Meg Babey Davies’s take on Illament’s recent dubstep release…
Illament switches it up, or should we say down, from his usual drum and bass tempo and brings to us a self-released dubstep dyad…
The first track ‘Guinness’ is a straight-up soundsystem-slayer which despite its seeming simplicity has the ability to reverberate every inch of your being into sludge, in the best way possible. There is no ‘nice’ way to describe it but that’s the whole point – it’s pure filth and that’s exactly what we came here for. Illament seems to have subsumed that classic guttural dubstep sound as if it belongs in the minimal Monday’s era when Youngsta’s seminal Rinse FM shows were still a thing. It’s moody and has a sort of ‘sad dog’ feel about it, sounds peculiar, but you know the ones that cause your face to fold in on itself as a good dubstep track should. Get this one through a rig and quick.
‘Eyes In Flight’ is up next and although it’s not mad-melodic, it has much more of a soundscape that is oozing with depth. It has a roundness about it, in a way that all the sounds overlap in a continuous manner – slightly Epoch-ESC. It immediately places you in a tunnel-like space where everything echoes amongst industrial whirs and trickling drums. The elongated screeches are like that of unoiled machinery and amidst the chug-ish patterns flowing throughout, it evokes the feeling of travelling on a derelict train deep underground – weirdly, that you want to be on. The components and characteristics of the track are distinctly comparable to those in Illament’s 170 productions – he has been sure to put his musical stamp all over this one.
The release, as a whole, is a dope demonstration of how Illament’s production techniques can effortlessly stretch across genres and in this case sit ‘pretty’ in a 140 fashion. The two tracks deliver an eerie atmosphere of their own whilst they both exude this drawn-out, almost dystopian affinity for one another.
Cop now to add some serious face-melters to your collection!
https://illament22.bandcamp.com/album/guiness-eyes-in-flight?from=hp&action=buyWords by Meg Babey Davies
