Scuba - Personality
- Written by Tom Belte
What happens when an electronic music artist makes a collection of tracks which are rooted inside their own attitude of content and individual style and the artist then wishes to build upon their current audience even further? What if that music becomes more accessible? Is it the artist’s identity shifting, or is the artist changing to become something that they might not have envisaged but have now willingly become?
It’s a series of questions which can only come from progression, time and ultimately risk. Scuba is at that place, now at the intersections of becoming an underground producer who is prized, but who could be respected even more if he makes himself even more obtainable. To go onwards and overground is a risk, but it can and does have its rewards.
Previously Scuba’s former efforts explored dubstep, where he mapped out individually its cohesion with other electronic music, in particular, techno and its extraterrestrial facets. More recently, Scuba made his most important declaration with the help of the DJ-Kicks Series which was a mix of tracks that demonstrated a direction of intent - listeners heard a blend of texture and detailed synthetic techno that displayed a producer and DJ influenced by futurism and environment, particularly the techno metropolis of Berlin. Scuba showed with skill that he is no longer ‘dubstep’ or ‘techno’, he is something gloriously in between.
Scuba’s first two albums A Mutual Apathy and Triangulation were refreshing - archived now with his other astute sonic explorations, we now have Personality and as an LP it is a proclamation of sorts, a proclamation that will inevitably cause an outbreak of opinion. Character is essentially what makes us human, and Personality is unquestionably a more humanised Scuba. On album opener ‘Ignition Key’ there is a direct and more practised sound, a fuller music body topped off with the thickset kicks and bass but now with more air and melody, fewer swing and extra bling.
Following after is ‘Underbelly’, a track which scrapes along the bottom end, layered with prickly percussion reminiscent of Shed’s ‘Estrange’ but ending with a cosmic and outer space breakdown which is equal parts Star Trek library music as much as it is Lindstrom in full cosmos mode. Again, we hear Scuba experimenting with a sharper and cleaner production.
‘Hope’ then drops, and drops it does– this is ‘90s business, E drenched and full of the chutzpah of main room drama music. It has trance stabs with druggy euphoria, a weird slightly awkward vocal message which states “got the taste, got the sex, got the leech, got the medicine, got the guy, got the girl, got the system.” It’s a track which does not work completely, although it does reference intelligently what the populace want to hear whilst in peak time mode. It is cliché however, which is something that Scuba fans may not be used to.
Following afterwards are tracks ‘July’, which sounds as if it could score any slick eighties cop movie; ‘Action’, a track that is what people of the eighties would have thought the future would have sounded like, and ‘Cognitive Dissonance’ - a smooth little drum and bass track which is akin to D Bridge’s ‘Gemini Principle’.
As a whole, these tracks thematically have giant breakdowns, life affirming exhilaration and reach for the lasers. Scuba has created bolder music, bigger and more positive than his preceding work. Listeners can also find the odd track heads down an undulating channel, but this is usually topped off with the sweetened and elevating atmospheres of progressive house break beat and old school ‘90s dance music.
Yet with all that range, as an album Personality still feels like it will get fed to the wolves of the underground, and perhaps it will be indigestible for some – listeners may value its dexterity but the album may be diminished for its over-indulgence in maximal production and sleek use of rave’s blatancy. Due to this, Scuba cannot depend on the mood or scene which he used with dubstep music and later techno. The reception of Personality will depend wholly on his listener’s perception and pride. The bold decision to make the album was at first made by Scuba; his fans though will most certainly be the deciders.