Steppa's Delight (Soul Jazz Records)

At the beginning of the millennium, London pirate radio and it’s club offspring were mutating garage and jungle sounds once again. Two-step was now oscillating it’s cultural pull away from silken Champagne affairs and moving into the darker and deeper turf of Dubstep.

This was street music, formed in the lab with extra helpings of cavernous bass and anxiety. The frenetic pulses, disembodied divas and echoes of Jamaica past are well represented by Burial’s 2 long players and continues to be championed by Rinse FM, who gave Wiley and Dizzee Rascal their first taste of notoriety.

The venerable, ever-rewarding Soul Jazz Records, who’s always first to connect with new and emerging sounds and reconnect with those musical traditions that should never have been lost in the first place has just released two excellent dubstep volumes titled, “Steppa’s Delight.”

Track highlights like Kode 9’s “Samurai” starts off as if you are attending a Jamaican Death march, then as soon as the tension builds, the uptempo slaughter ensues, replete with jaw dropping sub-bass that will face any dancehall. Closing out Volume 1, the remixed version of spacerock’s North Star, Seventeen Evergreen’s “Ensoniq”, which combines psychedelic electronics and vocal treatments with Dub Step’s trademark hypnotic, pulsing bass.

Steppa’s Delight is a portal that leaves you fiending for a Soul Train equivalent of a Dubstep dance show. Imagine Don Cornelius introducing Shackleton’s “Blood On My Hands” while clouds of smoke billow from the dancefloor.

Buy here!

J.Stinz/Bananaspam