Dusk of the Living Bassheads

Zomby

Traditionally I’d look upon an “illness” like Seasonal Affective Disorder as some manner of quackery or another. On the other hand, I’ve always thought all this Daylight Saving Time-related falling back and springing forward we do every year is a bunch of malarkey. It gets dark at four in the goddamn afternoon now! How is that helping anybody? Maybe my age is catching up to me, but ever since we “fell back” my brain has been fried. I’m not boo-hooing as if I’m suddenly afflicted by the aforementioned–and ironically named–SAD or anything. But the early darkness just feels unnatural to me. And I’m a “night person!”

Zomby ‘Where Were U In ‘92?’There are at least two groups who tend to operate under cover of darkness for whom the earlier-than-normal night-fall is undoubtedly a boon; supernatural creatures and party people. After all, when George Romero introduced his brain-chomping reanimated corpses it was in a film titled NIGHT of the Living Dead…And I’ve known club-kids willing to stand in line outside some warehouse or discotheque on the darkest and coldest of nights just for the opportunity to get down. In mysterious UK-based producer Zomby–whose macabre name and skeletal logo would seem to indicate an affinity for the ghoulish, and whose sub-genre-dissolving beats betray his love for almost every brand of electronic dance music to emerge during the last twentysomething years–there exists a bit of both. And his new record Where Were U In ‘92? is worth risking the perils of night–be they SAD, zombies or a case of pneumonia–to hear any day.

The only thing more disorienting than the sudden arrival of 4PM sunsets accompanied by arctic winds and sub-freezing temperatures may be the Frankenstein-like amalgam of club music styles Zomby throws into his tracks. As the album’s title should indicate, Zomby’s intention when creating Where Were U In ‘92? was in part to pay tribute to the salad days of club culture when House, Techno and Drum-N-Bass were all the rave, birthing new sub-genres and hybrids by the day. At the center of the album lies the wobbly, bass-driven Dubstep genre–Zomby’s entrance-point to the recording industry–and the speedier Garage music it was birthed from. But congealed around the pulsating sub-bass, shuffly rhythms and reverb is a melted-pot of Baltimore Club breaks, Rap accapellas, air-horns, Dancehall adlibs, catchy pitch-shifted vocal hooks and cheesy old-school House keys. It’s kinda like Burial if Mad Decent got ahold of him.

DiploSpeaking of which, Zomby’s tunes have been supported by Mad Decent founder Diplo, in addition to a globe-circling list of other eclectic DJs including the likes of Drop the Lime, Shadetek, DJ Rupture, Modeselektor, Erol Alkan, Skream, Sinden, Kode 9, Toddla T and others that should clue readers in to the cross-genre appeal of of his work. To me his rich pastiche of sampled sounds–drawn from across the dance music timeline and sub-genre spectrums as well as from various oldies, contemporary R&B, Pop and more–reminds me those old “party-break” and rhythm track 12′’s heads like Frankie Cutlass, Funkmaster Flex, Bobby Konders, Kenny Dope, Todd Terry et al were dropping during the early ’90s transposed for post-internet age clubbers. And surely, if anything ever deserved to be slapped with the appellation “Nu Rave”–a term I dismissed in this space over a year ago–it’s Where Were U In ‘92?!

At just under 40 minutes in length, and paced as it is at a breakneck tempo, the album rockets by quickly and almost seamlessly. In fact, the high BPMs, repetitive riffing and lack of space between songs makes it feel like a non-stop DJ mix, even though the selections aren’t mixed. Some of the standouts include “Fuck Mixing, Lets Dance,” which sounds like “Wu Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthing Ta Fuck Wit” fighting the “Baltimore Version” of Diplo’s “Thingamajawn” while a Dancehall sound system and a Hip-House DJ have a soundclash, “Float,” which resurrects a deceased R&B diva and a hit by an early-’90s Brit-House duo, and “Tears In the Rain,” which revisits the sound of pre-Techno Detroit only to let pirates submerge it in tremulously murky underwater bass and celebrate with Ska horn-blasts and echoey vocal samples. I’m also partial to the whomping basslines and novel vocal bits “We Got the Sound,” “B With Me” and “Euphoria” are laced with.

Zomby “Float”

It only took one listen to Where Were U In ‘92? to infect me with whatever it is that makes this Zomby move.  So you better watch out, or the same might happen to you! If it does, you can rest easy in the knowledge that it’ll be plenty dark for you when you go out on your evening hunt for brains…er, bass…though…For a few more months at least.

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