Album Review : Mary Anne Hobbs - Wild Angels

Over the last few years dubstep’s profile has continued to blow up and make ripples in mainstream consciousness, helped in no small part by her neverending devotion to the sound, the scene and its associated artists - and two blinding special edition shows, Dub Warz and its follow-up Generation Bass. Yet she’s always continued to stay at the forefront of new hybrid sounds as they emerge, giving airplay to the likes of Joker, Shackleton and Zomby long before they began to taste the levels of recognition they’re currently attaining within the dubstep scene and beyond.

Wild Angels is the third in her long running series of compilations for Mike Paradinas’ peerless Planet Mu label, and marks something of a departure from the previous two, Warrior Dubz and Evangeline. Whilst the music collected on her first two albums was distinctly and closely tied to the original and established ‘dubstep’ sound – gutwrenching sub-bass pressure married to sparse, halfstep percussion – this most recent release sees her gather material from the furthest reaches of its ever expanding area of influence. So among its eighteen tracks there are stewards of the recent ‘wonky’ phenomenon (Rustie, Mike Slott), explosive, sprawling post-garage (Brackles), heavily vocodered electronic pop (Darkstar’s cover of Radiohead’s ‘Videotape’) and slow, deliberate guitar atmospheres (Sunken Foal). It’s appropriate really – the genre’s explosion and assimilation of a host of outside influences over the last couple of years has given rise to these mutant forms and many more besides. To document ‘dubstep’ now is to look beyond any tightly imposed limitations of genre and explore the farthest, and often least conventional, regions of modern dance music.

Opening with a slow builder like Mark Pritchard’s ‘?’ is, it turns out, a canny move. It’s a particularly beautiful, spectral piece of ambient electronica; nothing much happens, yet its heavy presence works perfectly as a warm up before the storm that follows. Hudson Mohawke’s ‘Spotted’ then rises from below before keeling over awkwardly in a humid haze of conflicting synth pressure and unquantised drums. It’s easily the equal of anything on his rather excellent Polyfolk Dance EP in its druggy charm, and is suggestive of some exciting times ahead with his debut album Butter, due out in a few weeks on Warp. Mohawke’s LuckyMe collective companions Rustie and Mike Slott make appearances here too. The former’s classic ‘Zig-Zag’ is as drunkenly lairy as it’s ever been, staggering onto the floor with a pint of extra-strong cloudy cider in hand.

The only representative of Bristol’s Purple Trio to make an appearance here is also its most mercurial; Gemmy’s productions often lack the immediate pop-nous of Joker, and Guido’s obsessive attention to melodic layering, but make up the difference in cocky bursts of 8-bit fire. ‘Rainbow Road’ - named after the infamous Mario Kart race, naturally - is no exception, propelled by a fiendishly addictive bass thump and drums that shuffle back and forth from rattling skank to 4/4 pulse. Special mention should also be made of fellow Bristolian Hyetal. Paradoxically, despite being offten the most underrated of the West Country lot, his productions are some of their most fully realised. ‘We Should Light A Fire’ is simply gorgeous, an aqueous wash of submarine bubbles and gently attenuating techno chatter.

Wild Angels really does act as an excellent introduction to the more extrovert and brightly coloured ends of the dubstep spectrum. Whilst its darker and more contemplative regions are not given so much airing here, save Hyetal and Untold’s brittle, brooding ‘Disclipline’, attempting to piece together a compilation that completely encapsulates such a rapidly expanding and innovative scene is next to impossible. What she has managed to do is assemble a well thought-out, well-sequenced album that acts equally well as a primer for the genre newcomer and as a source of new material for established heads.