Dusk and Blackdown - Margins Music (Keysound)
4/5
By: Various Scribes
After slowly creeping along for a number of years with the odd dubstep single, self-released on their Keysound label, underground music journalist Martin Clarke (Blackdown) and his production partner Dusk have produced one of the most comprehensive albums the genre has yet seen.
Usually, music that doesn't come from an internal source ends up sounding somewhat empty, devoid of emotion to keep the listener engaged. However, Blackdown and Dusk have achieved quite the opposite, in crafting songs which must be seen as journalistic. The sparse, bleak, backdrop to 'This Is London' is illuminated by a group of ghostly sounding teenagers, discussing their London experience. Elsewhere on the energetic high point of the album, Durrty Goodz outlines stories from his youth, taking what he needed from his surroundings. Even the introduction begins with an old grime interview that Blackdown conducted, setting the pace for the album.
From the intro onwards, there's always the impression of looking out on the different cultures within London. Eastern sample sources and the singer Farrah add to a rich, surreal world which the producers manage to maintain cohesively, something often lost in the fast moving world of singles and ringtones. The chaotic but fun 'Rolling Raj Deep' and Dusk's fantastically euphoric 'Focus' - a sort of bouncy techno number which samples the film of 1984 by Orwell - are instrumental highlights of the LP. However the duo has carefully calculated the value of lyrics, with the vocal tracks of both Goodz and Trim taking up the middle of the album, compromising a switch in tone for the album to keep the listener engaged.
There are few flaws in this set of songs. If anything, the overindulgence of the two skits, 'Keysound Radio' and 'Keysound Rain' could have been done without, the latter in particular comes across as something of a Burial knock-off, after he discussed the use of layering atmospheric noises in his albums. Knit-picking aside though, this is easily one of the best dubstep and grime crossover albums to be released, and deserves more than the low key acclaim it is likely to receive.
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