Joe Nice brings aboard Slovenian new-skool dubsteppin’ duo DubDiggerz for the 10th slice of GourmetBeats. Here we are presented a three track slab of wax that covers all the right details and styles – from dubbed out meditation, unrelenting growlers that are primed for maximum club pressure and fluid techy beats. Heavily supported by the Dubplate Assassin for quite sometime now, its a great addition to the GourmetBeats stable.
Straight out the gate, “Le Hospital” is geared directly for the dance with its distorted and pneumatic low end and no nonsense percussion work. It’s simple yet effective and deservedly will get the rewind treatment on any proper system. It comes off almost as a lost DMZ plate with its spartan details and commitment to pushing air out the speaker cone.
“Up & Dub VIP” is another fine slab of Jamaican inspired production with the boxes checked – Rasta chatter, guitar chops treated with spring reverb and delay, and a hummable bass-line (I’d like to hear the original at some point also). Some will complain that it does indeed check all the right boxes but doesn’t add anything new to the mix, but its a perfect mid-set track that’ll give some breathing room after the onslaught that was “Le Hospital”. That being said, it’s a nice little piece that gets the vibe right without getting lost in the ganja smoke.
Finally “Busted” comes correct with the percussion salad. Adding some much needed momentum with a skippy garage influenced rhythmic framework, but keeping it appropriately dark with some delicious and lush synth work, “Busted” sounds like it could have been on Chord Marauders and their ilk. Truly, it’s all about the second drop, as the percussion picks up and the synths swirl around in a dub-tech-y frenzy.
GB010 is released April 6th and available to pre-order from Unearthed Sounds, Redeye, White Peach, Juno and Intense Records.
