Molten Beats

a review by gareth metford of
release format Molten Beats by Ram Trilogy (CD Album)

text

Released at the very end of 1999, Ram Trilogy's Molten Beats seems at first listen to conform to the rigid roboticism that has dominated drum & bass since the 'scientific' or 'neurofunk' sound first rose to prominence in mid-1997(1). With its thumping, repetitive beats, filtered basslines, and looming Bladerunner-style synths, the impression is of an uninflected re-versioning of a style which long ago took on many of the qualities of kitsch. However, sustained exposure reveals a much more interesting dynamic taking shape. Listen closely to a track such as 'Gridlock', with its fizzy synth-miasma and multiple basslines, or the vertiginous pitch-bent shrieks of 'Terminal 2', and one becomes aware of this music's sheer textural exuberance, its timbral multiplicity. Most neurofunk producers restrict themselves to only those sounds capable of generating associations with the hard, intractable materials of adolescent techno-fetishism: silicon, steel, concrete, the abraded plastic of William Gibson's early novels. With Molten Beats a whole range of substances comes to mind, from springy, intractable styrofoam, through to slick, fine-grained fabrics and the crusted, yielding skins of exotic fruits. Similarly, though grounded in the basic kick / snare combination codified by Doc Scott's 'Shadow Boxing', there is nothing austere about these rustling, twittering, shivering rhythms, built up latin-style out of layer upon layer of hihats, shakers, tambourines, micro-breakbeats, and all manner of rhythmic detritus. The album even displays a degree of mockery, via 'Iron Lung''s hilarious headbanger bassline and the wierd, crab-like synth-organisms which transform 'No Reality' into a reserve for scuttling DSP-creatures, of the high seriousness which makes Blackmarket's basement such a malodorous breeding ground for testosterone. In essence, then, if Molten Beats is not the injection of adrenaline which jungle's lardy-arsed corpse so desperately needs, then at the very least it gives a momentary impression of vitality, a sense of the twitch or spasmodic jerk which might prefigure a recovery. On the other hand, like the bizarre movements produced by rigor mortis, it might imply nothing other than the final, irreversible settling of jungle's fluids, once so freely circulating, into stagnation and decay.

(1) Simon Reynolds proposed the term 'neurofunk' in his article '2 Steps Back' (The Wire #166, December 1997). I use Reynolds' terminology here since, to the best of my knowledge, this tendency has never been satisfactorily summed up in any other way. Posted by gareth metford at 00:00, 14 Apr 2000