deeptime

I’m behind on a lot of things right now thanks to a bad case of RSI, but I’ve been meaning to post about this.  Dusk and Blackdown’s album Margins Music has finally been released and, along with it, a stunningly produced video.  It’s not a music video in the usual sense – it cuts together multiple tracks from the album set to lush but quick-shifting visuals from the streets of London. The cuts caught me by surprise at first, but in the end it works because this five minute clip is like a condensed version of Margins Music itself: a set of looping trajectories and rough juxtapositions that make up Dusk and Blackdown’s personal geography of the city.

I was lucky enough to get a preview of the album in the spring and it’s been a rotation all summer.  By no means is it the quintessential dubstep that some might have expected from the pair. Dusk and Blackdown took a chance when they decided to base an album largely on their shared love of grime and desi beats. But it works well thanks to solid, creative production work and some of the year’s best vocals, provided by Farrah, Teji, Durrty Goodz and Trim.

I’ve got a hefty interview with Dusk and Blackdown forthcoming in the long-awaited third issue of Woofah (and I think there’s a review from Gutta), with a ‘director’s cut’ likely to follow sometime later at Riddim.ca.  In the meantime though, Melissa Bradshaw’s done an excellent two-parter with Blackdown, Dusk and Farrah over at Decks in the City.

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Last note – things haven’t been totally quiet the last couple of months.  With help from Siah Alan and Tim Finney, I’ve tentatively revived Riddim.ca to cover rumblings in the fast-mutating UK House/Funky scene which I’ve been quietly obsessing over more and more since the last winter.  I haven’t wanted to add to the hype machine by gushing about it here but, like I said a while back, it’s an exciting ‘wot do u call it?’ moment right now and I’m not sure we’ll even quite grasp it until it’s nearly past.

First up, an interview with Roska.  Check back for more in the coming weeks.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 24th, 2008 at 5:45 pm and is filed under Cities, Dubstep, Grime, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.