Distance
My Demons

Months ago, the topic of dubstep was already addressed in these parts. There was talk of Kode9 and his fabulous long-distance debut. It is well known to all electronic music enthusiasts that the United Kingdom is a scene to always keep an eye on: trip-hop and drum'n'bass are clear examples, now familiar even to laypeople. Grime was the next big thing in the early years of this decade, but soon we encountered something new and astonishing: physical and intellectual, original in a way we hadn't heard in a long time. Dubstep, indeed.

Distance is not the last to jump on the bandwagon, but he is the latest to debut on record after several acclaimed remixes: My Demons is an evocative record from the title onwards.

The work's mood is strongly urban and harks back both to early techno and to more classic dub (several times, even thanks to the use of acoustic instruments, Augustus Pablo might come to mind). Huge and thick layers of bass crash against more or less natural rhythms, smoky jazz samples establish themselves on syncopated rhythms, all seasoned with deep and mystical reverberations and a few synth chords.

The opener Night Vision might refer to grime, but a grime slowed down to the point of exasperation and covered by layers of metropolitan echoes. The title track enhances the sound with reverberated guitars and a warm progression of the rhythm section: the more you listen to it, the more you get the idea that this music is light-years away from the dancefloor. An impression soon dispelled by songs like the distorted and skewed Weigh Down or the very rhythmic and somehow danceable Ska and Fractured. Elsewhere (Cella, Mistral, Delight), the Jamaican and psychedelic roots of this music are explored, but combined with an underwater and heavy ambient component; while Traffic shows an unexpected and aggressive hard-rock matrix.

My Demons is an interesting and truly beautiful album, another confirmation that dubstep is an intelligent genre worth following: this record is above all the revelation of a talent that is hard to ignore once encountered, the talent of its creator, Distance.