Juno Recommends Dubstep March 2019

Review: From Bristol with love; DE-TU return to Infernal with more of their signature sweet stuff. "Tried By Tu" will be familiar to many thanks to its heavy dub rotation and those lonely eastern strings that don't as much as pluck at your heart but pull your entire vascular system out. "Waiting For Jah" is a much darker twist up. Primed for real soundsystems and rumbling with sub weight and minimal muscle, if your brain isn't screaming Outlook festival really loudly when you hear this then you might need to consult your GP.

Review: Although Dalek One has been exterminating dancefloors (sorry) for some time, it was only last summer that the deep dubstep don made his long-awaited vinyl debut. Here he keeps up the pressure via a weighty EP on Encrypted Audio. Check first the mangled, electronically scrambled rap vocals and sci-fi riddims of "Eyes Red", before getting your ears around the elongated sub-bass tones, tribal percussion and paranoid electronics of "Wire Tap". If that's not enough to set the pulse racing - and it should be - we'd recommend whacking on the crackling, sub-heavy roller that is time-travelling dancefloor treat "Man Sees Alien". In summary: pleasingly far-out.

Review: New Zealand dubsmith Akcept hops over the Pacific with a plate of two halves; "Teachings" takes us back to the foundations for root cause analysis. Unfathomably deep, warm and tailored for fine tuned systems, it's a quintessential lesson in dub science. Meanwhile on the B "Going Round In Circles" flips the coin for something just as dubby but a lot more dancefloor. As teased by many of his mixes, Akcept's penchant for dub techno is just as strong as his love for roots... Something that's more than clear when you hear this record.

Review: Copenhagen-based dub warrior RDG (Circle Vision, Surfase Records, All Out Dubstep) returns with more fire on his new jamdown version "Bellyass Dub". Bringing together powerful ragga vocals, fierce bass frequencies and skilful riddims that altogether exclaim it one jah! On the flip, he ventures down a darker, left-hand path on the personal dub of "Born & Grow" a sinister and paranoid joint that calls to mind the early days of UK style dubstep on Tempa or Skull Disco.

Review: Bleak Winter whip up another highly limited storm with this powerful 12 that combines two very different approaches to bass yet share a similar glacial spirit. Inyoka takes the A with two incredibly emotive trips; the brilliantly titled "Beryl" is a dreamy march through the thickest of snow while wrapped up in the cosiest roadman coat you've ever fleece-lined under the glaze of the northern lights while "Turbines" is a more poignant, turbulent flight back home. Flip for more of a concrete adventure as Korin Complex makes his grimey beats shiver with the jitters on "Interlinked" before icing you out with junglised two-step on "The Person You Might've Been". For added vinyl-only pleasure VGB shoves us in the deep freeze with his remix. Ain't no spring on the horizon.

Review: The mysterious Macker returns to the scene of the crime. Previously spotted shaking up the dancefloor two years ago on a similarly anonymous release, here he's back and armed with more sonic treacle. Dark, thick, swampy with just the right amount of drone, "Faust" is a cathedral creeper that's weighted by insanely heavy kicks while "Isolation" takes us even deeper down Macker's rabbit hole with grainy depth charge bass plucks, samurai samples and that crucial overall sensation of a cosy graveyard picnic somewhere on another planet. Crucial; don't slack on the Mack.

Review: Vinyl-only business from the FKOF crew: Sheffield's Dark Harmonics and Subaltern's Otz team up for the incendiary "Voidwalker". Creepier than a graveyard picnic, it's all in the strange misty textures and powerful sense of tension before the flabbiest of subs kick in and the fun begins. Remix wise J:Kenzo does them proud with a similarly tense twist that's based around hard swaggering kicks and more eerie and bad dream textures. Elsewhere Dark Harmonics throws down a crucial solo. Brilliantly entitled "Fucking Spiders", it's an outstanding piece of 23rd century funk with all the right room and gloom we've come to expect from him. Creepy crawly.

Review: Neither Scratcha DVA, nor any of these legendary tracks and artists on this release need any introduction. It's taken about eleven years but the two highlights of "DREAMEATER 007" - A side "Kill All A' Dem" and "Taliban"- finally see the light of day. On the B side, we have the man remixing Mega's "Dangerous Liasons" in wonky street level fashion before he turns his deft hand to take on scene hero Wiley's "Apocalypto", churning out an intense tribal thriller to round things off on this long overdue release.