Cassette
The Bristol producer/DJ/promoter Pinch once described early half-tempo dubstep as “hardcore and jungle turned in on itself”—a perfect description of the way the hyper-kinetic, hyper-social mash of hip-hop, reggae, and techno from a decade previous were folded inwards into something dense, internalized, and introspective. At the same time this musical shift was happening in the mid-‘00s, a few producers seemed keen to pull the rave sound back out of this gravitational well; music by Vex’d, Milanese and some one-off tracks by artists like Cluekid reinstated jungle-style breaks into dubstep’s sound palette to often fearsome effect.
It’s this intersection that Jamie Russell revisits on his second album proper as Low End Activist. Where previously he’s mashed together grime, electro, and many other genres, the set of sounds in use on Airdrop are almost entirely from the early-to-mid-‘90s—from bleep techno, hardcore, jungle, and Metalheadz style drum & bass—and the track titles reference spots in Russell’s native Oxfordshire, many of which were sites of raves back in those heady times. But the dynamics and structures are all about restraint, not release: Like those early dubstep tracks, things are clipped, separated, creating wide open spaces above the giant bass tones.
But the album’s not just a throwback to the ’00s, any more than it is to the ’90s. Rather, it feels like a revitalization of the modernist visionary feeling in the records that inspired him and a projection forward into a dark future. Whether it’s that the constrictions of creating such a very specific ruleset for this record have sharpened his creativity, or it’s just that his skills are naturally developing over time, Russell’s techniques are razor sharp here. He’s not here to replicate Photek or 4Hero or LFO, he’s in the business of taking what they did on the very basic technology available to them and rendering it with untold, ultra-fine detail. It often feels like being in the middle of a three (or even four) dimensional exploded diagram of a rave track.
Yet these are not abstractions—they are still rave tracks in themselves, a fact that becomes very much apparent when you get them on big speakers. The “low-end” part of the artist’s name is absolutely vital: this is soundsystem music, and even high quality headphones don’t do it justice—it only fully makes sense when the sub-bass is actually running through your body. When it does, the sense of the project suddenly falls into place. Those lines of influence going back through past decades and out into the future pass through real bodies in real places and times—including your body, as you listen. It’s an almost scientific study of the enduring effects of certain sounds and rhythms, and a thrilling demonstration of those effects at the same time.
