Moldy- ‘Windmill Dub’/ ‘Black Forest’ (Heavy Pressure Recordings 001)

I get the feeling that the shops will be running out of this one soon, which is a pity because one of my rules is to only review tunes that the punters can actually buy. I would have reviewed it sooner, but Venez only turned me on to Moldy in the interview I did with them a fortnight ago. Turns out he has graced the decks of NYC’s (where he lives) main Dubstep shindig Dubwar, and has even set up his own record label, Heavy Pressure, which sees it’s second release sometime this month. Like much of the US Dubstep contingent Moldy started off doing Drum & Bass before he slowed things down to 140bpm, but if his next few releases match these two cuts in terms of quality then we can forgive him for any Junglist skeletons he may still have in his closet. 

‘Windmill’ starts off with clickity hi hats and a looped key sound that oozes with dark intent without ever actually being that dark. There’s a strict to the point drum pattern that flirts with the Dubstep norm, only without sounding too much like an effort in copycatting the UK sound. But the suggestion of excitement proves to be a false alarm when the bassline actually kicks in, cause it feels a little under whelming. The rest of the production, like the constantly present keysound and the clickity noise, sound fairly competent, and yet the b-line just isn’t as satisfactory as you would expect. It’s too simplistic, like the kind of tune that an inexperienced bedroom producer would tour around as a demo but get little positive feedback (“yeah mate, I’ll play it out. If you give it to me for free that is”). 

But after 32 bars of this the bassline melody grows some balls and becomes more sophisticated, and it’s time to let your hair down for some brock out business. Even still, it’s quite a clean sounding b-line, nice and mature. It compliments well with the keysounds, but it gets especially interesting midway through with the, for want of a better word, mournful sounding chords (and I promised you I wouldn’t use that word last week didn’t I). What can I say, this track is hard to describe, but it definitely sounds that little bit different from the rest of the stuff you would have heard last year. 

‘Black Forest’: If you go down to the woods today…
Moldy originally comes from the small city of Portland, Maine, but the track titles on this release and the spooky vibes on the beats themselves suggest that he liked to spend his free time there as a hermit in the wooded hinterland that the state is famous for. This side manages to better ‘Windmill Dub’, and despite its pretty powerful sub, it works better as a home listening tune, although any dancefloor with good taste shouldn’t find it hard to appreciate ‘Black Forest’.
    
Again, this one starts off with four to the floor sounding hi hats. The kick drums are really hard, to the point that if you have loudspeakers you can visibly see the cones of them punch in and out, not that the drum pattern will give you an earache or anything. To be honest it’s all very relaxing and mellow sounding, but this is mainly down to a flute type melody that is the core of the track. It’s the kind of creepy tune you would expect from an old Golden Era of Hollywood movie, used as a build up to a shocking moment. The type of sound that paves the way for the resulting gasps of fright as the matinee audience jump out of their seat and spill their popcorn all over the floor. If you’re of a certain age then you probably experienced the same thing while watching old Disney flicks as a child. Maybe seeing Shere Khan in the 1980’s reissue of The Jungle Book disturbed your youthful mind in a similar way to how this tune does now.  

However this melody was created- whether through sampling or even Moldy actually playing it himself on the keyboard, it makes for a brilliant background for the sub low wanderings of the bass. After a point though the melody ceases and Moldy introduces us to more urban pastures, with sounds of distortion and very muted hoover type noises (but if that makes Joey Beltram spring to mind you’re on a completely wrong footing). They’re not unlike the haunting noises you can hear in parts of Wonder’s ‘What’. The tune soon returns to Blair Witch Project type territory with some really unsettling wind chimes.

It’s hard to tell if this tune would survive without the melody, because as good as the bassline is (and it really is good), it’s the fairytale atmosphere that really makes ‘Black Forest’ what it is. At Darkside Sophistication we try to go for the less obvious records- the more obscure the better. And I think we’ve come close to testing the limits of that benchmark here (short of doing a feature on corporate R&B). If you’re after something that’s really out of the norm, then look no further.  

