'Memories of the Future' then, we can assert that Kode 9 is the music machine while Spaceape invokes modernist viral 'fictions' as a Ballardian stoned mystical preacher. His words continually repeat and rematerialise across each of these 12 songs, as well as the Burial album and Dubstep Allstars Volume 3 (a defiantly studio-bound DJ mix) inducing an occult-like mantra. The identity of the label suggests a less easy definition. On opener 'Glass', Spaceape alerts us, "Lately there's been / a serious rise in the pressure / A tension so visceral / we have to take serious measures" on descending woozy feet, steady cowbell rhythm and a modified rave-riff on hyper-intensive synth. The immediate shock is melody but followers of the Hyperdub ethos will not be so surprised, for therein texture and tune are as vital as the low end. The reason that dubstep may have struggled and will maybe continue to do so is with a drive towards too stark a masculinity, sacrificing melody and hook to an overly-stoned obsession with bass sound (and it is exactly this kind of thing that killed jungle). If anything, the achievement of this long player is the final realisation of Tricky's sometimes-unpalatable Nearly God project- an abstracted post-everything aural universe in 'dread pop' form.
And pop is a vital element here. As soon as the tense looped reggae twang and mournfully ecstatic melodica of 'Victims' kicks in, you know you're in the presence of something truly remarkable. Taking the dub foundation, much like 'Maxinquaye' a decade before it, 'Memories...' unfurls a potentially new genre with every song. This is not a claim made lightly, as Spaceape himself outlines the plan: "Creating blinding lights of fiction / as our only clarity". This clarity reveals itself in surreal moments of depth - when the black hole of 'Glass' reveals itself through a cavernous space of bass and echo alien-child, or when the maniacal, neo-Human League melody drops out of 'Backward', leaving a gargantuan slab of looping abstract noise before the simple cymbal and bass throb falls into place. '9 days' is a hymn to sensuality delivered in the most gone drawl you can possibly imagine, another gigantic block of cubist noise enriched with a stalking beat and that eastern perfume so beloved of dubstep. Guest star Ms Haptic is so enmeshed within the echo chamber on 'Curious' as to be barely human, whilst the melodica-driven hook has the reach of the best pop music. 'Nine Samurai' is Kurosawa directing anime with music from the RZA.
It closes with the hypnotic hallucinatory 'astro-dancehall' (their words and they're right), of 'Quantum' that is equal parts Aaliyah, Specials and glitch pop with an old skool bass and spanglEy synths staking out a curiously warm territory. 14 songs, 14 worlds of possibility.
For a dancefloor music only really coming into its creative stride, it's somewhat incredible to realise that the genre has now bestowed a second masterful long-player in the space of a few months, and both on the same label. To these ears this has album of the year stamped all over it.
"Maybe just maybe we could kill you"
Don't sit on the fence. This is as serious as your life.
Jonathan Fletcher
