The Bug's 'London Zoo' Launch Party @ Third Base, 2 August 2008

The Bug's 'London Zoo' Launch Party @ Third Base, 2 August 2008

05 August, 2008
by: Robin

There's a transatlantic relationship that for a long time has seen musical ideas bounce between Jamaica and the UK. Kevin Martin's music as The Bug – along with the similar Razor X project – is a glitch in that narrative, combining dancehall culture with a background in dense experimental projects like God, Ice and Techno Animal. The British producer abducts vocalists to frequently harsh, out-there places created with techno, noise and rave techniques. There's some parallel there with breakcore's junglist appropriation of soundbites, but with none of the uprooted flippancy, setting Martin apart and putting him more genuinely in the story.

The launch of the Bug album 'London Zoo', though, could easily celebrate the end of Martin's existence as an anomaly, as well as the release of a new record. At the time of his last full-length 'Pressure', the UK-JA exchange had helped give us garage, already mutating into grime. But neither the one scene – ranging from sweetness to sparseness via the odd rude-boy anthem – nor the other were likely to accommodate The Bug. When the lineage subsequently gave birth to dubstep, Martin's interest in the style (and partial assimilation with it) suggests his project was waiting for somewhere to feel more at home. At its worst, dubstep is another genre feeding shallowly off transatlantic culture, but at its best – say Kode 9 and The Spaceape or Digital Mystikz – there's an obvious match-up.

So it's fitting that Kode 9 and his MC warm up for Martin tonight, and not just because it's clearly a dream bill for the hordes outside Third Base. The duo have moved on from the treacly stasis of their earliest collaborations – sensbily in a climate of too-blunted, too-derivative dubstep. The music has a different kind of richness, which comes from layering lightweight percussion with concrete low end and synth strains from Detroit techno's most futurist movements. Although the sound-system isn't pristine, it's good enough to show off the spaciousness that makes it work. If high-hats and bass seem a few thousand feet removed in Kode 9's music, everything else dives between altitudes, except Spaceape's all-permeating voice.

The Bug has his side of the bargain too. Past shows have employed terror tactics, but now the impact comes from a benign weight more familiar to dubstep fans. His DJ set, with Warrior Queen on the mic, proves that he's moved closer into the continuum of UK dance music – but this isn't bad thing so much as a valid progression for new label Ninja Tune. Tunes like 'Poison Dart' hit hard enough without having to recall the distorted ragga of 'Killer' or 'Politicians and Paedophiles'.

It's only severe sound failures that save closing act Flying Lotus from being the odd man out. No doubt his appearance is a draw, but if overheated amps hadn't cooled the mood, his horizontally psychedelic hip-hop would probably have been the false move that derailed the rave. And as people from Kingston to London know, that's one thing you don't do.

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Robin