Hyperlinks:

Moldy: http://selectormoldy.com
Heavy Pressure Recordings: http://heavypressure.com
Venez: http://www.myspace.com/resistdub
Dubwar: http://www.dqxt.org/dubwar
Joey Beltram: http://www.myspace.com/jbeltram
Wonder: http://www.myspace.com/djwonder
 

There were many tunes on Kode 9’s Dubstep Allstars mix notable for their distinctiveness, but ‘Haunted’ was definitely one of the stranger ones. Slotted in after the energetic jump up of Benga’s ‘Mammoth’ (Plastician remix), Cyrus’s track sounded slower than any half-step tune had a right to be. Well now it’s finally on wax, and with a remix from fellow Random Trio producer Omen.

Cyrus mix: It’s fitting for a track that seems to go out of its’ way to break all the rules that this has a beatless intro, made up solely from the sounds of what could be either: a) a twisted interpretation of the middle eastern muezzin call to prayer; b) the wailings of a mad Tibetan monk, or c); a witchcraft fixated male singer laying down an atmospheric vocal backing track to a Bollywood horror movie. Typical Dubstep fare I know, but there isn’t much else about this tune that is.

The bassline and drums are really quite strange with their repetitive nature, droning on in a kind of depressing way. Somehow I get the feeling that this is a Marmite love it or hate it track, there’s no middle ground. Now I really dislike using that analogy because every time I’ve ever heard someone say that about a song, book, TV programme, etc., I’ve always just thought ‘it’s alright, not too bad, MOR’. But in this context I reckon it’s probably a truthful description of ‘Haunted’.

Personally I rate this mix for it’s uniqueness, but I really would love to know how this has fared in clubland. Does the bassline make for a floorfiller, or is the response usually “this DJ’s boring me, I’m away for a beer/piss”. Feedback please! At the bottom of these articles it’ll always say posted by Darksidesophistication on dd/mm/yy @ X:XX PM. To the right it’ll say 0 comments, or 3 comments, or whatever the amount of comments people have made is. If you click on this you can make a comment yourself. Have Random Trio tunes triggered fisticuffs on the floor of Plastic People, or do they make you want to hug your boyfriend/girlfriend? I’m all ears.

Omen mix: Omen’s affectively giving us the more accessible, club friendly version here. The tune’s called ‘Haunted’ but it’s his job to make it less so. But don’t be expecting anything too saccharine. This is got a pretty tough sounding set of drums, with ever present echoey snare, but the pattern is varied enough to include the odd bit of bouncing hi hats and other special effects. There’s even a reversed sound effect, though it’s nothing like the one he did for his Tectonic cut ‘Aphrodite’; don’t think this will be seen as a Omen trademark just yet. For all those who don’t know, Leeds based Omen is the most recent addition to the Croydon reared Random Trio collective, which funnily enough used to be a duo.

In this mix the bassline is altered to make it sound much warmer and, well, happy. Dry your eyes cause this rub’s took away the scariness and replaced it with a sense of humour. As such I wouldn’t be surprised if this ends up getting more plays on the Dubstep circuit, but I’ll leave it up to you mob to keep me informed. Otherwise this version loses some of the A-side’s eerie hallmarks like the endless repetition, but it gains brownie points for originality with the bassline key change near the end. Either way, I’m glad they put both mixes on one twelve instead of just choosing the one and resorting to placing another track on it as B-side cannon fodder. I like both and it’s nice that one of them didn’t end up in dubplate purgatory.

Hyperlinks:

Random Trio: http://www.myspace.com/randomtrio
Omen: http://www.myspace.com/djomen666
Kode 9: http://www.myspace.com/kode9
Benga: http://www.myspace.com/bengabeats
Plastician: http://www.myspace.com/plastician  
muezzin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muezzin
Tectonic Recordings: http://www.myspace.com/tectonicrecordings   

                                                                Reviews by Owen Griffiths

Thanks to the joys of MSN Instant Messenger I met up with these two characters. Pretty sure I’ve seen the one on the right in an identity parade, but I won’t hold that against them. Forget about hyperlinks with this one, everything you need to know is in last week’s label showcase.

Clandestine Cultivations: Dom and Unlikely are here. If we give separate answers we will make it clear. Most will be joint.
Darksidesophistication: Okay… how did the whole Brighton (listed wrongly in Boomkat as Bristol!) & London connection come about then.
Clandestine Cultivations: Both of us are originally from London (sorta) and moved down here to study, we’re still back and forth all the time; it seemed only natural to spread the sound to a new area when we moved here.
Darksidesophistication: So what brought you two to Brighton then?
Clandestine Cultivations: Just seemed like a good place to spend a little time while not doing much actual work.
Darksidesophistication: But I take it Kion was from there originally?
Clandestine Cultivations: Yeah we met Kion when we moved down here at a Brighton Dubstep meet up someone on the dubstepforum.com organised, we got on straight away and his tunes were great so we got him on board
Darksidesophistication: Sounds like there was a bit of a Dubstep thing going on then even a while ago. I asked this question of the Venez boys about New York, and I’ll ask it to you about Brighton too. I know there’s no comparing them in terms of size, but: Is Dubstep a familiar term among the majority of Brighton clubbers?
Clandestine Cultivations: When we started Dubpressure in November 2005 no one seemed to know what it was at all, there were definitely no other Dubstep nights. I (Unlikely) played a Dubstep and Grime set to open for Darqwan at a Miami Bass/ Breaks night the year before but that was about it. To be honest at the time [Dubstep] wasn’t as separate from garage and grime either.
Darksidesophistication: What about 2007 though, I suppose Grime & Dubstep are more understood in Brighton now?
Clandestine Cultivations: Over the course of ‘06 everything changed though, and now everyone down here knows about it. Grime is still fairly poorly understood though. Its underground music by its nature though, in a way its more surprising how many people are aware of Dubstep now.
Darksidesophistication: Yeah, cause round here in Sunny Belfast, you have Boxcutter, who’s presumably sold a fair amount of albums, he’s well respected in England and everything, but if you ask anyone in Northern Ireland what Dubstep is and I’d say that most clubbers would never have heard the word let alone actually heard the music. And although Boxcutter might have a local following, he isn’t getting put on the big nights over here (though to be honest this is to be expected when the only big nights are House & Techno ones which stick to a predictable format). I take it your point about Grime though has more to do with MC’s rather than the instrumental side of things. The whole MC thing doesn’t seem to travel as well as it could, different cities take to it in different ways.
Clandestine Cultivations: We’ve both been huge fans of grime from before the name really came about too, the instrumental side has been hugely influential on current Dubstep in our opinions, its a pity its been marginalized and largely written off by a lot of people the way it has, it really was one of the most exciting things to happen to music at the time.
Darksidesophistication: In my opinion though the problem with Grime is that it has lost that emphasis of minimalism in the productions, it’s just not as experimental as it once was, and the fact that fewer instrumentals are getting made really hasn’t helped things, or at least, it’s lost potential fans who aren’t really into their vocals.
Clandestine Cultivations: The media was pretty irresponsible (and inaccurate) in their portrayal of it too.
Darksidesophistication: Well you see, now people equate grime with MC tracks, basically the UK’s version of Rap, to a lot of people the name ‘Grime’ equals vocal track. They disregard Grime as an instrumental thing entirely, or at least to them instrumentals only exist for MC’s to spit over.
Clandestine Cultivations: Everything is bound to lose some degree of experimentation as it cements, though MCs in particular continued to try and push boundaries in a very intent manner. Trim, D Double, Flirta, Skepta, JME, Slew Dem, and loads more always came with something unexpected. And of course Wiley at the helm put out some of the most forward thinking and eccentric music in any genre.
Darksidesophistication: Come to think of it though the links between Dubstep & Grime seem to be better now than how they once were, and I’d say your first EP was a good mish mash of styles. Was it your intention to put out something pretty varied, to attract the most potential customers, perhaps?
Clandestine Cultivations: With our first release I think we wanted to represent different sides of the 140bpm post Garage scene that we were into, it wasn’t so much a commercial concern, more that we didn’t want to be seen as only representing one side of the sound. I’m not sure about the ties between the scenes being better now though, because they were the same thing for a while. Like in Drum and Bass, Tech Step people didn’t like jump up say, but at least they could agree they were both D&B, now the scenes (Dubstep and Grime) are seen to be completely different things. (authors note: they have a fucking point here)
Darksidesophistication: Which sort of leads me on nicely to the thing about Clandestine Cultivations in general. You put on your first Dubpressure night in late ‘05 (pre Dubstep Warz and all the resulting hype), and in ‘06 you’ve set up a label, with quite a professional website and label sticker designs I have to add. How was the collective set up? What was it that made you want to step it up to the next level, and how did you meet up with the rest of the crew?
Clandestine Cultivations: A label was something we’d both wanted to do for a long time, before Dubstep even came about. I think it just happened naturally, that and we’d been going on about it for so long we thought we’d better do something, ha ha!
Darksidesophistication: And Clockwork was someone you’d met through the Brighton scene perhaps?
Clandestine Cultivations: Clockwork we went to school with actually and we were all producing about 4 years ago, collaborating, sharing ideas, etc. He isn’t so much involved in the workings of the label, and also produces for a number of other entities. The same applies to Crooked Man, who originally was one of the founding members but is mostly tied up with other projects now. Basically us two (Dom & Unlikely) run the label end, me (Unlikely) and Letty do the promotion end, and Letty does all the design.
Darksidesophistication: There’s tons of labels coming out at the moment, but you’ve more or less proved your staying power with the last 3 records in what, half a year or so. And more importantly, you’ve managed to attract big names like Toasty & Shackleton. How did linking up with them come about?
Clandestine Cultivations: I (Unlikely) met Shackleton ages ago at the sadly now defunct Thriller Funk night Slaughter Mob used to run at Herbal 2003-04 sometime (memory is hazy) and we’ve been good friends ever since. This was before Skull Disco’s first release, we were going to both start labels around the same time, [but] I took quite a while longer getting it together. Toasty I met through the Hotflush crew who I used to chat to at the time when I was planning to move to Brighton (he lives down here too), again we got on well and [had] similar views on music.
Darksidesophistication: I remember hearing about Thriller Funk on J Da Flex’s show. That was ages ago come to think of it, did Thriller Funk last long?
Clandestine Cultivations: Not as long as it should have! It was a great night that, one of the first Dubstep nights where everyone just had a good time; FWD was more about networking then and was the meeting place for the scene really.
Darksidesophistication: I suppose it [Thriller Funk] was just ahead of its’ time. One thing I’ve got to ask you about though is the Redstar Sessions you hold down in a Camberwell pub once a week. On one flyer (don’t know if it was a typo or not) it had it billed as lasting from 6pm to 3 in the morning, and its all for free… that just sounds insane. And when I say insane I mean the time of it more than anything, a 9-hour club night on a Thursday. Elaborate more on Redstar.
Clandestine Cultivations: Yeah it was a bit mad (authors note: presumably it still is! It’s back with a vengeance now after an Xmas hiatus); Redstar is a bit of an anomaly in many ways actually. Its turned into a new meeting place for the scene as its very relaxed and not a normal club night, you can have a cup of coffee, play a game of pool, swap CD’s, and then get unreasonably pissed as the night goes on.
Darksidesophistication: Did it really go on for 9 hours though? I mean, were there people clocking off work at 5 and then rushing down to Camberwell, then emerging nine hours later at 3 in the fucking morning!
Clandestine Cultivations: Yeah! Obviously people went home gradually from 12-3 but there’s a big squat rave contingent in south London and Redstar is run by a long running ex squat sound system crew (Unsound), so they would fill out the later hours… It was basically the pub, a place to eat a takeaway and a club in one in the summer.
Darksidesophistication: Seeming as most of Clandestine seem to live in Brighton, is it awkward making the commute to London for Redstar, or for Unlikely & Kion for their Sub FM show
Clandestine Cultivations: Yeah I (Unlikely) cant make it up for every one because of uni and travel expenses so Letty is the one who does most of the work on the night, and me on Dubpressure. It all works out in the end. Dom works in London so is usually about. The Sub FM show is actually streamed from Kions’ studio in Brighton so that’s not an issue. They’re very close to each other though (Brighton and London) so it’s never too much stress.
Darksidesophistication: I take it Dubpressure down in Brighton is more about big one off events, with bigger DJ names and all that? What is it, bi monthly, seasonal?
Clandestine Cultivations: Ha ha, seasonal! Nah, it used to be every 2 months, we’re making it monthly this year though.
Darksidesophistication: All right, finally, what does Clandestine Cultivations actually mean? Is it a reference to loft grown weed, voodoo black magic (judging from Lettys’ occult type artwork on the labels), what is it!?
Clandestine Cultivations: Good question. I (Unlikely) came up with the name ages ago, just the clandestine bit at first, I just liked the idea of it being a bit under the surface, not exactly secret but not a glaring media entity. The cultivation bit just came from the idea of nurturing the undercurrent I guess.

                                                              Interview by Owen Griffiths